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Sport pages
from Palatinate 844
by Palatinate
Sport Durham Women lose out to experienced Man City side
Abi Curran in Manchester Sport Editor Durham lost 3-0 to an experienced Manchester City side who bagged two late goals to seal the win. The Academy Stadium hosted a youthful visiting Durham squad where talent for the future shone against national and Olympic stars.
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For a native Mancunian like myself, making the trip over to my beloved blue half of Manchester and not supporting the sky-blue clad team was definitely a different e perience. However, once you have fallen for Durham Women as a club, it is near impossible to not root for the Wildcats.
It was a brisk evening in North West, the Manchester City faithful were out claiming territory at the media stand with various City Women flags. ot pies were in demand and scarves were a staple in the Academy Stadium which was framed by Diwali fireworks and its parent Etihad Stadium.
The Wildcats are currently holding their own in the Championship sitting top of the table. Over in the cup, with one eye on upcoming fi tures in the league, Durham had the opportunity to give less experienced players a chance to develop their game. urham fielded a side with youngsters Lily Crosthwaite, Grace Ayre and Hannah Greenwood all making starting appearances. Georgia Nicholson would come on from the bench and under the lights they delivered, not looking out place in the much changed eleven.
Durham’s defence remained stubborn for much of the first half, providing Manchester City with a sense of frustration.
The deadlock was broken upon the sixteenth minute with a moment of quality from Fillipa Angeldahl. A formidable counter attack led to the number 12 beautifully striking the ball into the bottom right corner of the net.
There were also glimpses of potential and clever play from Durham. Runs from Lily Crosthwaite in behind tested the City back line in the first half with the young forward gracefully dribbling through swarms of sky blue shirts in dangerous areas.
Despite these moments Durham failed to test Karima Benameur Taieb, City’s third choice goalkeeper. Though in the other net Megan Borthwick put on a stunning goalkeeping performance denying City multiple times. Alongside an Ellie Christon clearance off the line, this was making to be a gritty defensive performance from the Wildcats.
Into the second half, Durham made changes adding experience and youth to the red shirt Wildcats side. Sarah Robson joined skipper Wilson in central defence which could only be described as a telepathic defensive partnership.
Playmaker Beth Hepple was brought on inside the 58th minute to add an injection of attacking vigour but Durham struggled to get out of their own half for much of the second 45.
Another textbook Borthwick diving save led to a training ground corner drill from Manchester City Women.
The ball bumbled and fell to Caroline Weir just inside the box who thumped it home to double the lead on her 100th City appearance.
By the 89th minute, Janine Beckie made it three, the final score line not uite reflective of the defensive shift put in by the Wildcats.
Speaking to Palatinate after the game, manager Lee Sanders spoke of the value of giving younger players the experience of playing against a top side like Manchester City, “I think it can’t give them anything but confidence.
“What an unbelievable night that they have had and it gives them that inspiration to say look, this is what I want to do, this is what I really want to concentrate on, this is what I can make a living from”. Sanders paid particular attention to Grace Ayre’s defensive display at left-back and spoke of his decision to rest
CFA Campus
(Manchester City FC) players in preparation for their following league game against Crystal Palace.
“When we put out the starting line-up there was a lot of people that probably looked and thought this could be a bit heavy, so fair play to them I thought they have conducted themselves unbelievably well.”
After an unfortunate 3-1 loss on the road against Crystal Palace last Saturday, Durham will continue their quest for promotion in this Sunday’s Championship game against Liverpool. The top two Championship sides will meet at what is expected to be a packed Maiden Castle.
Sport must act to tackle climate change
Hannah Davies
The COP26 summit began in Glasgow on 31st October, marking the start of a series of important discussions between world leaders about climate change, and how change can be made in all aspects of life in order to tackle it. Signs of the damage of climate change on sport have become more frequent in recent years. Extreme weather events like typhoons, bush fires and heat waves have disrupted sporting events from tennis and rugby tournaments, to athletics and winter sports in the Olympics.
