We’ve followed the Football fever for over 12,000km through West Africa but at one small football club in Ghana we saw first hand the importance of football and its influence on young lives.

Across Africa and in particular Ghana, football is ingrained into the lives of almost every individual from an early age. Using this affinity, as a football club, Keta are bringing the wider community together through working on a number of local projects.

Sandlanders FC has implemented a program which ensures every player in the team has a skill or a trade to use off field generating life skills off the pitch to support the skills on it.

We visited Keta to get a feel for the club ourselves.

We can’t talk about a football club without mentioning scores. After a warm up of song and dance like no other come half time it was all tied up at 0-0 with Keta being hosted away at Action Rangers. The second half heated up and we saw grassroots football at its best in Africa.

In front of close to a thousand fans, Keta took the lead early in the second half and celebrated in emphatic fashion, cartwheeling to all corners and providing a polished dance routine. In the nervous nineties deep into injury time Rangers levelled amongst controversy equivalent to France’s Thierry Henry v Ireland with a handball featuring to see the game finish as a 1 all draw as the crowd swarmed the pitch from all sides.

That aside, Keta Sandlanders FC might have only finished second in division two of the Ghanaian Football League but they are certainly on top of the table when it comes to preparing players for a live off field. The club already facilitates a share house for the players and has implemented an off season on the job training schedule for skills work in the Ghanaian capital, Accra.

If you’re in the area, have some skills in either coaching or teaching a trade there are plenty of opportunities and you can get involved with the guys yourself via the Keta FC website