Rayhan Miah

Rayhan Miah

I was born in Bangladesh and I came to the UK when I was about three months old. So I always had this perception I was born in England until my parents told me at the age of ten, “no, you are born in Bangladesh”. 

I grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire. I lived there for 15 years of my life and then I moved to the Midlands in about 2002, so I’ve been here for the last 20 years. But I still call myself a Yorkshireman, that’s something I try clinging on to. To be honest, it's no disrespect to the Black Country accent, but I prefer my Yorkshire accent! I live in West Bromwich now.

Moving to the Midlands was more of a family decision. They found that there were better prospects in the Midlands compared to Yorkshire. Secondly, it's the heart of the country. Even though London's the capital, I would say Birmingham is the heart and is accessible to all-around within a couple of hours. And I got into university in Birmingham as well. So my parents were like well, “it's a no brainer. You're not moving away from home - we are coming with you!” I did multimedia at university, so subjects like website design, animation, photography, filmography, and a bit of sound as well. I didn't pursue it after I graduated and the only reason was I actually got a job in the last year of uni. I still wanted to graduate, so I graduated but I took a different career path which was the sports stuff.

So when I moved to the Midlands in 2002 it was quite difficult to connect with people because I was still a young teenager. It was quite difficult, but sports got me into that. I met a few guys and they were like, “do you play any sports?” And I said, “Yeah, I'm quite decent at football”. And then they invited me, I played with them and then I realised the community here was quite nice. There was a mixed community of different ethnicities and backgrounds playing together. And then when I started to meet some of the older lads that were playing football at the time, they went, “Oh, you know what? You're really good with a lot of people. So we're setting up a football team. Do you want to take part of a role in it? You can be our coach.” So I was a coach to start off with, and then a couple of years later the main manager left. They then wanted me to then take on the managerial role, to do everything including picking the players.

One thing I found in our team was that even though there was a little diversity it wasn't that diverse. We had more different Asians playing in the team, so we had Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Yemeni and a few Moroccan lads. So when I became the manager, I decided that I'm going to put out a flier all around West Brom and try getting all the different communities together. Then on the first day when we had our first trials we had different backgrounds and different ethnicities. So you had the Asians, you had the Afro-Caribbean lads and we had the English.  Well, the British lads really because we had a few Scottish and Welsh lads that turned up as well. So it was looking really nice. All the different guys together on a football pitch that I would’ve never probably met or spoken with. If they saw each other in the streets, they wouldn't probably even acknowledge each other. But soon as they were on that football pitch, there were willing to impress and play with each other just to impress me. And that felt really nice. And eventually, there were about 17 different nationalities that represented the team, and the heart of it was West Bromwich. They were all from around the area and you wouldn't realise that we had about 17 different nationalities in just West Bromwich itself.

Quite a few of the lads were Real Madrid fans, so we said “let's call it Real West Brom. We were quite successful as well. It's not that our team has ended now, but we just don't do 11 aside anymore. We now play more tournament football, so five aside, seven aside. I have hit the 35 barriers and so also we play veterans football as well. So I’ve become one of the veterans now.

I just love mixing with different backgrounds and this is, you know, broadening my knowledge about different ethnicities and religions. I just like to help people out. I want people to succeed in life, especially the younger lads that I've helped over the years.

I've had a bit of guidance. I think with my family being from a different country, my parents were more, “Okay, we need to save money. We need to look after the children and send money back to Bangladesh.” But with me, I want to help this new generation of children and show them that we have got opportunities as well.

Sometimes the youngsters are misguided, and I feel that they're misguided because we don't put enough time and effort into the children and that we are constantly blaming them. We're saying, “Oh, the kids are doing this. Our kids are getting it up to no good.” But if we are not examples for them in this life and in the community, then who are they supposed to look up to?

