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Distin is a good sport Everton defender Sylvain Distin has been out in the community meeting young sports stars of the future As part of Everton's Places for Players programme, the French defender visited Greenbank Sports Academy in Sefton Park, Liverpool as Everton launched their Premier League 4 Sport scheme. Distin said: "It is great to do something different rather than be at our training ground running in the rain." |
| Sylvain Distin |
"It is fantastic to meet some of the youngsters across Liverpool, though I am not sure they are all Everton fans but it is always good to be around them and talk to them. They are always smiling and are positive which is nice."
Legacy Plans
Premier League 4 Sport, a groundbreaking £3.8m partnership with the UK Government, sees all 20 Premier League clubs link up with local sports clubs to help attract young people to take up badminton, judo, table tennis and volleyball.
The initiative will help the Government's ambition to offer young people five hours of sport a week, as part of its 2012 legacy plans. It will also address the drop-off in sport participation when young people leave secondary school.
Each Premier League club has linked to four community sport clubs. The 80 sport club also link to four secondary schools in the area creating a total of 320 satellite clubs.
Every club has a project co-ordinator who will manage the scheme locally and work with clubs and school sport departments to drive the project on. Greenbank Sports Academy will promote opportunities for fitness and leisure amongst disabled children and adults in Merseyside.
Distin enjoyed spending time with the youngsters although admitted that another ball game was his first love as a child.
Good Fun
He added: "I played a lot of different sports as a youngster, but mainly basketball. That wasn't because of my height, but because it was more practical in France. We don't have as many football fields in France as we have in England, but we do have more basketball courts and handball courts.
"I was a big basketball fan and used to follow the NBA. They're not necessarily the kind of skills you'd use in a football career, but sport is sport and it is all about timing and hand-eye co-ordination, so I guess it helped."
Distin was impressed with the scheme which aims to get 25,000 young people aged between 11 and 16 into the four Olympic sports during the next three years, although had to stop short in trying his hand at all of them.
He laughed: "It was good fun playing the table tennis, badminton and especially the volleyball, although I was told I couldn't do the judo.
"I wouldn't have minded because they were all school children but because our injury list is pretty bad I thought it best not!"
