Football legend and Strictly Come Dancing star Paul Merson will be at London’s historic Hackney Marshes on Wednesday 9th October 2024, 4-5pm, to support professional and amateur sports people, environmental heroes and clubs coming together for a fun football match played in wellies. Under a SAVE OUR GRASSROOTS banner, the event will highlight the plight of grassroots sport and public green spaces, many of which are under immediate threat from climate change and nature loss. 
Gary Lineker, Judge Rob Rinder, Helen Glover, Steve Backshall and others have lent their support to the campaign by sharing video messages about their favourite grassroots memories.
Through October, four more SAVE OUR GRASSROOTS events will be taking place at:-
ENGLAND: Saturday 5th October, Taunton FC
WALES: Sunday 6th October, Cardiff Half Marathon
SCOTLAND: Saturday 12th October, Pollok United’s Nethercraigs Complex, Glasgow
ENGLAND: Saturday 12th October, Willaston FC, Cheshire
The Save Our Grassroots events are part of COMMON GROUNDS, a campaign led by The Climate Coalition, Rewriting Earth, Local Storytelling Exchange and Hope For The Future. Channelling a can-do Olympic spirit, the campaign aims to create a groundswell of public noise around green spaces, that urges MPs to champion action that is good for us, for nature and for our climate.
The stats are stark: one in four stadiums across the UK can expect partial or total annual flooding by 2050; extreme weather has stopped 130,000 cricket overs in the last decade; 120,000 football games are now lost every season. For green spaces, heatwaves and drought increase the risk of wildfires and disease, while extreme rainfall further threatens biodiversity, and its vital role to improve air pollution, mental health and wellbeing, reduce flooding and mitigate the effect of hot temperatures.
Commenting on the campaign, ex-Rugby 7s Captain Jamie Farndale and a 2024 BBC Green Sport Awards nominee says: “the science is clear – recent groundbreaking reports show that we are going into a warmer and wetter world where more matches will be cancelled because of rain, flooding, drought and heat. Unfairly, it is grassroots sport that will be less able to cope with these changes. COMMON GROUNDS highlights the national affection for all the benefits associated with local sport and green spaces, whether that’s improved physical mental and wellbeing to broader social benefits like reduced crime and better social integration.”
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