COMMUNITY
A QUESTION OF SPORT! BY SOPHIE SADLER
Andy and Judy Robinson
While on holiday in Burgau, a chance conversation led to Andy and Judy Robinson moving to the Algarve with the idea of building a sports-centre. 35 years since its inauguration Andy explains how his dreams became a reality. Andy Robinson is a bit of local action man. A role model to the hundreds of kids, including Spurs' Eric Dier, that have passed through his sports centre, he played 1st class Rugby for WASPS and London Welsh. Despite this when he came to Burgau on holiday, he was looking for a new path. “When I first came to Burgau, it was 1979 and I was lost. My dreams of being capped for rugby hadn't come to fruition and injury had halted my sporting career. I had been a P.E. teacher, but I become disillusioned by the non-competitive sports initiative that had infected British schools. For me, teaching was about throwing yourself into improving childrens' lives with competitive sport, but now I was told that it was cruel to make children compete. So with a lump in my throat and missing the kids terribly, I walked the plank.” Andy started working as a rep. for Adidas but feeling that it wasn't the job for him. “I had come on holiday with my wife Judy, my brother and sister-in-law plus two friends. Fate turned for me on that day.”
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FOLLOW US ON TOMORROWALGARVE
“I had organised a football match on the beach for the holiday-makers and locals. We were drinking in one of the bars afterwards, I was playing the guitar and everyone singing. A big guy with a posh accent who had been playing football asked me, out of the blue, what I was doing here and what I did for a living. The drink talking I told him; “I would like to build a sports centre here in Burgau.” That guy was David Miller the MD of Beach villas so the seed was sown on that summer day in 1979. “To my surprise, he asked me to meet him in Cambridge. I marched along Hill’s Road, went into Beach Villas and came out appointed as a holiday rep. We took that chance and we are still here 39 years later. ” “We had come with nothing more than our clothes, leaving behind a great circle of friends. We just got on with it, every Thursday we had 100 tourists arrive to stay in Burgau, Luz and Salema. We settled them into their accommodation, organised parties for kids, football matches and beach parties.”
“At that time Burgau was a poor village. Some of our neighbours had no shoes. There were just three cars in Burgau.”