Setting aside all those who claim to find Messianic qualities in Kevin Keegan, it might be argued that modern football is a godless place, with its profit-chasing owners and players who are obscenely wealthy and sometimes just obscene. Yet in these increasingly secular times, sports chaplaincy is something rare for Christianity: a growth area. The cliché has it that sport is the new religion. But is it the other way around?

Lilleshall has long been a centre of learning and rehabilitation and this week a different sort of sporting development was being discussed there by about 70 men and women of God.

It was the annual three-day conference of SCORE, the sport's chaplains charity. There were only a handful of club chaplains when the Rev John Boyers took on the role at Watford in 1977. Now Manchester United's chaplain, he founded SCORE in 1991 and membership of the organisation has swelled to about 175 chaplains, almost all of whom are attached to clubs from various sports. They came together in Shropshire this week to hear guest speakers including Richard Caborn, the former Sports Minister, and to consider topics such as death in sport - from how to handle the passing of promising players to whether it is appropriate to allow supporters' ashes to be scattered over a pitch.

Running SCORE has become Boyers' full-time job, but he devotes about two days a week to United. He acts as a life skills coach to Academy pupils and is available for players and staff in need of advice, whether their problems are provoked by the unique demands of a footballer's career, or the challenges - relationships, bereavement - that everyone faces. “We'd like to see chaplaincy in sport as valued by administrators as it is in say, the Armed Forces,” Boyers said.

“We're trying to make it more professional. We need to move away from the days when the chaplain was just a friendly local vicar who popped into the ground and got free tickets because he knew a director. You're there essentially as a pastor, to help and support, but we are more than social workers because we offer a spiritual dimension as well.”

Long before the FA's initiative to curb footballers' excessive behaviour, there were the Ten Commandments - arguably the original Respect agenda. While much of a chaplain's work will be private, religious players can act as role models. “I'd like to think there's a positive influence from sporting Christians. It's not just about an individual faith, it's how you affect others,” the Rev Matt Baker, the chaplain at Charlton Athletic, said.

But do believers make better athletes? Baker thinks so. “I have seen examples where once a player has come to terms with life's issues, they play better because they are more secure in who they are,” he said. “They realise they are part of a bigger plan and their life is much more together.”

As for the idea that Christians are, essentially, too nice to succeed in an aggressive environment, Baker mentions Linvoy Primus, on loan at Charlton from Portsmouth, as a defender both hard-tackling and devout, and Kaká, one of the world's best players. “As a Christian we want to do the best in life with what God has given us, whether we're a solicitor or a footballer,” Baker said. “There is a direction and guidance. That comes into decisions such as transfers - you're not simply asking your agent for advice, you're asking, ‘What is God saying to me? What's His plan?'”

Having a chaplain is not a hotline to divine intervention on the eve of a six-pointer, of course. “If we get asked to pray for people to win, we tend not to,” the Rev Mary Vickers, a chaplain at the 2004 Olympics, said. “Our prayer can only be that people give their best. If that takes them to the podium, so be it; if it takes them to relegation, it takes them to relegation.”

www.scorechaplaincy.org.uk