It is estimated that by 2050, one in four English football league grounds will experience regular, yearly flooding. lthough issues like these can be attributed to the wider problem of rising global temperatures, sports have also been put in the spotlight for ways in which they can often damage the environment through their emissions. This is of course also due to the failure of those in charge to fully address climate change in a meaningful way.
In the same week that the English football league launched their environmental sustainability scheme, Premier League team Manchester United used an aeroplane to fly 10 minutes to their game in Leicester instead of taking a coach, emitting 10 times as much CO2 into the atmosphere as a result.
Despite defending their behaviour by blaming congestion on the M6, these actions are inexcusable and make any claims by football teams that they are trying to improve their environmental impact appear hypocritical.
Even more of an effect is made by hordes of fans coming to watch each game – at full capacity, 76,000 fans travel to Old Trafford, and little is done to encourage fans to use public transport instead of cars.
Foods served on match days are mainly meat-based options and this worsens the environmental impact – an issue that League Two team Forest Green Rovers solved by providing an entirely vegan menu for players and fans. Participation in events on a global scale, such as the Champions League, Euros or World Cup are the worst offenders for a club’s emissions, as not only do teams travel abroad by aeroplane, they are also followed by huge numbers of fans, emitting tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
Other global sporting events, such as the Olympics, pose a similar issue for the environment. In order to continue to compete and participate in sports with other nations.
Yet, if sports want to guarantee continuation long into the future, they need to ensure the environmental conditions in the countries involved don’t deteriorate to an extent that they can no longer safely compete there.
Although this is a complicated issue to solve, the very least that can be done is encouraging fans to use public transport, utilising rail or coach travel over planes where possible, and offsetting carbon emissions when they can’t be avoided. Another sport that has been pointed to as being one of the worst for its environmental impact is motorsports, particularly Formula One.
A sport centred on the highspeed consumption of fuel, alongside the transport of the F1 circus around the globe on a regular basis, unsurprisingly emits over 256,000 tonnes of carbon yearly.
One redeeming statistic is that with key sponsors comprised of oil companies and car manufacturers, any attempts to improve their environmental impact are heavily influenced by those who have the biggest financial incentive for things to stay the way they are.
Developments in green technology and turbo hybrid engines have improved the sustainability of F1, but these developments can’t be translated into any real world benefits.
That being said, attempts to marry the sport with environmental issues like Formula E and Extreme E may provide a way forward for motorsports to continue in harmony as opposed to war with the health of our planet.
Fully electric cars in both of these sports have proven capable, yet less popular with current fans – a roadblock to change that we are likely to see across sports as they modify to improve their environmental impact.
During the conference, members of the Sports for Climate Action Framework agreed to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040 – a positive step and bold commitment to the environment.
However, far more is needed from leaders if the damage of the worsening climate crisis is going to be prevented.
A delicate balancing act between reducing their impact whilst preserving and pleasing fanbases will have to be maintained, but if successful, can promote environmental sustainability on a global stage.
Sport Durham City A.F.C: Is this the end?
After a 16-1 defeat, George Simms asks how long the local club can last
If Jean-Paul Sartre had written footballing stories, it’s hard to imagine a better fit than the inexorable decline of Durham City AFC over the last decade or so. Since the start of the 2018-19 season, the Citizens have been rooted to the foot of Northern League Division Two, in the tenth tier of English football. In the three years since, they’ve won 27 from a possible 276 points in the league.
However, by what started off as luck but is seeming more and more like fate by the day, Durham’s biggest men’s football club have managed to avoid relegation to outside the National League System structure. Their own Sword of Damocles has now hung for so long that it’s become more of gaudy feature piece than a genuine threat at their shared stadium, Hall Lane.
Durham have been in perpetual motion downwards for some time now, but appear incapable of actually reaching rock-bottom. Condemned to be torn between a vicious cycle of hope and disappointment, new managers and players come and go and “everything could change in the next ninety minutes” wails throughout the stand, the moans of the club’s personal poltergeist.
