Troy Townsend on His Storied Career, Bouncing Back From Heartbreak, and Becoming an MBE | OneFootball

From the tragedy of losing his son to persevering through his failures as a player, Troy Townsend opens up about his storied career in football in an exclusive Urban Pitch interview. 

Turning pro isn’t in the cards for most young footballers, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have a career in the sport altogether.

Troy Townsend is a gleaming example of one such case. He’s worn many hats across his six decades in the sport, from coach, to pundit, to advocate, and in 2024, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his work with Kick It Out to help end racism in football.

Townsend was obsessed with football from an early age, yet despite playing for the Crystal Palace and Millwall academies, breaking through to a senior team wasn’t in his tea leaves.

He’d make the jump to coaching, earning his badge at 19 and working with the university teams at Middlesex University and youth side Redwood FC, as well as launching Ultimate Sports alongside Steve Browne, which focused on providing physical education teachers and after-school programs to East London schools.

“Even though I didn’t recognize it at the time, [getting my coaching badge] was probably one of the best things that I’d ever done,” Townsend said in an exclusive Urban Pitch interview. “It enabled me then to steer my journey some years later into a coaching capacity, which I thoroughly enjoyed.”

Such was his immense dedication that Townsend was forced to spend more time away from his six children than he would’ve liked. That changed in part when he’d get a chance to coach his eldest son Kurtis, who joined his non-league outfit Cheshunt FC following his release from the AFC Wimbledon academy.

It was a match made in heaven to start, but the dream turned into a nightmare on December 15, 2001.

Usually, Cheshunt players would pile onto a bus and drive to away matches, but they were so convinced that their match against Barton Rovers would be cancelled that they didn’t plan for transportation. However, the match would be played as scheduled, and without a bus on the books, it forced players to drive to the game themselves.

But while Troy made the trip to Barton-le-Clay, Kurtis didn’t.

The 90 minutes was a complete blur; all that Townsend remembers is entering the changing room and being told that he needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Upon arrival, he was greeted by a police officer, who told him that two of his players were involved in a car accident and suffered career-ending injuries, while Kurtis had passed away at the age of 18.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Troy Townsend MBE (@towno10)

Rather than let it break him, he has spent the past quarter-century making his impact as a coach for teams including Slough Town, Boreham Wood, Dover Athletic, and Leyton FC, a sports analyst, and a founder of S&T Academy. In 2011, he joined Kick It Out, British football’s anti-racism campaign, where he worked his way up from a part-time volunteer to the one of the most prestigious figures at the company before eventually departing in 2024.

“I left because the work was draining,” Townsend said to R.Org. “And I’ll be honest with you, when I say draining, I mean personally having an impact on me and my well-being. I was at everyone else’s beck and call at any stage of the night or day, and I’m not quite sure the same was bestowed on me. I think I had served my time, and the organization was changing as well.”

While he’s no longer at Kick It Out, Townsend is still making his presence felt, either as a freelance consultant for Middlesbrough Academy and Liverpool FC Foundation, a guest contributor for The Guardian, or a special advisor to Nujum Sports, a non-profit organization focused on providing assistance to Muslim athletes in the United Kingdom.

We caught up with Townsend to discuss his diverse career in football and how he navigated the highs and lows across the years.

Photo by Tom Dulat/Getty Images for Football Business Awards

It’s fair to say that your football legacy has been more off the pitch than on it, but can you talk to us a little bit about your beginnings in football? How keen were you to become a professional footballer?

It was my everything. I loved the game in a way that is very indescribable. From the minute I could pick up a ball, from the minute I could run with a ball, football took over my education. I loved the game, I wanted to be a professional footballer from the minute I knew that it was a possibility.

I was in the academy system at Crystal Palace and Millwall, which was totally different back then, and I was fortunate enough that my Sunday league team (Beaumont) was a really good side. We had a lot of players that came out of there and eventually became professional footballers: my center forward partner was ex-Manchester United striker Teddy Sherringham.

I then eventually made my debut for Millwall, which I remember like it was yesterday, funnily enough. A game against Aston Villa, we won 4-2, and I didn’t score, but I hit a rasping shot off of the crossbar that went sailing back over my head. It was the first time I really heard people talk about me. There was good guidance from some good people, and I actually felt that I had it made. I think there was a mentality switch as well in regards to schooling, and what it meant in regards to everything else that didn’t mean enough for me.

