An update on Peter Crouch's involvement and the subsequent Discovery documentary

Since fans stepped in to save the club in September 2018 and return it home to Champion Hill the focus of the club’s board has been on clearing debts, creating a stable foundation and then building a sustainable club owned and managed by fans for generations to come with a future secured by the delivery of a new stadium and facilities which will in turn increase sporting provision for the wider community. Seeing that progress undone by the pandemic was hard to take but we have to put it into context considering the lives lost and the wider toll on countries and communities. We have fought hard once more to keep the club alive and ensure we are still here when the time is right for football at this level to return safely.

This most recent crisis to hit the club underlined the fact that the efforts and skillsets of the fans who have been running the club have been solely focused on ‘off the pitch’ activities. The lack of people on our team with experience in football has been a gap we have been trying to address since our return to Champion Hill. Whilst we have succeeded in many areas, offering practical support to the management teams of the men’s, women’s and youth teams has been a concern we raise at every supporter meeting.

Our search to date has identified a few excellent people with the right skillsets but sadly without the time available to commit to the club so when the opportunity to work with Peter Crouch arose it did seem too good to be true. It was exactly what we had been looking for, someone with a Dulwich Hamlet background and with experience of all levels of the game. He is a perfect match for the role we had open and that role is critical to creating a club management structure where equal weighting can finally be given to matters both on and off the pitch.

We are excited about having this opportunity and looking forward to Peter’s contribution to the club, supporting the existing teams and helping both the club and the local community to recover from an extremely difficult period away from each other during the pandemic. Looking forward we are also looking to leverage Peter’s knowledge of the game and experience with other clubs as we start the process of expanding our youth sporting provision.

A story like this obviously brings media interest and a documentary series wanted to follow Peter’s hands-on work with a non-league club and whether to agree to feature in that story was a decision in its own right and one in which we had to weigh up a lot of concerns we no doubt shared with many other fans.

Our reasons for participating in the documentary are different and separate from our reasons for working with Peter. We are confident having met Peter that his commitment to his day-to-day work with us will deliver what we have long been looking for, camera or no camera. Critical to our decision on the series was a belief that being able to show a wider audience that a community and fan-led and managed club can be a successful and sustainable model is a huge opportunity for the non-league football family.

Most ‘behind the scenes’ documentaries on the running of football clubs focus on the professional full-time officials and players at the top of our game. This opportunity was presented with the aim of showing how impactful and meaningful the contributions by committed volunteers are to the running of a non-league club. We believe that is a valuable story to tell as our club is only here due to the round-the-clock efforts of those that commit their time because of their love for the club.

We were ultimately swayed after knowing that Peter’s own condition for participating was to be given a chance to make a real and impactful difference and so with that shared purpose and motivation we look forward to welcoming Peter back to the club, joining our community and delivering for us in the areas we have not been able to address from within and that pose a real risk to our future if we fall short.

We hope you will all welcome Peter to his role in our team throughout the season whenever it is safe for you to return and we are committed to acknowledging and respecting any concerns about filming.

The Board of Dulwich Hamlet FC