Margate weight-loss football group up for award after losing a collective 150kg

Margate F.C.'s Man V Fat program sees Kent Men put in a 10 team-league, where shedding weight gets you just as close to the trophy as scoring goals.

Transcript

00:00 Chipswich Town, FC Copenhagen-Darts, Eintracht Frankfurt, OB City, Margate Flanjeman and

00:08 Monster Munchen Gladbach.

00:10 Yes, you are hearing me right.

00:12 Man v. Fat Football is a national organisation, with 150 clubs around the country bringing

00:17 in members who want to change their weight and their lives.

00:21 Before the 30-minute six-a-side matches, the players are weighed and goal bonuses are given

00:25 to teams based on how much weight they've lost.

00:27 The organisation also provides them with fitness tips and healthy recipe ideas.

00:31 And last season, one team, Olympic Mayonnaise, lost a total of 154 kilograms, or 24 stone,

00:38 between the ten of them.

00:40 This earned them the nomination for Team of the Year at the Man v. Fat Football National

00:44 Awards at the National Football Museum in Manchester.

00:46 Yes, I mean, obviously it was an honour.

00:50 You know, we've sort of done quite a lot outside of the sort of normal MPF things, you know,

00:56 raising money, we raised about two and a half grand.

00:59 We had four lads turn up, you know, in an overweight health range and ended up in BMI.

01:07 And yeah, we all sort of bonded as friends as well.

01:09 So even though the teams have reshuffled now, and I'm part of a different team, so are the

01:15 rest of the lads.

01:16 We're all still friends, you know, the group chat's still going and all the rest of it.

01:20 Margate's Man v. Fat are up for ten of the twelve nominations, including the most active

01:24 member, Coach of the Year and Community Hero.

01:28 They also participated in the national 1 Million Steps Challenge for Diabetes UK, where they

01:32 walked an average of 1.7 million steps each and raised £2,345 for the charity.

01:39 Olympic Mayonnaise's weight loss has also impacted their players' lives significantly.

01:43 Yeah, so when I first joined I was about 22 stone, and since then I've lost three stone.

01:50 Still got a bit to go, but as a process obviously it's helped me lose weight, and along with

01:56 the Monday nights that we normally do, we also have an 11-a-side team and a couple of

02:01 days during the week we do social games as well.

02:04 So there's the opportunity for players to play up to four times a week, which is fantastic.

02:09 And our 11-a-side team this season entered the national tournament and managed to get

02:13 to the semi-finals, so sort of really positive in terms of competitive football going to

02:19 sort of another level in a way.

02:21 Talking to the community here, everyone describes it as friendly, and even though fouls are

02:25 pretty common, the team reshuffling means everyone knows each other and is here to help

02:29 one another on their weight loss journey.

02:33 Well that was the end of Chipswitch Town versus Eintracht Frankfurter.

02:37 Back to you in the studio.

02:38 Finn McDermid for KMTV.