I was on this journey of becoming a professional footballer at 14 years of age, and I got released a year later. I went to Crystal Palace for six months, and worked under a guy called John Cartwright, who was an England under-21 coach and one of the best coaches I’d worked with.

But John wasn’t the decision maker, and six months later, I was on the scrap heap. There wasn’t enough of a support system to understand that there were another 90 non-league clubs out there where potentially I could have gone. I didn’t even make it into the phase where it was a full-time job, and then kind of things dipped from there for a short while.

You fell out of love with football after Kurtis died, but when did you realize that you could love football again?

It’s a very good question, and I don’t know if I’ve got the right answer, but my business partner, Steve Browne, God rest his soul, he was the driver of getting me back. We were working in schools anyway, so it was a period of time away from everything, but I think he knew that the best thing for me was to get back in. I was running my own academy, I stopped being the manager of Cheshunt, so I think it was about five to six months where I didn’t go back to work there, because it was too much.

It was the environment where Kurt was in as well, and being there by myself and not with him was something that I didn’t even want to comprehend, you know? Steve was also a non-league manager at Slough Town, and he invited me to come over to a couple of games and took me back into schools and comforted me, saying, “It’s not the worst thing in the world to go back into that environment, and Kurt would be proud.”

He’d also probably be disappointed if I just gave up everything. In terms of supporting me and helping me, Steve made life easier and made me feel that life could be easier. I went back for one game with Cheshunt, which was a cup final — proper glory hunter me — and we won and the players dedicated it to Kurt, because obviously they’re hurting as well.

It was a very controversial thing, but the club pushed me to one side at that point, and then I went and joined Steve as a reserve team manager and first team coach at Slough. It was seven to eight months later that I connected with the game again, but at the beginning, I’ve got to be honest, it didn’t feel the same. It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel like I was getting a purpose out of it, but it eventually came along, and obviously I enjoyed being back, but the memories will never fade.

When you say that they pushed you to the side, do you feel like they were just trying to squeeze a feel-good story out of you before letting you go?

Oh, look, I don’t know. Again, it’s very hard, because my memories are very, very clouded, but I do know that, from being the manager of the football club, there was a meeting, and they were searching for a new manager. They had an interim manager at the time, obviously, when I was off, and I respected that, and I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna go back anyway. But I think the lack of respect shown to me in regards to, who knows what period of time it is that people need to convalesce and come back into a working world.

I struggled because Kurt wasn’t there, and it was his footballing dream, and he was living it with me, so it was always going to be a struggle for me to go back and just continue as if nothing had happened. I understand that other people can do that, and I understand that things have to continue, but I thought I’d be given a little bit of grace, but obviously other people had other ideas.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Troy Townsend MBE (@towno10)

Your contributions at Kick It Out earned plenty of national acclaim. Ten years after being presented with the Grassroots Hero Award by the FA, you were appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire. Would you say that it was one of the best moments of your life, or is it just another number for you?

It’s not just a number. Anyone who starts off as a volunteer and then works their way through the program of what football presents themselves, you’re not doing it for accolades, you’re not doing it for pats on the back, you’re doing it because it really means something to you. The amount of people I’ve managed to influence along the way and help support and guide their careers, that’s the real important part of it. The fact that other people are recognizing the work that I’ve done, the fact that other people were willing to put my name in that arena and platform, and the fact that I was actually awarded the MBE, it’s very special.

There was a period of time where I had just lost my father and missed him, I so wish that he could have known that that was coming, you know? He would have been very proud, he’d have made a big song and dance of it, that’s for sure. Obviously, I talk about Kurt being my inspiration as well to achieve whatever it was that I was gonna achieve, so I have to thank those two looking down on me. But going to Windsor Castle, where I got presented — I had been to Buckingham Palace 10 years before — they were special moments for a young man who was born in East London, in Hackney.

I had a failed playing career, I didn’t make anything of what I knew was a talent and an ability to play the game, but I didn’t get to where I wanted to be. I started volunteering to start with, so working on very little money up until about 25, and then the trajectory of my career went upwards. To be seen in that light, to mix in those circles, to have those letters MBE after my name, I never thought that they would have happened. They’re up there with milestones, although obviously, because of things that have happened in my life, they’re not the biggest thing, they’re not the biggest milestones. But I’m proud, privileged, and I just wish Dad was here to have experienced it as well.