Lee Trundle celebrates his goal with Tristan Jenkins and Matthew Fisher. Pic: Owen Morgan.

Ammanford United . . . The Swansea City Old Boys’ Club With A Heart Of Gold

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By Owen Morgan

Ammanford AFC enjoyed a thumping 5-2 win over Undy Athletic in the JD Cymru South League at the weekend.

A vital three points for the home side, taking them up to 12th place in the 16-team table and 10 points clear of their visitors who are one spot off the bottom.

However, the win wasn’t the only significant success of the week for a club which prides itself on its community links.

A couple of days earlier, Ammanford AFC was named Carmarthenshire’s Community Sports Club of the Year – fitting recognition for a club that prides itself on its work in the town and beyond.

Many within football may associate Ammanford with the former Swansea City stars who have represented them in recent years.

The club’s fans – the Black and White Army – have had the pleasure of cheering on Leon Britton, Andy Robinson and Lee Trundle, who was on the score sheet at the weekend.

But Ammanford AFC is so much more than what happens on the pitch – from helping raise money for opposition clubs’ flood-hit communities to a disabled youngster in need of a new wheelchair.

The club has also helped set up a life-changing mental health foundation in the name of one of its former players, who died at the tragically young age of 27.

With the team 3-0 at half-time on Saturday, vice-chairman Rhodri Jones explained to Dai Sport, why its community work is so important to the club.

“We’re at the forefront of the community,” said Jones. “We work really hard to make sure that it’s not just about people coming to the game and supporting us.

“We’ve been lucky enough to have crowds of five or six hundred people here, so we make sure we give back to the community.

“Whether that’s fundraising for a wheelchair for a little boy at the beginning of the year or raising money for flood appeals for opposition teams.

“Even today, we’re raising money for the Ukraine Appeal by selling old replica shirts, as well as taking donations of clothes, sleeping bags and things.

“I think it’s important what we give back to the community, and we see a reward from that with the fans coming in and supporting us too. We see it very much as a two-way relationship.”

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the club organised a Wales-wide FIFA video game tournament – dubbed the DAIsolate thanks to title sponsor Dai Sport.

Clubs from all over Wales took part and the tournament to raise money for local food banks and the NHS.

However, the club wasn’t always quite so community minded, admits Jones.

“You go back five years and we did very little for the community in reality,” he says, “and it showed with the number of supporters we were getting through the door.

“We’d probably have 20 to 30 people watching us. Whereas these days, I think last season we averaged 270, which was in the top six within the whole of Wales, including the Cymru Premier.

“So it proves that when you show yourself within the community , the community supports you back.

“But it’s just a good feeling that when you’ve done something that’s really important for people, that you get the reward factor.

“So yes, it’s good to have the funds coming in to the club, but I think sometimes you’ve got to look at the bigger picture.

“If you’ve changed someone’s life or supported someone, as we did with that little boy, or as we’ve done with those flood appeals, then it just makes a difference in those communities.”

In the midst of the club’s transformation into a more community spirited entity, tragedy struck with the loss of a hugely popular figure within the town’s close-knit sporting community.

In 2019, Jac Lewis died at the age of 27. The town was stunned by his sudden death.

But through the grief came a determination to try and prevent the loss of another member of the community.

The result was the Jac Lewis Foundation, set up to provide support for mental health and well being through free professional counselling.

Builders and businesses came together to build the “Wellbeing Centre”, which is situated on the touchline in one corner of Ammanford’s Recreation Ground home.

There, those who need it can receive counselling. The building also acts as an office and training centre for the foundation’s counsellors. On match days fans can buy refreshments and merchandise there.

Jones explains the importance of the club’s involvement with the foundation.

“Jac was a former Ammanford player and came to watch every game,” says Jones of the youngster who has been described as a larger than life character loved by all who knew him.

“When we got promoted to Welsh League Division One, he was the one who ran on the pitch with a smoke bomb. I don’t know if that was quite the right way to celebrate, but that was Jac for you!

The Jac Lewis Foundation flag flying proudly alongside the Welsh flags above Ammanford’s Recreation Ground.

“He was always a part of the club, even when he stopped playing. He’d be at every social, every event we had.

“So when we lost Jac, it was a big hit for the community. Not just the football, but for the rugby, the cricket – any club in the town, he was a big part. So we wanted to do something to make a difference.

“And the Jac Lewis Foundation has made such a difference within the community. It’s got bigger than we ever imagined.

“We’ve got a partnership already with Swansea City, providing free counselling sessions.

“And that’s what we wanted, we wanted that sort of exposure, for people to say, actually, it’s okay to talk and have that support.”

The association with Swansea is a sign of how the Jac Lewis Foundation has grown at an enormous rate over the past three years with local individuals, organisations, sports clubs and companies raising funds to help support the service.

Last September, the Swans and the Jac Lewis Foundation announced a fortnightly mental health hub at the Swansea.Com Stadium to provide a preventative wellbeing and mental health service.

Due to the demand of this service a ‘One-Stop Mental Health Hub’ has been created, funded by the club’s majority shareholders, Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien, together with director and investor Jake Silverstein.

It aims to offer supporters, along with local residents, the opportunity to attend more regular drop-in sessions in the city facilitated by qualified counsellors to receive professional help and support for mental health difficulties.

