New role for Baker

Charlton chaplain Matt Baker is putting over a decade of experience working in sport to good use after being appointed to a new national role.

As the pastoral support director in English football at national sports chaplaincy charity SCORE, he will seek to develop the role and the range of chaplains within football.

But Baker's duties at The Valley and Sparrows Lane will be unaffected.

"I'm very excited about the opportunity to forge a closer partnership between football and chaplaincy, and to increase the contribution to player welfare," said Matt, who is also the independent chairman of Charlton Club, which runs the Valley Gold scheme.

"At Charlton, we have an excellent reputation for positively affecting the local community - for example, through the Street Violence Ruins Lives initiative, with which I am involved. It would be great if such projects could be extended throughout football to have a national impact, and I believe the chaplaincy network will help to do that."

On his new role, Baker continued: "There are currently about 80 chaplains at Premier League, Football League and non-League level. Working for the sports chaplaincy charity SCORE, my role will be to train, support, resource and encourage those chaplains already in post, share good practice across the network and develop a code of practice to improve the pastoral care being provided to the football industry.

"The post is largely being funded by the Premier League, Football League Trust and the Professional Footballers Association so it will also mean meeting with them and listening to what they see as the pastoral needs within football so that I can mobilise chaplains to help meet those needs."

Read an article with Matt in Christian Today here.