Back10. Meet the Directors
AFC Sudbury is a progressive organisation, focussed on leveraging football’s unique ability to bring people together to help make the town of Sudbury, and the rural community around it, a great place to live, work and thrive for everyone.
However, we also acknowledge that football has a legacy that is scarred by anti-social and abusive behaviors which, whilst fading away in many respects, continues to compromise our sport and most clubs. We are a club that is proud to be positively disruptive and different. We are leaders of the next generation of football, not slaves to all the negativity that has gone before. We are a club determined to be on the right side of the history of football, no matter how hard that can be. This agenda is driven by our Board of Directors which act as our curators and custodians.
This commitment includes it’s hosting of a Women’s Refugee Football Group, the presentation of ‘Champion Charities’ with a physical health or mental wellbeing charity featured each month of the football season, the introduction of a Disability Football program and the partnership it hosts with popular local charity, The Bridge Project. Importantly it is also centrally manifest in our highly inclusive overall ethos, with a highly successful Women’s First Team and section, over 100 students provided full time education and almost 20 Youth teams in action.
The club’s Board of Directors is a group of individuals united by their desire to use their broad lived and professional experience to help to make the club a valuable community asset. They are as follows:
Andrew Long, Chair - Overall Governance: Andrew is a retired International Corporate Lawyer, ex semi-professional footballer with experience of corporate law and finance. (Full profile to follow)
Patrick Bell - Partnerships: Having lost his father aged five, and been schooled in a Convent Prep School and a Quaker-led Boarding School, Patrick formed a deep sense of responsibility from an early age. He left school age 16 to find work immediately as the only earner in the home, whilst caring for his dying mother.
His work as a management trainee in a cardboard box factory proved an education in itself, and by the age of 33 he was CEO of a large creative, media and marketing services group listed on the London Stock Exchange. In this role he worked as an advisor to some of the world’s biggest brands, including Disney, Microsoft, Ford and 3, and went on to acquire the agency re-branding Arsenal football club.
On the birth of his second child in 2009 Patrick retired from his media career to focus on education, first as CEO of an educational Trust which he co-founded to establish the very first “Free School Academy’ under new legislation in the UK (Stour Valley Community School in Clare, Suffolk) and then Chairing the HR Committee for one of the UK’s biggest providers of primary school education, specialising in taking over distressed schools in deprived areas across East Anglia. He has also worked in the independent education sector. Patrick joined the club as a Director in late 2022 and was appointed CEO in January 2023.
In his spare time he is a committed member of his family and his village and enjoys poetry and literature and skiing and climbing. He also holds a qualification in Disability Football coaching.
Ronnie Egan - Safeguarding, Welfare and Women’s Section: Ronnie has had a successful 30- year career in policing with Essex Police retiring in 2019 as a Chief Inspector. She worked across many areas of policing including crime investigation, safeguarding, counter terrorism, community policing and Operations. Since retiring she has worked for Suffolk Constabulary as a Change Manager in Learning and Development and is now Head of Continuous Improvement and Projects for the National Investigation Service. She is a trained executive coach and mentor and thrives on developing others, helping them realise their potential. She is married with 2 daughters, both who have played football since an early age and her eldest is a current academy student and player with the successful Women’s team. Having supported both her daughters playing over the years she is passionate about development of the women’s game at every level and recognises the excellent opportunity AFC Sudbury provides to players from all backgrounds in each team. She joined the board as a Director at the start of the 2022/23 season and hopes to bring her experience, passion for development and sense of equity for all to compliment the board and skills across the growing club and help drive the positive changes planned.
Ronnie also loves other sports too and is a keen runner and latterly a developing triathlete.
Ben Davies - Matchdays and Community Representative: Ben has been a fan and volunteer at AFC Sudbury since the club was formed in June 1999. He is a founding member of the grassroots youth section of the club, a level 2 qualified youth coach for 12-years and secretary and vice-chair of the youth section for many years. Ben was honoured to join the board a few years ago where his main role is organising the many volunteers needed to help run the club.
Ben is often the face of the Men’s First Team on matchdays, but you will also find him organising volunteers to cover the various roles needed for the many matches held during the week.
Many local people know that in 2021, Ben lost his wife Lynsey to cancer at the tender age of 40. Lynsey was also a volunteer at AFC Sudbury and the turnstiles have been named in Lynsey’s honour.
Lynsey and Ben both supported the charity ‘Hope for Tomorrow’ which operates mobile cancer care units nationally and Ben has continued supporting this charity and has raised around £75,000 since Lynsey passed away two years ago. Many of the charity events have been held at AFC Sudbury where Ben’s ‘second family’ have been incredibly supportive. During the day, Ben is a commercial insurance broker, working locally in Long Melford. He has two grown up children and two grandchildren but is still one of the younger members of the board!
Ben enjoys reading, badminton, going to the gym, walking, undertaking charity fundraising challenges and of course football; playing every Wednesday night at the club.
Andy Message - Health & Safety
Andrew Harvison - Academy Governance
Aamer Khan - Health & Wellbeing