The world’s first vegan football team
If you’re not a big follower of English football, you probably haven’t Forest Green Rovers. In fact, you probably haven’t heard of them even if you are a big follower of English football. The club, based in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, currently play in the National League, the fifth-highest division of the overall English football system. The teams in this league tend to be a mix of full-time and semi-professional players, and as such their games rarely, if ever, receive any national media coverage.
Forest Green Rovers, though, are known for more than just their ball-technique. The club is on a mission to ‘green up’ football. To date, they’ve installed highly visible solar panels to power the stadium lights, an irrigation system beneath the pitch which collects rainwater, and even the world’s first organic football pitch. And now, after already dropping red meat from its match day cuisine back in 2011, Forest Green Rovers have made the decision to become the world’s first vegan football club, serving only plant-based food to the crowds at their stomping ground, the New Lawn Stadium.
The makeover is all the brainchild of the club’s chairman Dale Vince, OBE, a local green energy industrialist and former New Age traveller.
Vince, who owns the green energy company Ecotricity, made the observation that “The meat and dairy industry is responsible for more emissions than all the world’s planes, trains, cars and boats put together”, and decided to do something about it.
The transition has been a huge success: “When you drop the ‘meat and two veg’ approach”, Vince says, “a whole new world of food options opens up.”
“Cows, for example, can take up to 10 times more high-quality plant protein — grains and soya — than they produce: 10 kg goes in, 1kg comes out, which is madness.”
As well as locally sourced vegan food the club will be serving vegan ciders and ales, and hopes to lead the way for other sports groups to make the move themselves. They’re already in good company – take a look at these other athletes who’ve already gone vegan and felt the benefits.
