A Watford legend will be joining two charity walkers on a 12-stadium tour of London this weekend aimed at raising awareness and acceptance of autism.
Hornets record goalscorer and club ambassador Luther Blissett will be joining Richard Stevens, Goddo Debattista and fellow walkers joining them at various stages of their two-day fundraiser.
The 65-mile Walk for Autism will raise money for Anna Kennedy Online, a small charity dedicated to raising awareness of the condition.
The pair are due to set off from Vicarage Road at 6am on Saturday and walk to the grounds of Boreham Wood, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Leyton Orient and West Ham United before they finish day one at Shoreditch High Street station.
Sunday will see them leave Shoreditch and head to Chelsea, Fulham, Queens Park Rangers, Brentford, Wembley and Barnet before their challenge is due to end back at the home of the Hornets.
Luther has been working with Rich, who presents the ‘Inside the Orange’ Podcast which aims to promote inclusion and acceptance, and Goddo to increase awareness of autism through the Watford record goalscorer’s Former Players Club.
This will be the fourth football-based Walk for Autism – more than £5,000 has been raised since it was launched in 2021 – and the focus of this year’s event is to create an understanding of late diagnosis autism.
This year’s walk will be launched with an event at Vicarage Road tomorrow evening where the Watford Observer’s Hornets correspondent Andrew French, who did not discover he was autistic until turning 50, will be conducting a Q&A session with Rich and Goddo about why they are doing the 12-stadium trek.
Neville Spiers, who is the owner and chief executive of a business consultancy, is also due to speak about his experiences of being autistic, before Anna Kennedy will talk about the work of her charity.
The launch is due to conclude with a ‘send off’ photo for Rich and Goddo by the Graham Taylor statue outside the Hornets shop.
The Walk for Autism has a GoFundMe page at https://gofund.me/d5a82578
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