BBC Green Sport Awards: How two football winners are using the power of the game

"Sport has a unique place in our lives. It's influential."

Whether it be in a small town in Gloucestershire, or on football pitches in rural Africa, the words of football club chairman Dale Vince ring true.

Vince's club - Forest Green Rovers - have been crowned the 2023 BBC Green Sport Awards elite organisation of the year. More than 5,000 miles away from their home in Nailsworth is the Rhino Cup Champions League, which won the grassroots organisation award.

They are bonded by one thing - the power football can have to bring about positive change to people and planet.

• BBC names 2023 Green Sport Awards winners

• Watch: The BBC Green Sport Awards 2023 on BBC iPlayer

Forest Green Rovers have ambition for 'bigger platform'

The greenest football club in the world. The world's first carbon neutral football. The vegan football club. The list goes on.

Lots of labels have been attached to the name of Forest Green Rovers, but Vince doesn't mind because it means more people are taking notice of what his club are trying to achieve.

"What we have found as we have gone up through the leagues of football and through the pyramid of football is we have a bigger platform for our message," said Vince, who became majority shareholder in 2010.

The League Two club have been on a mission ever since to become more environmentally sustainable while also being successful on the pitch.

To do that, they have made a raft of changes, including moving to a fully vegan menu, powering their stadium with renewable energy, installing charging points for electric cars, recycling water, buying electric groundskeeping equipment, putting in an organic pitch, and putting information around the stadium about climate change.

Some of those decisions have been questions, but Vince feels they have helped the club grow.

"I think we've proven one of the most important things is that fans are just like anybody else and if you put the information in front of them, they embrace it," he said.

"We've had fans who are changing how they live - going vegetarian and vegan. I have people tell me every game how it has changed their life - they're getting electric cars, solar panels and that sort of stuff.

"Our fans don't tolerate what we've done, they've embraced what we've done. Our crowd is four times bigger now, we sell 10 times as much food as we did before."

Though pleased to win the BBC award, Vince has no intention of halting the momentum.

"We keep innovating," he said. "We're hoping to get an electric team bus in the next 12 months and we think maybe we can travel to at least half our away games next season by electric coach. Maybe one day we may even fly to a game with an electric plane.

"Aside from that, we have a new location planned - Eco Park, a stadium made entirely out of wood, which is a really important issue.

"I think it is good to have ambition - get to the Championship and have a bigger platform for our message and continue having fun as a football club.

"Our message is helping to propel us. We probably have the biggest sponsorship income in our league. It's one example of how our message helps to propel us."

It is the platform football and sport have that Vince feels can really help to drive progress.

"In every sphere of life we have to change and we have to green up, so sport isn't immune from that," he said. "But at the same time, sport has a unique place in our lives and an opportunity - it is influential.

"We're working with the United Nations on a programme called Sport for Climate Action, which is intending to harness the fandom of people around the world for any kind of sport to make them fans of the environment.

"That's how we can bring big change to the world."

'Wildlife, local communities, football - that is our thing'

Matt Bracken went from hating poachers to helping them.

And it was football that helped make that change for Bracken - the founder of the Wild and Free Foundation, which created the Rhino Cup Champions League.

The winners of the grassroots organisation of the year award may not have the same platform as Forest Green Rovers, but their impact is as important.

Set up in Mozambique in 2016, the RCCL began as a way to encourage young men in communities around wildlife reserves to move away from poaching by bringing them into football.

"What we're doing with the Rhino Cup Champions League is bringing something they love but from the wildlife," said Bracken. "The Rhino Cup Champions League is a football league brought to you by your local rhinoceros - and that is bringing so much. It's bringing compassion, happiness, hope and love.

"We asked 'how can we help?' and their answer was football. We needed a football league to keep these young men busy. It was their idea and that's why it's a success.

"We're not bringing football to these communities. They follow football. They're passionate about football. They're very very good at football. They already had the football pitch. The passion and the skill was there. We just brought the organisation of a proper league."

The RCCL has grown rapidly since it began and now includes 84 men's, women's and youth teams in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, with more than 1,700 players and coaches involved. It even has a rhino-shaped mascot called Davey that helps education on wildlife conservation.

"When we started the Rhino Cup Champions League in 2016, there was an average of about 100 young men each year getting arrested and killed or disappearing from villages," said Bracken.

"Since 2016, there's only been three deaths from wildlife poaching they were directly involved in. So you have three down from what could have been thousands being killed or arrested.

"In Namibia last year, in the area which has a third of the world's remaining black rhinos and where we have the Champions league there were zero rhinos poached."

Bracken believes the league can continue to grow further, reaching more people and more species.

"Our goal is to be the one thing that brings everything together. We want to be in the communities surrounding wildlife reserves. Wildlife, local communities, football - that is our thing. And there are so many of those communities, so the goal is to be the largest and most organised amateur football league for youth in Africa.

"Someday, you will see somebody from the RCCL in the Premier League . You'll see somebody in the Olympics from the RCCL... in the World Cup from the RCCL and in their country's national team from the RCCL."