FORMER Wanderer Glenn Keeley revels in taking football to the parts of Bolton that other sports cannot reach.

While his stay at Burnden Park in the late eighties was relatively brief, his impact on the town’s footballing landscape in the four years since he was appointed as the council’s community football development officer has been significant.

Keeley’s role encompasses the wide spectrum of football provision in Bolton, from working alongside Wanderers’ own Football in the Community department to dealing with the Football Association and many schools, clubs and organisations.

The hours are long but the work is rewarding for the former Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United defender, whose enthusiasm for his job is apparent from the moment you meet him.

“I organise funding for all sorts of work,” he said. “I try and get round as many deserving causes as I can.

“But the stuff I really like to get my teeth into are the harder to reach parts of the community – children with disabilities, ethnic groups or those in the care system.

“Football isn’t just about getting healthy or staying fit. It can do a lot more than people think.

“If you take children who have been put into care – they didn’t ask for it, but it is about trying to redress the balance and sometimes, even if it is just taking them to a game or getting the funding to get them a set of golf clubs, it’s amazing the difference you can make.

“I’m not a social liberal but once you have seen some of the backgrounds these kids come from, you quickly come to realise that they are screaming out for some help.”

Keeley speaks proudly of ‘twilight schemes’ set up around the borough that get young people, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, involved in four-hour football sessions on Friday and Saturday nights.

He has also worked for the last eight years with the town’s wheelchair football team, who are forced to travel hundreds of miles to play their fixtures, at a cost of £1,000 a game, because there is no regional league in the north. He is hoping that from next autumn, teams from Manchester and Liverpool will help to create a league in the North West to change all that.

After starting as a trainee with Ipswich Town, the Barking-born defender played for Newcastle, Blackburn, Oldham and Bolton before retiring.

Keeley, aged 54, hung up his boots at Burnden Park 20 years ago after 20 appearances for Wanderers, then managed by Phil Neal. He later played semi-professionally while managing two pubs in Leyland, gained a degree in sports rehabilitation, lectured at college, and has also worked with Blackburn Rovers and the England Federation of Disabled Sports.

“Since I have stopped playing I have been lucky enough to work in jobs that have given me a broad enough knowledge to help me in the role I am in now,” he said.

“Footballers can lose sight of the way life works outside the game. It has probably always been the case, even back when I was playing.

“When you are involved in football, that becomes your life. You’re immersed in your own little world.

“The same happened when I worked as a lecturer, you live and breathe work and don’t pay much regard to what is going on around you.”