Every weekend, the players of Grenfell Athletic lace up their boots, carrying grief and memories of the 2017 tower fire that killed 72 people. Yet the club, with two men's teams and a women's side, also brings hope, pride and joy as they climb amateur league tables.
Founded five weeks after the disaster by community leader Rupert Taylor and survivor Paul Menacer, the club was born from a simple idea. Menacer, who escaped the blazing inferno, told Taylor that football had helped him through past trauma. Taylor promised to create a team, saying: "If he'd told me table tennis had helped him, I would have said: 'We'll do table tennis tournaments.'"
Menacer now manages the Saturday team, but still battles with mental health. "I was suffering very badly with insomnia and very bad PTSD," he says. "Survivor's guilt hits home, thinking: 'Why didn't I knock on more doors upstairs?'" The club has provided a support network and a reason to keep going.
Theo Lee Ray's new documentary captures the tragic night and the club's uplifting story. For Taylor, the aftermath was "like living in a different world" with "sadness and darkness in the air". But through football, the community found togetherness. "We tried to find togetherness and the community did its best to pull together under tragic circumstances," he says.
Grenfell Athletic continues to grow, offering a hopeful future despite the pain of loss. As Taylor puts it: "It was a very dark time... So we tried to find togetherness."
