‘Life has turned upside down the last eight weeks,” Allan Cockram says with a breathless smile after another muddy Sunday morning training session with the exuberant kids in his football team for players with Down’s syndrome, the Brentford Penguins. “It’s gone from just the training to all this recognition from so many people. I’m at a stage in my life where I can handle this stuff so let’s go for it. Let’s highlight these extraordinary children.”
Cockram’s life has been remarkable and unusual. After a couple of games for Spurs in the 1980s, playing in midfield alongside Glenn Hoddle and Ossie Ardiles despite his undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he became a playmaker with a magnificent mullet for years at Brentford. His depression after football, while he found work as a fireman and then a taxi driver, lifted when Cockram met a teenager with Down’s who, years later, inspired him to start the Penguins.