Everything they try, from the well-thought through appointment of Northern League stalwart Peter Mulcaster as manager in October 2020, to the absurd series of young foreign signings made during the ill-fated premiership of former Celtic wing-back Didier Agathe, seems to push the team one step closer to the abyss.
Yet for the last three seasons, the abyss has transpired to be nothing more than one of those rather realistic, but very much not real, pothole stickers that socalled pranksters find it funny to stick on the road to scare drivers, and film their reactions.
In 2018-19, structural changes elsewhere in the league reprieved a Durham side whose 17 points from 38 games put them bottom of the league, 12 points from safety with a 93-goal difference. The following two seasons still provided the Citizens ample time to embarrass themselves, before the league came to an unceremonious halt, and stalemate.
It’s hard to overstate the depth or breadth of the utter disorder at Durham. In charge between June 2016 and June 2018, former club midfielder lly otchkiss was the last City manager to feel either the warm embrace of success or the security of longevity. Despite managing an inexperienced squad, he oversaw respectable tenth and eleventh-placed finishes in orthern eague Division Two.
However, in the three years since Hotchkiss’ departure, Durham have gone through six permanent managers. Eight, if you count the two managerial pairings they tried at the start of the 2019-20 season. Wayne Gredziak, Billy Harper and Stephen Durant, Andy Iness and Ross Flintoft, Didier Agathe, Peter Mulcaster and Mark Sherwood have all tried and failed to stop the rot at Durham, and been gone within a year. Sherwood, the most recent casualty, lasted just 45 days.
In the 93 league games that have elapsed since Hotchkiss left, Durham have drawn six, lost 80 and won just seven. They’ve scored 76 goals and conceded 351. That’s an average of just short of four goals a game picked League First Division, now play at New Ferens Park.
I haven’t yet mentioned the club owner behind this stadium dispute, and everything else that has happened at Durham City over the last eight years.
Vivacious former Newcastle and France U21 defender Olivier Bernard bought the club in 2013. He was chairman until 2019 and has even had brief stints as caretaker manager.
The Frenchman fell in love with the North East whilst playing for the Magpies and saw the takeover as his way of giving back. History will perhaps not judge his benevolent sentiments kindly.
Six weeks ago, disgruntled fans set up a Twitter page called Save Durham City AFC. It focuses
onthe idea that the club has 103 years of history behind it, having initially been founded in 1918. Understandably, it has called on Bernard to either invest or sell the club. He reportedly paid £25,000 for the club and will not sell it for less, despite having virtually no assets and needing significant investment to get it back on its feet.
The page alleges that numerous offers to take over the club have been tabled with plans to help stabilise, yet Bernard is apparently uninterested in selling. His social media suggests he’s more engaged running a gastropub he bought and renovated in nearby Blyth.
In an interview in November 2018, Bernard reiterated his initial ambition for Durham City to become a feeder club for bigger North East sides, with an academy nurturing talent from 6-18. He regularly writes on Newcastle United for The Chronicle, but has been conspicuously silent on the state of affairs at the club he owns. Whilst there’s apparently now between 15-20 Durham City age-group sides, the team that matters most has been utterly neglected.
Fans have not missed the irony of the anti-Mike Ashley tirades littered throughout Bernard’s articles.
Whether the former Newcastle fan’s favourite has spread himself too thin financially or simply refuses to put any more money into the club, it’s widely acknowledged that the club is now functioning with a playing budget not far off £0.
On 9th March 2010, The Independent wrote a piece entitled ‘Durham City: in a league of their own’. At that point,
Durham were 27 games into their Northern League Premier Division season. They were propping up the table, with zero wins and an almost impressive minus si points, for fielding an ineligible player. They were considered amongst the worst teams to ever kick a football on this sceptred isle and were unsurprisingly relegated to the Northern League Division One.
