Sep Heravi and Brandon Tiller talk to Dentistry about setting up British Dentists FC in their final year and how you can get involved.
Sepehr Heravi and Brandon Tiller are both foundation year dentists working in south Wales and Dorset.
Both heading up the position of captain at the British Dentists Football Club, they talk about why they decided to set up the team.
How did you come up with the idea for British Dentists FC?
Brandon: It all started when Seth and I were in final year at Barts in London. I was playing against the GB medics team from the hospitals in London and, as I was coming up to graduation, I asked the coach if they accept dentists.
He firmly shot me down so I went back to Sep in a bundle of tears on clinic. We were chatting about it and it was basically born out of that. And here we are one year later!
Who can join? Where are your players based?
Sep: At the moment we are open to all dental professionals across the UK, studying or working. Our players are mainly based in London at the moment as that’s where it all started but we are open to people all across the UK.
I’m now coming from Cardiff, we’ve got people coming from Plymouth, up north – Leeds and Manchester areas – as well as Scotland. We are slowly looking to branch out and get more people involved from elsewhere across the country.
Brandon: We’ve got a good spread of players across the country.
Sep: It’s slowly getting bigger too so hopefully we will get more people involved.
How games have you played so far?
Brandon: I’m not the admin one out of the two of us so I’m not exactly sure. But we’ve played a good handful in the last year – probably about one a month or one every six weeks.
We just play exhibitions – we aren’t in a league or anything. We play against the universities in London and banking groups for example.
Sep: We’ve played medical schools and London Business School and Natwest.
Brandon: We’ll hopefully have a few more fixtures soon. We’re just trying to find teams basically.
Most of the games are London and we want to branch out.
How can people get involved?
Sep: The easiest way to get in touch with us is through our Instagram @dentistsFC. Drop us a message and hopefully we can get you added into the group chat. A message is all that’s needed to come down and play and we can go from there.
Brandon: It’s a good group of lads.
Where do you hope to take this in the future?
Brandon: We’ve got big visions. Small term goals include establishing ourself as a club. We’ve got a good group of players now, there’s around 25 or 30 of us. We want to be more than just the football – it’s about likeminded people where dentists and dental students can meet.
There are thousands who don’t know about us at the moment. We just want to create a good, competitive team.
We’ve secured sponsorship so the club is now looking for more professional.
Long term goals are to compete internationally. We’ve got links in Norway so we would like to tour there. There’s something called the Medigames, which are the medical Olympics.
The overall goal is to jump on a plane to somewhere hot or cold, play good football and have a good time.
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