The bloke in the tie is now the Prime Minister

A draughty hall in Leigh

Twenty years ago we were nobody.

Two lads from Leigh with an idea, a bag of bibs and a business that existed mostly in our heads. We had a launch, if you can call it that. A school hall, some children, a basketball, and the two of us hoping it went alright.

A local MP turned up to help us do it.

No cameras. No press officer trailing behind him. Nothing in it for him at all. He stood in that hall and gave us his time like it mattered, because to us it really did.

That was Andy Burnham. He is now the Prime Minister.

What that day actually taught us

I am not here to talk politics. I will happily leave that to the people who enjoy it, and there are plenty of them.

I am here because of what that morning taught two lads who were about to find out how hard running a business is.

You find out who somebody is by what they do when there is no audience. Not in the big moment with the lights on and everybody watching. In a school hall, on a wet morning, in front of a room full of people who cannot do a single thing for them.

We have tried to run the business that way ever since. Turn up properly for the school with forty children and no budget, not just the one with the big contract. Be the same on a Tuesday in February as you are on the day somebody important is visiting. Children can spot a person who is only half there, and so can head teachers.

Twenty years on, it matters more than it did

Here is the part that has genuinely changed.

For most of our twenty years, the big decisions about sport and activity in this country were made a long way from Leigh. Money arrived from London in neat little pots, with a form to fill in and a box to tick, and by the time it reached a school in Wigan nobody could remember what problem it was meant to solve.

That is shifting. More of it now gets decided closer to home, by people who can actually picture the streets they are deciding about. Whatever you make of the politics, that is good news for children round here.

It only works, though, if there are people on the ground worth commissioning. People who know the schools, know the families, know which estate has nowhere safe to play and which club is one volunteer away from folding.

That is the job we came back to do.

Still the same two lads

We are twenty years older. We have both had proper careers since, and we have learned an enormous amount about how this sector really works.

But it is still the same two lads, and it is still the same belief. Every child deserves the chance to move, play and be the best they can be.

We just know a lot more about how to make it happen now.

Every move matters.

Andy