Eleven years later, very little has changed. They’ve got more than minus six points, which is something, I guess. Courtesy of their 2-2 draw with Bedlington Terriers two weeks into the season, urham should finish in the green points-wise. Not much else is looking positive.
In September, they were suspended from the Northern League for three games for being unable to fulfil their fi tures. Thanks to a heady cocktail of injuries, managerial changes and sheer embarrassment, the club have named 42 different players in their 16 starting line-ups this season. They’ve conceded 92 goals in those 16 games, nearly six a game.
Last week’s 16-1 loss to Carlisle City was perhaps the nadir of this sorry saga. Those are decent bowling stats, or would be a great record for a team in this season’s NFL, but no-one wants to see them on a football pitch. Unsurprisingly, manager Mark Sherwood resigned almost immediately, and questions were raised as to whether the club would even be around to play out their next game, a visit to Bedlington Terriers. They did, and the manager-less XI ground out a 5-0 loss, which some might argue is a success given the circumstances.
There seems to be no logical end to the misery at Durham City AFC. Trapped in a warped purgatory between the hope of progress and looming threat of relegation, they will inevitably look bring in new blood and set leeches on the old after Sherwood’s resignation.
Change is their only option, yet seems to force them ever closer to the proverbial wall. They appear set to continue brazenly on into their season, having committed to completing all games in their schedule. Relegation to the Wearside League now appears a formality, unless fate intervenes to save them for a fourth time. That would put them alongside upstarts Durham FC, Durham United and AFC Durham, as well as New Ferens Park’s new tenants Durham Corinthians.
All of these clubs have been founded in the last three years, most likely with the aim of usurping the falling local giant.
If they go down, Durham City would become one of the thousands of clubs in the NLS Feeder Leagues, outside the official ational eague ystem structure. nly significant investment, or a minor miracle, could save the Citizens now.
Although he’s not the French existentialist best known for his footballing aphorisms or prowess, Sartre quipped that, “In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposing team”.
Everyone associated with Durham City AFC must wish their problems were still that simple.
Durham City vs Willington AFC (Ken Fitzpatrick) out of the Citizens’ net. Their last league win came on 9th April 2019, a 2-0 victory over Washington.
After a dispute between the stadium and club owners led to them leaving their long-term stadium, New Ferens Park, in October 2015, they now share Hall Lane with fellow Norther League Division Two side Willington, about eight miles outside Durham.
Despite playing in the same stadium, Willington’s home attendance isn’t far from double Durham’s, with 89 spectators to Durham’s 52 on average. To add insult to injury, Durham Corinthians FC, a club founded in 2018 and playing in the Wearside
Sport “Once you’ve fallen for Durham Women, it’s near impossible not to root for them” Abi Curran reports on an away day in Manchester with Durham Women FC “ nly significant investment, or a minor miracle, could save the iti ens” George Simms dives into the disarray at Durham City A.F.C
The power of Durham’s sports clubs
George Simms
Sport Editor
In the wake of the #dontgetspiked fiasco, it became apparent that students were going to have to lead urham’s fightback against spiking.
The Durham Night-In organised a club boycott for Tuesday 26th October. More than 1,400 students pledged to take part and, as I walked through the centre of town around midnight that evening, I was comforted to see the streets and club queues virtually empty.
Yet it must be said that Tuesday is perhaps not Durham’s busiest night out on a normal week.
Sports inspire an inimitable sense of community
Some sports clubs don’t allow their players to go out on a Tuesday because they have important games every Wednesday.
However, almost every sports club in Durham runs regular nights-out on a Wednesday and it has become a fundamental tenet of university life. Wednesday is the famed (and sometimes infamous) Sports Night and sees thousands of students bedazzled and dressed up for their respective socials. This is what inspired the vast majority of Durham’s sports clubs to support the club boycott.
Clubs from DU Hockey and Weightlifting to Trevelyan College Boat Club released statements stating that they would be boycotting nightclubs on Sports Night.
