South Brent Primary School hosted the first day of the Primary Schools’ League One Trophy Roadshow on Thursday May 25.

The children had an inspirational day and a once in a lifetime opportunity to welcome the League One Trophy to school alongside Plymouth Argyle Football Club’s (PAFC) Ex-Captain Gary Sawyer, Argyle Community Trust Regional Manager Stewart Walbridge, PAFC‘s media team, and of course club mascot Pilgrim Pete.

The children wore green, black and white for the day in return for a £1 donation for Plymouth Argyle’s own charity Project 35. Plymouth has a high proportion of deprivation estimated at 35% and the project has been designed to help the most disadvantaged families across the city through donations that can help towards job opportunities, food costs, school costs etc.

The children were welcomed with some facts about the trophy that has been in existence since the 2010 league restructure. The children witnessed some of the previous winners on the trophy that included Wigan Athletic (3 times) and Premiership duo Brighton & Hove Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers.

The children were then treated to a fascinating insight into the life of a professional footballer as Stewart held a real time interview with Gary Sawyer. Some tricky questions were asked of a player that has played over 500 league and cup games. Stewart dug deeper into some of Gary’s highlights, namely a visit to Wembley, as Argyle were promoted after a playoff victory, and playing at Old Trafford in an FA cup game away to Manchester United when Gary was on loan to local rivals Exeter City.

That day, he played against the likes of Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes and Cristiano Ronaldo, all world class players. Stewart also asked Gary to reflect on some of his lows which included a playoff defeat at Wembley and his forced retirement due to injury.

Gary also went into great depths to identify that life as a footballer is not always a rosy picture. There are many challenges within a footballing career that you need to apply resilience to make yourself a better player. He then related these life experiences to the children’s normal day-to-day school life where children may experience many knock downs in school, but followed it up with discussion points on perseverance and resilience for children to overcome these setbacks to develop themselves as individuals and to have a successful learning journey.

As part of the build up, the children took part in a ‘Design your own Plymouth Argyle shirt’ competition which was very well received. The school received 101 entries from children of all years across the school, which was amazing! The headteacher was very quick to point out that Plymouth Argyle ended up on 101 points so it was interesting to see the comparisons with the schools’ very own competition matching the same number.

Winners from each of the teaching units won an amazing prize of a free place on one of the Plymouth Argyle Summer Camps.

In addition, there were two runners up both winning a PAFC bottle and snood respectively!

The children put a lot of effort into creating their amazing designs with both Gary Sawyer and Stew Walbridge both commenting they could both visualise the squad wearing one of the designs - high praise indeed!

The children had the most amazing experience and hopefully with perseverance and resilience feel inspired to follow their dreams, said the school.

‘We would like to thank Plymouth Argyle for their hard work and commitment to the communities that they serve. What an amazing day at South Brent Primary School!’