A local community came together as a football club hosted a football tournament and community event over a weekend.

The football tournament, hosted by Crowle Searchers FC, is normally held on one day but organisers decided that, because of the number of teams looking to take part, it would be better to run the event over two days.

They also wanted to create a community event.

The tournament raised money for Crowle First School, Crowle Nursery, Tibberton First School and the Crowle Community shop, as well as the Crowle Searchers FC.

One hundred and twenty teams and more than 1,000 players took part over the weekend of May 18 and 19.

Adrian Coleman, club chairman of Crowle Searchers, said: “We have hosted nine tournaments in the past and, every year, we have had more teams taking part.

“Last year we had 78 teams from all around the region taking part and we couldn’t fit them all into one day, so this year we decided to run it across two days and get everyone involved.

“We had a fantastic turnout with friendlies for the younger players on the Saturday and competitive matches on the Sunday with everyone from under-6s to under-12s and, in all, we had over 1,000 young players taking part.

“We wanted to turn the event into as much of a community event and that is why we got the climbing wall from Redpoint as well as bungee trampolines.

“In addition, we had the support of Bolero, who have supported us continually for some time now, Warren’s Removals, who supplied a van to take and bring all the equipment we needed for the event and Blackpole Recycling who supplied us with a skip.”

On Saturday, the younger players took part in friendly games, with a medal given to each player at the end.

On the Sunday, 10 trophies were handed out to the winning teams from games played by the older players.

Speaking about the community aspect of the event, Mr Coleman said: “We have seen school fetes and village fetes dying out all over the country so being able to do something like this with such an impressive turnout is fantastic.

“On both the football and non-football side of the event, we had a great response and wanted to make it a real day out for everyone in the village.”