Volunteers are the lifeblood of non-league and grassroots football. Put simply, without them, many clubs simply wouldn’t exist. I won’t go into a deep dive on trickle down economics, but the astounding and frankly grotesque levels of money in the higher echelons of the game have undeniably had at least some impact on the amount of money that is in the wider football landscape.

When I was still in single digits age wise, I had an obsession with the non-league game; the GM Vauxhall Conference as it was then known, was my very own Premier League. I did what many kids my age did and chose the best team to follow, which that season was Kidderminster Harriers, who had just won the league in the 1993/94 season under the stewardship of Graham Allner. Alongside their title success they also enjoyed a heroic FA Cup run, defeating the likes of Preston North End and Birmingham City before ultimately falling to West Ham United in the fifth round. They demonstrated their ability to mix it with the “big boys” but were denied promotion owing to failing the ground grading requirements due to the wooden stand at their Aggborough home. It was, at the time, still very much a semi-professional league with part time players and infrastructure that could potentially rule a team out of the promotion they rightly deserved.

Fast forward to 2025, and the overwhelming majority of teams that populate the National League are full time professional outfits. Nonetheless, as you travel down the pyramid, it is still a world where the vast majority of roles and responsibilities are carried out by people who simply love the game, their clubs or have a general penchant for suffering. I only need to look a few miles up the road to see a club like Stambridge United who once counted Alan Brazil and Garry Nelson amongst their ranks and were a long established local side, who sadly folded due to a lack of people able to set their time aside and keep the club going. I know of many cases where some poor pensioner finds themselves signing up for “just one more season” to try and keep their club alive.

Why have I told you all this? To be honest, it’s probably my inability to stick to one subject at a time, but more importantly for this article, it sets the scene for the sheer chaos that erupted in a quiet corner of Southend.

Now, I’ve previously been a member of the “media team” at a local non-league club, and while it certainly kept me busy, it never reached a stage where I was unable to function in my day to day life. I sent out the odd tweet, interviewed the management team, and tried to keep up on game day providing match updates. I wasn’t particularly skilled in this department, owing in no small part to the aforementioned concentration issues (I’d catch a whiff of the onions from the burger bar and miss all the action), but, at its very worst, I would pick up my phone in the morning, check the notifications and see that a couple of people had followed the account overnight, then get on with my day. So imagine you are a family man, in full time employment, who volunteers at an 11th tier club. Now, I can attest that the man in question goes above and beyond when it comes to his duties however, he couldn’t have foreseen what came next.

It had just turned midnight on September 1st, 2021 and Catholic United Media Manager Rob Lilley sent out a tweet that would have a huge impact on the profile and fortunes of the Southend, Essex based amateur club. The expectations were minimal, and Rob settled down for a nice night's sleep, ready for the next day. Then, this happened:

“I had to take two days off as leave, just to stay on top of the messages……….. I was on my phone and laptop almost constantly throughout the night and then for the next 36 hours”

One of the reasons I have always found football such an engaging prospect is its ability to throw up organic narratives far more interesting to me than any work of fiction could offer. Such was the case on the 31st August, 2021 when Celtic signed Cameron Carter-Vickers on loan from Tottenham Hotspur. One thing myself and Cameron have in common is we are both from the tropical paradise of Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UK, although it must be said that, unlike myself, he has somewhat had a more adventurous journey and now finds himself in a different Paradise altogether. Carter-Vickers was spotted by Tottenham scouts at the age of 10 whilst playing in the youth ranks of Catholic United, a fact spotted by then first team player Dan Trenkel, as Rob explains:

“He notified me of the link and sent me the picture of Cam when he was playing for Catholic United Youth when he was probably about 10 or 11 years old. I posted it out on Twitter and that's when the madness started.”