Sir Geoff praises Iron's community spirit

SIR Geoff Hurst paid tribute to the community work being done by Scunthorpe United when he paid his first ever visit to the town on Saturday.

The man who scored the famous hat-trick for England when they lifted the World Cup back in 1966, was a guest at Glanford Park to watch the Iron's game with Crystal Palace.

He was there to launch a level one coaching scheme in a partnership between the club and the McDonalds fast food chain for which he is currently director of football.

"Scunthorpe have a tremendous community scheme," he said.

"They look at and analyse people coming to the games and work with different small groups and the ethnic communities.

"We now have a community partnership which is developing.

"We at McDonalds have 1,200 restaurants in this country and 50 per cent of those have developed close links with their local clubs in many different ways.

"We started in 2002 aiming for 10,000 new coaches and now have 15,000.

"It is important we get the right calibre and quality of people into level one football coaching."

You can have the chance to win a place on the coaching course at United in a competition later this week which the Scunthorpe Telegraph is running in conjunction with McDonalds.

And in tomorrow's Scunthorpe Telegraph, Hurst talks exclusively about England's World Cup chances in South Africa this summer.