Nick Price, MD of Bright Purple, had been touched by the stories he had heard from his friends at the Homeless World Cup team in Edinburgh about the homeless issue and how it was not a local problem, but global and affecting over a one billion people. It was obvious that most people didn’t really understand the complicated issues behind why people fall into homelessness in the first place – drugs, alcohol, physical and mental abuse, just pure bad luck, the list is endless.

The Homeless World Cup is a Scottish based organisation working on a global stage to tackle the issues of homelessness and doing it through the global language of football. Led by its president Mel Young, The Homeless World Cup is inspirational and it aims to take people off the streets from 46 countries around the world (and growing), bringing them together to play football for their country – some don’t own a football or even football boots. Yet the pride these people feel often helps them to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel, in many cases turning their lives to the better forever.

Nick decided to try and get Bright Purple to do their bit!

Bright Purple’s first tournament was formed to help add funds to another event where the company was involved in and again aimed at homelessness, Byte Night and so 11 corporate teams donated to play, raising over £1000 towards their end goal of over reaching £3000 for the Byte Night event (October 2nd 2009).

 

It was a tournament played in good spirit, lots of passion (typical Scottish football) and in perfect weather conditions, yes it wasn’t raining!

The teams that took part included RSTO (2 teams), Wiseman Dairies, Martin Currie, JP Morgan, Tenon Group, 24/7, Tesco Bank, BEAR, RBS and Bright Purple’s own team. After the group stages the 3rd and 4th places were fought out in a tough battle between RBS and Martin Currie, with the latter coming through as winners.

 

 
The final was between JP Morgan and Wiseman Dairies and this really was a tense affair, however the clean sheet specialists of JP Morgan ended the day victorious with a 2:0 score line. What was more amazing was that JP Morgan never lost a goal the whole tournament, so it was no surprise when their goalkeeper, Graham Mason won Goalkeeper of the Tournament.

 

 

David Gilchrist of Wiseman Diaries was top scorer with 4 goals and he had to work hard for them.

The victorious JP Morgan team accepted their trophy on the day from Scottish rugby legend Gavin Hastings and later the new Bright Purple trophy was delivered to JP Morgan’s, head of Scotland, Paul Murphy. He took great delight in reminding us the trophy had been won by the West – the East need to get it back in 2010.

 

 

We hope that Paul’s JP Morgan team will defend their trophy in 2010 against a much bigger field, as Bright Purple will look to push the homelessness situation in to the spotlight once. Working harder than ever, we intend to raise significantly more money for this wonderful cause, which affects not only thousands of Scots, but many other nations around the world.

We hope to count on your support in 2010.