How Go Beyond has helped Robbie Bishop!
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Robbie Bishop overcomes health issues and worries in his life to become the man he is today, with the help from Fleetwood Town Community Trust and our Go Beyond group through football!
Robbie, known as “Bish” to all his friends has always had a big love for football, at 16 years old he was on the books at Fleetwood Town FC as a goalkeeper, unfortunately due to an ACL injury he had to give up his dream as he needed to give up football altogether for a few years.
Bish said “I started to care for my mum unofficially from 17 onwards as her health required my help more often. I then decided to stop all form of football to dedicate myself to caring for my mum full time from 21 years old. After three years, my mum noticed my mental health was starting to be affected as I never liked asking for help. Eventually it was my mum again who said I should try to get back into it and I was informed by Fleetwood Town’s Community Trust that a PAN disability team trained locally”.
Phil Bowker the inclusion and disability coordinator had decided to set up a team through the “Go Beyond” programme, Bish arrived with 4 of his friends as we tried to put a team together. Phil Bowker said, “it was a struggle at first to attract any players as we weren’t in a league, but with the help of Bish, he attracted players to come along and join us”.
Fleetwood then had enough players to enter their first tournament at Melwood, Liverpool’s accadamy training ground. The team were amazing on the day and went on to win it with help from Robbie. From this, Bish has grown in confidence, not just on the field but off it too, he has gone on to win more tournaments after this, at Lytham, Stanley Park and in Bootle. The team have played a lot of games and without our number one we wouldn’t have achieved as much.
Away from football in his early life he had a hard time. He developed pneumonia at a day old and spent the first three weeks of his life in special care baby unit (Intensive care for baby’s) his immune system was damaged from there on out. He grew up getting multiple infections in his chest and ears.
Bish moved to England from Canada when he was 5 as his grandfather was in poor health. After his passing Robbie’s mum saw he was still struggling to adjust to life in England due to having no friends and bullying because of his accent, that’s when she introduced him to football to help him to make friends. Bish said, “My mum got me into football and my uncle Frank made me fall in love with football. Sadly our family lost him at a very young age”.
Bish has now signed up as a volunteer helper for the new DSA (Disability Supporters Association) group. This is by the supporters of Fleetwood Town FC, John Hartley the CEO of the community trust and Phil Bowker the Disability officer at Fleetwood Town. Bish has come up with some good ideas and is really keen on implementing them come the 2025/26 season.
Robbie Bishop said “I am very happy on the strides I have taken in the past couple of years, Phil and Fleetwood have helped me so much with mental health and confidence, I am grateful to them and proud of myself”.
Phil Bowker went on to say, “I am extremely proud of Bish, from a shy person, he has really opened up to people a lot, he can now voice his opinions and help the rest of the group out, plus he is a top-class goalkeeper, he has won us tournaments we maybe should not have won”
Everyone is so proud of Bish, and we look forward to the future with him around the team and at Fleetwood Town FC matches, helping other people with disabilities. He is the perfect person to help as he knows the struggles he has gone through, he is now giving back to others.
Bish finished off by saying “Over time I got back into the routine of playing, hoping to once again represent Fleetwood Town, to make my Uncle Frank proud, my family proud and to make all the illnesses and injuries worth it and to put to rest a mistake that cost me dearly. At 16 years old I felt it left, the home of football. And when the community trust, Phil and everyone started up the session again when I was 31, I finally felt I was home again and that regret of playing injured I’d carried for 15 years was finally off my shoulders”.