Sessions are be hosted every Friday between 9am and 5pm when there are members of the Jac Lewis Foundation, South Wales Police, Samaritans and Swansea City Council in attendance and available to provide professional support.

Commenting on the expansion of the foundation since its inception. Jones says: “The main aim to begin with was actually to look at young males, because that’s where the highest percentage was.

“You know, young males who like football, everyone thinks they’re all jolly, but then perhaps go home and hide things that people didn’t know about.

“But now it’s grown to so much more than that. It’s got a bereavement service, it’s got play therapy for young children. It’s providing services from the ages of six all the way up to 86 at the moment. It very much caters for all.

“We’ve got more services within Ammanford itself, because it’s growing and one room isn’t enough anymore,” says Jones as we speak in the Welfare Centre overlooking the Ammanford pitch where the players are about to re-emerge for the second half.

“We’ve got at least three or four going now. Hopefully, it will grow even bigger and we can provide this kind of community hub within other areas of Wales.

“It’s already made a massive difference to people’s lives, we’ve provided over a thousand hours of counselling in the short period we’ve been going.

“The people running the Jac Lewis Foundation are the people within those communities. It’s built from the community and that’s why people support it so well.

“They understand that it’s not just something that’s standalone, we’ve got members from all areas of the community involved and they want to be part of it as well.”

Jones feels the foundation is vital to supplement established formal mental health services provided by the NHS and privately, which have been inundated and stretched to the limit by a rising tide of people needing support.

“There’s long delays, long waits, but with the way the Jac Lewis Foundation works now we’ve got a lot of trainees and counsellors on board so that the sessions are readily available at the click of a button,” says Jones.

“It’s important that people have those services, because they are life changing. Unfortunately they weren’t available for Jac when he needed them, but our hope is that if we can save one life – and we know we have already – that it makes a difference.

“I think every community needs something like a Jac Lewis Foundation and the way it’s growing, there might be Jac Lewis Federation within your community in the future.

“And that’s great, if it gets Jac’s name out there and saves another life in another community, that’s all we want really.”

Back on the pitch, the future is looking brighter for Ammanford with results like Saturday’s hopefully preserve their status in the Cymru South League.

Former Wrexham, Swans and Bristol City hero Trundle’s may be the stand-out name in the Ammanford line-up, but the local community ethos is just as strong on the playing side says Jones.

“Our first team manager has been with the club since he was six or seven years old, he’s been here for the best part of 25 years

“Again the skipper, Rhys Fisher, has played for Ammanford every year since he was six or seven years old. It’s very much the same for four or five other players out there.

“And even the people within the club as well, you look around at those who’ve been involved, myself included, since we began kicking a ball. People have done it on the field and they then want to give back to the club afterwards too.

Tristan Jenkins smashes in his first goal for Ammanford on Saturday.

“And, you know, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your first game, or whether it’s your 100th, we give a warm welcome to everyone. We try and make everyone feel as if they’ve been here before, that they know everyone. You’ll be welcomed with open arms.

“It’s important we make it feel like a nice community club and you want to come back. People mention names like Trundle, Britton and Robinson, the funny thing is that Trundle actually approached us after he finished with his last club.

“He thought ‘Ammanford’s a great fit for me, they’re a great community club’. He’s very much a good focal point within any community. He does a lot with the Swans, obviously, in the community and he felt Ammanford would be perfect for him too.

Lee Trundle celebrates his goal with Tristan Jenkins.

“It just shows that we’ve got our name out there within Welsh football and we’re getting the rewards right now after all the hard work of the volunteers and the boys on the pitch.”

The club has come a long way since wondering how they were going to fill their new stand at the Recreation Ground after moving from their previous Rice Road ground.

“We’d played Welsh League Division Two for probably close to 20 years,” says Jones, “bar one season when we went down and came straight back up.

“We had a new stand here with 250 seats, we thought ‘how are we going to fill that?!.We don’t want just one man and his dog to come to every game. How are we going to get the fans in?

“We talked about creating the ‘Black and White Army’, we got new supporters on board, we’ve always had a good player base in terms of numbers and now we run three senior teams, a ladies team, a vets team a pan-disability team and all the junior teams. So we try and cater for everyone.

“We try and cater for everyone on match days as well. It’s not just about coming to a game where before we’d have a table with some teas and coffees which were probably lukewarm! Now we try to make it very much a match day experience.

“We have music playing, we have some entertainment, competitions, raffles, obviously teas and coffees, merchandise. We try and make it a day out – not just the football.

“It’s very much making an experience for people to enjoy and hopefully, if they do enjoy, they come back again, and I think that’s what we’ve seen.”

And those who were there on Saturday will certainly be tempted back after the team’s five-star performance on the pitch.

Morgan Clarke opened the scoring in the first half from 30 yards before Trundle added a second with a smart close range finish thanks to a fine pass from Matthew Fisher.

But Magic Daps was upstaged somewhat by Llanelli youngster Tristan Jenkins who produced a fine finish to put Ammanford three up at half-time.

Tristan Jenkins’ second half rocket nestles in the top corner of the Undy net.

Jenkins then smashed home a rocket from outside the area which flew into the top corner to make it 4-0 before Richard Lewis bamboozled the home keeper allowing him to roll the ball into an empty net.

Two late consolation goals from Undy were never going to be enough to spoil what had been a memorable week for the Black and White Army and their community.

You can find out more about the Jac Lewis Foundation at https://jaclewisfoundation.co.uk/

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