A faculty 5-a-side football tournament for the Institute of Ophthalmology (IoO)

Jill Cowing (Environment & Safety Manager) organised a Faculty 5-a-side football tournament to bring together and connect colleagues from Brain Sciences for a fun and active wellbeing event.

What were you aiming to achieve from your wellbeing initiative? 

The Faculty of Brain Sciences football tournament was run in order to bring people together from the faculty who wouldn’t normally have the chance to meet due to the locations of our sites across the UCL campus.  Also, as many people have been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, we have become distanced even from those in our own departments. As it had been a stressful and difficult year for everyone the tournament was a great opportunity to do something fun and fitness related and have staff members connect with one another.

Tell us how you delivered your wellbeing initiative. 

The event was advertised internally in the IoO weekly bulletin and monthly newsletter and to other Brain Science departments via their Departmental Managers.  We had six teams competing with around 40 participants and used pitches at Finsbury Leisure Centre, close to IoO. The small grant funding went towards hiring the pitch, football kit for all participants and a trophy for the winning team. I was responsible for the organisation and purchasing the goods and the IoO head porter, Denis Lincoln, ran the event on the day also acting as referee and score keeper. Each match lasted for 20 minutes (10 minutes a side) with teams playing two initial matches before the grand final and play off for third place. Congratulations go to The Institute of Neurology team who narrowly beat Psychology on penalties.  The IoO A-Team beat PALS to come in third.

What was the positive impact of your wellbeing initiative? 

Everyone who took part really enjoyed the event and I received messages of thanks saying how great it was to get out for some much-needed exercise and to have fun with other people form the faculty.  Several teams have asked if it’s something we could continue to organise on a regular basis. The teams were made up of mixed genders and different ages, abilities, and ethnicities. The event achieved a good social mix of people from different departments across the faculty. 

What did you learn from running your wellbeing initiative? 

It would have been good to have more time to organise the event and get even more teams involved. It would also have been great to have more spectators to cheer their teams on and to have a social event afterwards with some food and drinks but with the COVID regulations at the time, this was not possible. However, despite that, an enjoyable afternoon was had by all and hopefully next year we can really build on this, get more people involved and have the chance to celebrate afterwards.