Jason McCarthy has just scored a hat-trick against Bitty United. "They took it very well considering we won 8-3," he acknowledges. The "we" is a team called Goals Before Heroics, or GBH for short. "There are black lads, Asian lads, some white British lads and five are Travellers such as myself," McCarthy explains.

The accent is Irish, although he was born in Southall, west London, 22 years ago. "That's probably because we go back and forth to Ireland a lot," he says. It could also be a reflection of the insularity of a community that, although long settled in the London borough of Ealing, has never felt at home.

The Ealing Travellers' Achievement Service has set out to address that problem. Its manager, Jake George, spotted McCarthy's footballing skills and helped to put them at the disposal of Moving the Goalposts, Queens Park Rangers' initiative to provide high-quality sporting facilities for local Travelling communities. McCarthy is doing his grade 2 coaching certificate with QPR's community trust.

On Wednesday, he will be at the newly promoted Premier League club as it hosts a conference designed to provide professional football clubs and county football associations with the skills to work more closely with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Representatives from Liverpool, Everton, Bolton Wanderers, Norwich City and Leeds United are expected to attend.

There are currently just two players from such backgrounds in the English professional game. One is Tottenham's Dutch midfielder Rafael van der Vaart who grew up in a caravan park. The other is Freddy Eastwood of Coventry City who has had his fair share of abusive chants from opposition fans and derisive comments from opposition players.

McCarthy started his sporting life boxing, aged 10, because that has been traditionally what fathers in Traveller communities have expected of their sons. "I always loved football but wasn't allowed to play at any serious level until I was nearly 16," he recalls. "Clubs would often tell you that they were fully booked. And those few Travellers who were allowed in found that their own team wouldn't pass to them and the opposition would wind them up by calling them 'pikeys' or whatever."

QPR's inclusion and diversity officer, Gareth Dixon, insists that the conference is about "spreading the chance to benefit from the health and social side of football" to a community that has largely been denied the opportunity. Allowing coaches to cast an eye over a potential pool of new talent is secondary. "Although if anyone is good enough, we can send them on to centres of excellence," he adds. "Social inclusion is about giving Travellers the same opportunities as everyone else."