A local football news title has revealed a “huge boost” as it prepares to host a physical awards ceremony for the first time since the pandemic began.

Football in Berkshire has launched the Berkshire Football Awards, which will be the first to be held in person since 2019.

The website has run the awards ceremony since 2017, the year after its foundation, and this year’s honours will be handed out by Sky Sports presenter Tom White.

Reach plc head of content development Tom Canning serves as co-editor of the title and runs it on a voluntary basis with a team of seven others.

Tom, pictured, told HTFP: “It’s going to be great to bring Berkshire’s football community together again, it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do something like this and this year we’re really pushing the boat out.

“Having a physical ceremony is a lot more work than simply announcing everything on Twitter, but it’s a huge boost for our blog and helps us get in front of more people.

“We always look at it very simply though, if what we do gets one more person out and watching, or involved with their local club, then we’ve done what we came here to do.

“We’ve had two curtailed seasons and I know everyone will be relieved to get through this one, a lot of people put in an awful lot of hard work to make local football happen, and our awards aim to thank as many of them as we can.”

Football in Berkshire averages 49,045 unique users and 83,710 pages views per month, according to Google Analytics data from September 2021 to November 2021.

The event will be held in June at Reading’s Double Barrelled Brewery.

Tom added: “We’ve got 16 awards to dish out covering social media, goals, managers, players, volunteers and more, we’ve got a superb venue in Double Barrelled Brewery and a brilliant host in Tom White.

“There will be food, great drink and hopefully a few more surprises.”