SDSA Interview: award nomination and upcoming ceremony
The Saints Disabled Supporters' Association (SDSA) has been around since 2010 and earlier this year, was nominated in the Community category of the BBC’s Make a Difference Awards, making it to the final four. The winner will be announced as part of a ceremony being held at St Mary’s Stadium on Tuesday 26th September. Paul Lucas has been Secretary of the SDSA since 2014 and we caught up with him about the nomination ahead of the awards night.
Tell us about the SDSA and the work you do…
The Association was formally set up in 2010 during a meeting between the club and five disabled supporters. Our aim is that when disabled Saints fans go to St Mary’s, their experience will be just like that of any other Saints fans and we work with the club to provide best in class facilities so that can be achieved. We’re not there yet but continue to work on it.
Now 13 years down the line, the SDSA has more than 400 members and we’re currently working to become a charity. It’s taken almost a year but I think we’re finally on the last straight to getting that okayed by the Charity Commission. It’ll enable us to increase our fundraising, help us to do a lot more in the community, it’ll give us access to Gift Aid and allow us to set up online banking which is a massive boost for donations.
Every year we buy a number of Season Tickets, which we then offer on a match by match basis for disabled supporters who can't afford to go to football games, so funding is important.
Without that, a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise come to games could see football as a sport that wasn't accessible to them…
That's exactly right. If I go back to my own experience, I didn't realise just how accessible the ground was until I came to a match with my wife and we took a lift right up to the seats. We want to let people know about the accessibility options at St Mary’s and support them in getting to games.
When planning is taking place over Season Ticket pricing for the new season, we speak with the club about the costs attached for disabled supporters to make sure pricing is fair. We liaise about various aspects regarding accessibility so we can make sure St Mary’s is as accessible as it can possibly be.
We also provide grants and sponsorships, for instance to help young people get to and take part in football tournaments, sporting events and trials.
Tell us about the award nomination and what the SDSA was nominated for…
The nomination was fantastic – we got a call one day from BBC Solent’s, Rebeccaa Parker and it was so unexpected. We want to thank everybody for their work because there must have been more than one person who nominated us. We were told we fought off hundreds of applicants and now we’re in the final four.
If you were to win, what would it mean to you and your members?
To gain recognition for the work the community has done in getting the SDSA noticed would be amazing and we’ll continue to do our work the best we can. I'm hoping we’ll attract more volunteers because we always need people to help out. Everyone who works for us does so for free, so volunteers are crucial.
We want to increase the amount of support we give at grassroots level and to the disabled community too. We only have so much money but we want to support people so they can go to football tournaments, take part in kids programmes and we supplied an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) not so long ago so we’d like to improve and continue doing work like that.
If you want to get in touch with the SDSA about applying for match tickets, becoming a member, or enquiring about sponsorship/grants, you’ll find all the information you need on their website. You’ll find contact details too so don’t be afraid to reach out.
