Football team for grieving dads up for award

A football team set up for dads bereaved by baby loss in Staffordshire has been nominated for the BBC's Make a Difference (MaD) awards.

Forget Me Knot FC meets twice a month to talk and play football at Port Vale, in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, after first being set up in September.

Members of the group said confiding and playing football with each other had helped them and made a "massive" difference.

Liam Conway, one bereaved father among many at the group, said the support others had offered after he lost his baby son Lewis was "unbelievable".

Conway and his wife Kim had already suffered two miscarriages when their son died at 24-weeks-old.

"I think without them I think I'd be on a dark road," he said of the group. "I've been there once before and I don't want to go down there again.

"Lewis passed in our arms, it was heartbreaking, still to this day it's hard to understand how we lost him - being in the hospital every day, being by his side, it was very hard."

Adam Coulston and his fiancee Emily took the decision to have a termination when they were told their son Frankie wouldn't survive.

"Planning our life as a four, telling our daughter that she's going to have a little brother, for it then to obviously take the course that it did, it's just something that we just couldn't plan for and still to this day, struggle to understand," he said.

The football team, which meets fortnightly on a Monday, was launched with the help of Port Vale FC Foundation.

It has been nominated in the Community Group category at BBC Radio's Stoke's 2026 MaD awards, which celebrates people who have helped to change the lives of others within their community.

"It's a lifeline," co-founder Sean Coleman, whose daughter Willow was stillborn last August, said of the group.

"No other word for it, it helps dads through the worst moment that families are going through.

"I couldn't imagine not being able to just pick up my phone and just ring any dad that I needed to, text any dad."

Goalkeeper Glen Jones lost his son Archie's twin, Noah, who died 18 days after being born prematurely.

"Me and my wife went through it, we don't really talk about what's happened, I think we know it upsets each other," he said.

"But having the football, having the lads, just being able to pick up the phone to one of them if you're feeling down a little bit, yeah it's massive."

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