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The Oldham Athletic Community Trust is also expanding its outreach programmes into adjacent neighbourhoods populated by British Asians to spread the message of inclusivity. In May he organised a cricket match involving the town’s Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian communities on the new, £1m hybrid pitch, which he will host again in May. This outsider vision is driving, among other things, an ambition to embrace the Asian community, which makes up 30 per cent of the near quarter-of-a-million population, but feels Boundary Park is not for them. Now the business is in the hands of his offspring, fellow board members Luke and Sue, whilst he applies his engineering oomph to his hobbies, which range from extreme sports like heli-skiing, a pastime he learned at 40, to sailing around the world, to building steam engines.Īs one of five children living in a house without running water, discarded by the system as a callow youth, Rothwell understands what exclusion feels like.

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So the magic is in Rothwell’s hands and his brain is bent towards mending and making stuff – talents which he cultivated via lucrative spells fixing plant and machinery in Zambia and Dubai, before returning to build an empire out of portable cabins to furnish the construction industry. I got top grades and at 19 I had my City & Guilds. “It was the lowest grade course Bury did. They thought I was thick, a numpty,” he said, his face flush with a look that said: “What did they know? I’ll show ‘em.” Only when he began a day release course in mechanical engineering at Bury Tech did he gain the kind of affirmation unavailable to him at school.

#I am athlete steve will do it full

By 14, he was full time, collecting £2.40 a week as a labourer.

He has been at it since he was nine, earning pocket money on a farm in his hometown of Ramsbottom. Everything after that is a bonus,” he tells i. There is no way back from a failed aorta. Frank Rothwell is bidding to row the Atlantic for a second time (Photo: Steve Morgan)Īstonishing in any light, unbelievable when you consider he is a cancer survivor and only a year ago lay in a hospital bed recovering from an emergency heart operation to replace his aorta, chronically distorted to the point of collapse. A total of 40 vessels are scheduled to start, 11 of them solo participants. On 12 December he will push out into the Atlantic from Tenerife. Once through the door on a cold, frosty morning at Boundary Park, what passes for reception revealed Rothwell in all his chaotic glory, 110 per cent of a man attacking the day with impressive vigour at 73-years-old. The unmistakable profile through the opaque glass, topped by the trademark flat cap, betrayed the identity of Oldham Athletic’s saviour. I travelled north to meet Rothwell before his second Atlantic odyssey, and other key actors in the Oldham story, including CEO Royle and manager Micky Mellon, to get a feel for the inspirational work under way, and the club’s plan to escape the National League, on which all else is predicated. He is also an extreme sports devotee, and will spend Christmas and New Year rowing solo across the Atlantic to lower his own record set two years ago as the oldest to complete the journey single-handed and raise another million to fight Alzheimer’s.

#I am athlete steve will do it movie

Rothwell is a movie all his own, a man who left school at 14 semi-literate without a qualification and ended up building a portacabin empire that made him a multi-millionaire. The story starts with a game of golf, an early morning two-ball involving Darren Royle, the son of the club’s legendary manager and former England international, Joe, and a friend Jimmy Schofield, the son-in-law of Frank Rothwell, who might just be the world’s most dynamic, fearless grandad.

It is a story as uplifting as any in the game, one that places Oldham Athletic among the most enlightened clubs in England, driving change through community engagement, social inclusion and diversity.