Former Spurs, Portsmouth, Gillingham and Brighton defender Guy Butters is giving something back to a community that has supported him for so long.
Butters, 39, is currently working under Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club’s hugely successful community scheme.
He is relishing his latest role as West Sussex Development Officer for ‘Albion in the Community’ and is grateful that he is still very much in Football: “The feedback and enjoyment I get is really good and it’s good to give something back,” he said.
Brighton was voted as Community Club of the Year at the Football League Awards in 2007.
Butters left his last fully professional club Brighton last year after a career spanning two decades to play at a semi-professional level for Conference South side Havant & Waterlooville, leaving him the chance to stay behind the scenes at The Seagulls.
“The chairman [Dick Knight] was always telling me about the community work and he wanted to get ex-pros on it.”
Alongside 25 other coaches, Brighton’s community scheme runs P.E lessons to encourage children to participate in a wide range of sports, as well as exclusively football-based after school clubs and skills training centres. Butters, alongside fellow senior coach Tony Clark, works with schools in the West Sussex area to get young people into sport.
Butters hopes that his work in the community will give him the start he needs to take his experience into coaching at a more professional level within Football as he pledges to stay in the game for as long as possible: “As I’m getting my coaching badges, I want to keep moving up the ladder and see where it takes me,” he said.
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