All in all, sports clubs with more than 2,000 combined members boycotted Durham’s nightclubs. Alongside this, many sports clubs also called for a week-long boycott. Men’s Rugby, Basketball, Tennis, Women’s Cricket and Polo, among others, emphasised that a weeklong boycott was the only action that would make clubs act to change their security policies and take proportional action.
Durham University Rugby Football Club (DURFC), one of the clubs to back the week-long boycott, told Palatinate, “Given that we as a club do not condone going out on a Tuesday due to playing games on a Wednesday, the Tuesday boycott was quite frankly not meaningful enough to reflect the severity of the problem it was raising awareness of.
“We felt that as the sporting community mostly (with notable e ceptions from some clubs) boycotted nightclubs, it would impact the attendance of nights out, especially the Wednesday Sports Night, and would make clear to (the nightclubs) the seriousness in which we take this issue.”
Whilst Marcus Rashford has shown what sportsmen can do to affect social change, many professional sports clubs are still conspicuously silent on social and political issues.
(DURFC)
You only have to look at the steaming mess at Yorkshire CCC currently to see how far some institutions still have to come. It’s refreshing to see this is not the case at university level.
Sports clubs are a fundamental part of university life in Durham. Very few people will leave Durham without having represented either their college or University at a sport. Sports clubs should continue to recognise the influence they wield within Durham and be proud of what they’ve achieved with the spiking boycott. Nightclubs have listened and Durham’s streets were much quieter at night throughout that week.
Sports clubs inspire an inimitable sense of community. These communities can create effective and cohesive vehicles for change, firmly built on trust, teamwork and mutual respect.
As Movember will now show, Durham’s sporting community can be wonderfully powerful when used in the right way. Professional clubs, especially Yorkshire CCC,
Durham athletes get growing for Movember
Harvey Stevens
Deputy Sport Editor If you’ve seen some less-thanimpressive moustaches walking around Durham during the past week or so, there is a very good reason why.
Just like every year in recent times, Durham University sports clubs are coming together to support Movember.
The charity encourages men of all ages to grow out their taches in order to raise funds and awareness for a range of men’s health issues.
Their goal is to alter the stigma surrounding men’s mental health, testicular cancer and prostate cancer. By 2030 they aim to reduce the number of men dying prematurely by 25%.
Donations go towards funding innovative testing and treatment for prostate and testicular cancer, as well as establishing crucial community-led mental health projects.
A huge part of the movement is the work done to get men talking about their mental health.
Far too many men suffer in silence and do not reach out to get the help which they may need. fter the difficult times which we have all faced during the past eighteen months, this seems more important than ever.
raised a combined £61,000 for Movember.
They are looking to smash this number this time around with no lockdown hindering the amount of in-person donations.
Durham University Rugby Club has been a big supporter of the movement. Club captain, Rhys Belcher, told Palatinate just how important the initiative is for them. “Movember holds a special place within the rugby club.
“With over 180 current playing members and tens of thousands of alumni we are an organisation full of men who could be affected by the causes that the Movember organisation seeks to support.
“The epidemic of male suicide and the lack of mental health support for men is something that we are very aware of and want to change.”
The club raised over £9,000 last year, and they are similarly looking to mount together their highest ever total.
“DURFC seek to do all they can to make sure that our brothers, fathers and friends do not suffer in silence and we will do all we can to lead Durham University in raising as much money as possible for the charity.”
The difference between last year’s effort, and this year, is that sports clubs are now in a position to raise money through events.
Collingwood College Football Club made their floodlit fi ture vs St. Mary’s in aid of Movember, and others have followed suit.
The Combined St John’s and St Chad’s ugby Club made their first game of the season in aid of Movember, and captain Samuel Simkin spoke of how important it is.
“It’s so vital that the club come together in support of such a great cause,” he told us.
“By getting our members talking about their mental health it makes such a difference, and ensures that none of us will suffer in silence.” ou can e pect plenty more bushy, and some not-so-bushy, moustaches to be springing up in Durham over the coming weeks.
