Saunassa

Since March, the first team have been recovering at Saunassa. The Nordic spa on Pargolla Road is sponsoring the squad's recovery this season, giving players access to a set number of sessions, and the partnership is set to continue into next year. Wood-fired sauna, infrared, ice baths and hot tubs, all a few minutes from the ground, with players able to book in when they need to.

For a non-league club, that kind of investment in recovery is not something we ever take for granted.

A Player Welfare Programme

The partnership sits inside something the club has been working on this season, a player welfare programme led by Emma Wright on the committee. It covers physical and mental wellbeing, and at the moment it runs across our senior teams. There will be more to say about the wider programme in the coming weeks.

Saunassa, specifically, is sponsoring the first team. Recovery at that level is the kind of thing a professional setup builds into the week as standard, and at ours it almost never happens. It happens here because a local business decided to put money and access behind it.

Who Saunassa Are

Zoey Cotton spent ten years in Canada before she came home to Newquay. She skied, she biked, and somewhere along the way she got into contrast therapy. It was how she recovered, and it was how she switched off at the end of the day.

When she came back, she set up a small contrast therapy space in town called Water and Stone. It worked, people came, and then the building got sold and the space had to go.

"It was really, really good for sports recovery," she says. "And when I came home, I noticed a gap in the market for a community contrast therapy space that could help with recovery, mental health, community."

She kept going. With Derry Smith, who used to come to Water and Stone himself, she opened Saunassa at The Feel Good Building on Pargolla Road in February 2024. Wood-fired sauna, infrared sauna, hot tubs, ice baths and a relaxation area to put yourself back together afterwards.

When we asked Zoey why sponsoring the team felt like the right thing to do, she came back to the same point more than once:

"It's part of our community. We love what you guys are doing up there. We really wanted to support something local, so it fits with our community values."

And later in the same conversation:

"I grew up here, and it makes everything seem worthwhile. It's the why behind why we run our business. Everybody wants to make money, but actually at the core of it, we get so much more back from giving back to our community. It just is such a good feeling for us to have a space where people can come, connect, meet new people in a healthy space."

She is running her business on the same values the club is trying to run on. That is the kind of partner we want around the team.

What The Players Get

A session is an hour. Players move between the sauna, the cold baths, and the hot tubs in the evenings, working through it at their own pace, with changing rooms, hot showers and a place to sit and recover at the end of it. Coming off a Saturday match, that hour does real work on tired legs.

What it does is fairly well understood. Heat opens the body up, increasing blood flow and relaxing muscles. Cold closes it down again, pushing blood back to the core and bringing inflammation down. Moving between the two, repeatedly, helps the body shift into a recovery mode that you cannot really get to any other way.

"Saunas are really good for cardiovascular health, blood flow, calming the mind," Zoey explains. "Cold is really good for stress tolerance and recovery. Combine the two and you just leave feeling amazing. Even if you came in tired or groggy, you leave brand new."

The infrared sauna does something slightly different. It works at a lower temperature and helps cells produce energy more efficiently, which speeds up repair. And then there is sleep, which for a first team playing at the highest level in the club's 136-year history is genuinely part of the job. Better blood flow, less stress in the body, deeper rest that night.

There is also something to be said for an hour away from everything. No phones, no pitch, no replaying the match. Just a player looking after themselves the way a professional squad would. We do not always get to offer that at this level. With Saunassa on board, we do.

Doing Things Properly

Saunassa is one of a growing list of local businesses investing in the club in ways that genuinely matter. Money on the shirt, money in the facilities, money behind the people. Each of them, in their own way, putting something real behind a club that represents the town they care about.

It is the same thing Zoey kept coming back to in our conversation. Community, and looking after the people in it. That is how Saunassa runs, and it is how we are trying to run NAFC.

Up the Mints

To everyone at Saunassa, thank you. The work the players do on a Saturday is built on the hours nobody sees, and a good chunk of those hours are now happening at Pargolla Road. We are grateful for the support this season, and looking forward to more of the same next year.

If your business is thinking about how to support the club, we would love to have that conversation. Sponsorship at NAFC isn't about logo placement. It is about being part of how Newquay backs its team, and how the club gives something back to the businesses that make all of this possible.

Get in touch: [email protected]

Or have a look at the options: newquayafc.com/sponsor/order

Saunassa — The Feel Good Building, 13 Pargolla Road, Newquay, TR7 1RP: saunassa.co.uk