The documentary charts Harrogate Town’s challenges to survive as a club during Covid-19, before securing its promotion to the Football League.
BT Sport is to air the latest doc from its BT Sport Films series, Proud To Be Town, on BT Sport 1 on Saturday 3 October at 8pm.
The film centres on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on football, and more specifically, Harrogate Town FC.
Filming began in June as the UK was making the first moves out of lockdown, and Harrogate Town picked up where it left off, in the Vanarama National League playoffs, which led to the team’s eventual promotion to the Football League.
Proud To Be Town was produced during lockdown, adhering to social distancing and remote ways of working, and includes self-shot contributions led by club manager Simon Weaver, along with his family, players and other key figures from the club.
During the pandemic, the future of Harrogate Town was unclear, while ground improvement work at its Wetherby Road stadium still had to go on.
This film goes behind-the-scenes with the management team and players, whose futures now depend on a pandemic and related issues beyond their control.
BT Sport Films series:
Brothers in Football: The extraordinary true story of how South London amateurs Corinthian-Casuals, set out on a pilgrimage to finally play a historic match that was abandoned on the eve of the Great War
Too Good to Go Down: The rarely-told story of how relegation in the mid-1970s enabled the modern-day Manchester United to emerge
Two Tribes: Focuses on the city of Liverpool during the 1980s and how, against a backdrop of social unrest, the city’s two football teams rose to bring a fresh hope and a new identity to Merseyside.
Simon Green, head of BT Sport, said: “This is not just the story of one club. It reflects aspects of almost every football club in the country amid the Covid-19 pandemic. This film is a unique collaboration between BT Sport Films and Harrogate Town AFC. A large proportion of the film was self-shot by members of the team and club staff on phones and tablets, who enthusiastically recorded their experiences of lockdown, getting back into action and making their historic bid for promotion.”
Proud To Be Town is an in-house production led by producer-directors Isobel Williams and Tom Boswell. Sally Brown was the executive producer for BT Sport.