Playing for Keeps

When Chris Kirby joined the fire service in 1998, it was a very different world. During almost 30 years, he witnessed profound changes in emergency response, prevention work and community engagement, and the growing demands of senior leadership – governance, ethics, values and multi-agency collaboration. He also took on national responsibilities with the NFCC, including water safety and drowning prevention.

“You sometimes feel from a prevention perspective that you’re waving this flag and you’re jumping up and down trying to get some attention on it,” Kirby said. “Grenfell started in a fridge, and white goods is a prevention matter. A lot of major emergencies have been proved through the fullness of time and inquiries to be preventable.”
But today Kirby is eager to talk about another passion of his – sport, and specifically Fire Sport UK.

A Quiet Decline

Twenty years ago, sport brought thousands of fire service personnel, families and communities together across rugby, football, cricket, swimming, golf, netball and ice hockey, among others. Several factors were behind its decline – Covid, the retirement of long-serving organisers, and the ending of sports leave during years of austerity.
“After Covid people just didn’t’ come back and those who retired and organised events didn’t stay involved. If you reached out into the sector now and said to new firefighters, ‘do you know about this?’ They’d be like, ‘no.’”

But rather than accept the decline, Kirby has taken action. One of his first moves was to bring the NFCC formally into Fire Sport UK, so that NFCC staff could participate alongside operational colleagues. When Cornwall CFO Kathryn Billings announced this to the section leads’ WhatsApp group, the response was immediate – though not what Kirby had in mind.

“The first response I got was, ‘can you bring sports leave back, gaffer?’ I said ‘no, that’s not what I’m intending to do’. And I pushed back on those individuals who came to me and said, ‘well, we can’t field the team because we can’t get sports leave’.”

With 45,000 to 50,000 operational staff across the sector – almost double that including NFCC and corporate roles – Kirby’s argued: “Quite frankly, the reason you can’t field the team is because you’re too exclusive and you’ve not opened your doors for new players to come in. Go big or go home.”

Clearing the Ground

Before Fire Sports UK,, Kirby needed to fix the foundations. Governance, for example, was archaic. He led a thorough overhaul: a new executive formed with sector representatives and a code of behaviour introduced, explicitly linked to the NFCC code of ethics.

“Now we’ve got a code of ethics or what I call a standard of behaviour that we expect from people represented in UK fire and rescue services and that links back to the NFCC Code of Ethics. I was a little worried that you get people invited to a lads’ test match because they were being sponsored by an organisation. All of that stuff is very disclosable these days.”

Fire Sport UK runs on modest subscriptions from services – around £35,000 annually – redistributed through a bid process to support venue hire, logistics and equipment. It subsidises participation; it does not fund it outright. The model is built on commitment, not entitlement.

Sheffield, April: The Festival of Sport

The centrepiece of Kirby’s revival is the Fire Sport UK Festival of Sport – a two-day national event in Sheffield, built on the legacy of the World Student Games and European Championships.

Day One spreads across multiple venues: open water swimming, rugby, football, table tennis, netball and potentially badminton where Fire Sport UK’s table tennis team will compete against the British Paralympic squad. Bowls, ice hockey, golf and water polo are all reactivated.

The evening will bring everyone together for a city-centre celebration dinner: a first for an organisation where sections have historically socialised in isolation.

Day Two has the Firefighter Challenge – an obstacle course of scaffold climbs, equipment hauls, weighted sleds, dummy drags and hose runs.

Along with the sports, Kirby wants to reaffirm the messaging about community and safety: “We’re wrapping around the entire two days all of our community safety messages. There’ll be stands at all the events where we’re giving messages about water, road and, of course, fire safety.

“We will be inviting local schools to come and watch the firefighters, talk to firefighters, not only about the safety messages around water, water safety but also around road safety, fire safety. Also. we’ve just got accreditation in South Yorkshire for white ribbon status for the campaign around Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, and that will be featured heavily throughout.

There will also be a focus on employment opportunities and positive action and recruitment and roles in the Fire and Rescue Service: “We’re writing to school and college heads and saying, ‘come along. There will be opportunities at all these events where there’ll be a little bit of downtime and where school kids can have a go at playing alongside firefighters who they see as inspirational figures’.”

Why This Matters Beyond Medals

Kirby’s case for sport in the fire service is not sentimental. It is structural. Firefighting is, at its core, a team discipline. Sport builds and reinforces the same qualities – communication, trust, shared accountability.

“It lends itself to character building and the qualities and attributes that you want from somebody moving into a role as an operational firefighter who can work as part of a team.

“But there’s also an element of leadership and listening to instruction and getting on with a job and then debriefing after a match. It really does fit with the general organisational context of fire and rescue.”

Then there is the wellbeing dimension – and this, increasingly, is where the conversation has become more urgent: “What I’m really hoping is that people who come and even just dip their toe into the water and come as participants or spectators, go away from the two days thinking, that’s made me feel really proud to be part of the Fire and Rescue Service because there’s a feel-good factor around it all – because it’s about mental health and wellbeing. It’s about resilience. It’s about bonding. It’s about network.”

The festival is not a distraction from difficult work, but a counterweight. Kirby’s longer-term vision is ambitious: participation to be doubled within five years, new sections including emerging sports such as padel, and case studies demonstrating the real wellbeing benefits of involvement: “I genuinely think that services have done a lot to clean up. And what this festival is about is, let’s showcase all the good things about working in fire and rescue.”

The Fire Sport UK Festival of Sport takes place on April 22-23 in Sheffield. For more information, visit the Fire Sport UK website: https://www.firesportuk.com/

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