That's one of my main causes. I've seen guys that have been in trouble, and I'd like to call them friends now. I know that I've could have easily taken that path as well and I decided not to. I've moved a different path than the community I working there really helped me. A lot of these lads, they'll come up to me and say, “Rayhan” very well actually call me by middle name, which is Funky.  So they'll be like, “Funks, you really helped me build a CV” or, “you made me go into this coaching helped me get my coaching badges thanks to you” and so on. That just puts a smile on my face, and the happiness that I feel knowing that I've supported someone to go forward in their life.

When I was working in the school on the last year of my university, I, I started working for one of the schools in West Bromwich and I was one of the sports coaches that my job was actually to work with special needs children and gifted and talented children and to be honest, I don't take away anything from teaching the gifted and talented children. It used to be amazing. But I used to feel so much better working with the special needs children because just giving a bit of time with them on them catching a ball or kicking a football and seeing that smile on their face. Sometimes I think they might feel a bit alienated because no one wants to play with them. 

But when I started incorporating them, I love that the gifted and talented children started thinking, “Oh, we can actually play with the special needs.” And I started making them mentors. I said, “You helped so-and-so out, you help so-and-so out”. And they started integrating together and it just felt really, really nice.

I think sport in itself is a universal language. You don't need to speak to play sport.

As I said, when I moved here to the Midlands, if I didn't play sports, I don't think I would have networked with the number of people that I have worked with. I know some people I've grown up in West Midlands, but when I speak to them they're like, “How have you got so many friends in the Midlands” that we don't even have in West Bromwich? Well, I go out and I play a lot of sports with them. I've always liked to keep myself fit and coming from a family who are sport mad as well like all my brothers, even some of my nephews, my nieces, my sisters, they're all like sports they love watching sports, even if they don't play it. And I think that's one of the reasons why I just carry on. I'm one of the lucky ones, I think, in the sense that I was quite good at football. I had trials and I was at the academy when I was in Yorkshire, so I think that just moved on with me.  I've gone on holiday and I've seen someone just kick a football and me and my friends have said, “Well, can we just play with you?”  They've just let you join in, but you can't just randomly go on the streets and just start walking around with someone and just talking to them because you think you're a stalker. But if there's a football involved, they'll say, “Yeah, fine, come on, shows what you've got.” So I think that's the difference with sports. It’s fantastic.

Your community is everything to you. Your community is that family that is not your blood family. The community will be there to support you when you need support. The community people are always there for you. They look out for you. When we work together, we make our community a stronger community. I feel that it eradicates all the badness around the area as well. If you can get on with your neighbour, your friends and locally you just see how much support they give you. Like it could be something as small as giving someone a lift from one area to another area or someone just giving you that word of wisdom. Or that they say that “they believe in you” and it puts a smile on your face

I've always said that Sandwell feels very similar to Yorkshire. Yorkshire is a place where you could just walk in someone's front door and they won't ask you what you do and they'll say, “Do you want a cup of tea?” And that's how it feels like in Sandwell as well. It's like you could just walk around anywhere and someone will smile at you and invite you into their house and have a tea that won't care where you're from or what you've done. They are just doing it because of the kindness and the goodness of their heart. 

I've always had this dream. I want to open up a youth centre in an area where anyone can come in, and drop in whenever they want. I want to open something that’s not only for sports. I want to try and show that you can do better in life, that there’s more to life than just hanging around in the streets. At this moment in time, this is still a dream because I have got a family and a business. But hopefully in the future, maybe someday I can set something up like that. 

I just feel that as long as I can give a piece of my knowledge to somebody else and they can take that as a positive rather than a negative, that's all that gives me a bit of happiness.

I definitely have hope for the future. You're seeing more integration between communities. Over the last 18 to 24 months this pandemic has just shown that we can go through the hardest times. People have gotten stronger together.

The Commonwealth Games are a big, big part because it brings so much different nationalities, so much different ethnicities, ethnicities, and religions together in one place and people are going to just love this thing that is going to happen in a few months' time. I just can't wait for it.