Supported by Sported:
Parr Sports and Community Centre

“I made it clear to the council that I felt very strongly that this needs to be done properly,” he recounts. “I was told, ‘look, you need to register as a charity, there’s an awful lot of paperwork you need and we can’t just give you the keys to the building. You need money to get some business acumen.’ They didn’t want it just as a boxing club.”

Wildcard ABC was born in November 2009 as an alternative outlet for those from the surrounding patch. With England Boxing providing initial help, a lot of kids came through the doors but it could not solve everything at once and not everyone wanted to pull on gloves. The asset transfer itself was problematic for a small team. “We were jumping through hoops and then hoops,” Hodnett reflects.

There was an opportunity to expand. It required business knowledge. With skills in strategic and financial planning, Derek May was despatched from within Sported’s bank of Volunteer Consultants, offering free advice and working closely with Wildcard’s management to put the organisation on a solid footing rather than up against the ropes.

“Derek was a wealth of knowledge,” Hodnett declares. “What he didn’t know about business wasn’t worth knowing to be honest. He was the go-to guy and his business acumen was absolutely superb. He was pivotal, to be honest. When we had a wobble, he’d go ‘Dom, come on.’ And he’d nurse us through it.

“He wasn’t patronising. He wanted us to succeed. I think he saw something in us.”

Out of Wildcard evolved Parr Sports CIC to run the facility. It is a heavyweight, in and out of the ring. Football courts resonate to the sound of games from morning until night. The gym inside is packed with coaches passing on their pugilistic powers. And a community kitchen serves up affordable meals, the building now a hub and a haven where all are welcome.

“We worked with their vision in terms of where they were now, but where they wanted to be,” Sported’s national manager, Rehana Koser, outlines. “The main thing was bringing in Derek to work with them, and to look at how we actually get them through that journey.

“So we were with them every step of the way, laying the foundation, getting a strategy in place, making sure they were realistic, making sure they had the right structure in terms of governance, and making sure we help them in terms of linking in with funding and getting that in place as well.”

Sported’s delivery team in Northwest England helped Parr access grants totalling over £500,000 from Power of Change, Sport England and the Steve Morgan Foundation, and the charity’s member services team identified other funding opportunities that have enabled Parr to expand.

“The important bit was also to make sure that they were in a place that they could build on that and have the sustainability elements so that in five years’ time, they’d be around,” Koser adds.

In partnership with Sported, it has used sport to created community cohesion and address anti-social behaviour in a way that resonates with the youth of the area, providing a return on investment that reaches beyond simple participation numbers.

“We’ve got kids here from all over St Helens, we’ve got kids here from Liverpool, we’ve got kids here from Wigan,” Hodnett notes with pride.

“People used to talk about the Newtown boys and the Parr boys as bitter enemies. Mortal enemies. Now they’re in here, they’re on the same minibus, they’re going watching boxing together.”