AN England football legend visited Finchley last week to promote grassroots sport in the community.

Former West Ham striker Sir Geoff Hurst was accompanying the FA Community Shield on a national tour of McDonald’s restaurants, to help spread the word about football coaching schemes for young people.

The 1966 World Cup hat-trick hero is the director of football for the fast-food chain's Football in the Community Programme, which aims to support volunteer coaches across the UK.

The scheme is already responsible for coaching more than one million children and supporting more than 4,500 grassroots clubs.

“The objective of the community programme is to develop about 20,000 coaches and the investment with the company has been well over £24 million,” he said while on his visit to a branch at Finchley Lido, in High Road.

“The importance is about grassroots football. It cannot survive unless it has a lot of people giving up their time, those who cut the grass, put the goals up, the linesmen, referees.

"But alongside them, it also needs a company to invest a bit of money. The programme isn't designed to produce the next Wayne Rooney, it's there to give everyone a chance to enjoy grassroots football.”

Sir Geoff said despite his football background and the links to the Community Shield, the programme was designed to get all children involved in all activities.

He said: “It is vital to bring in the young people, in any sport. It's about exercise, giving them the chance to develop in any particular sport.

“You only need to see pictures of Tiger Woods when he was young, the golf club was bigger than him. Steffi Graf had a racket that was bigger than her. Kids need to start at that level and that's why we need them to have grassroots sports, especially in football.

“It's not about sticking a McDonald's sign on the side of a football stadium, it's about investing in a worthwhile scheme.”

He was also promoting the Mums on the Ball campaign, which is helping more mums become coaches.

So far about 300 mothers are on the scheme, but Sir Geoff added: “We think a lot of the mums have the skills that a lot of good coaches need.

“Many bring the children up at home if the husband's out at work and they give confidence, self-belief and discipline, which are all factors of a good coach.

“They do everything anyway, take the kids to the game, wash their kit. We just want them to step over the touchline and do that little bit more.”