PALATINATE | Tuesday 28th September 2021
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This edition is sponsored by Lifestyle Fitness
Sport
Football Supporters Society: the best way to experience the North East’s football scene Tommy Isaksson It’s a long-used cliché that the North East is a footballing hotbed. The thing with clichés is that they always have an element of truth. The Durham University Football Supporters Society will be taking students across the region to see that for themselves, from the Premier League to the National League North. Media presentation of Newcastle, as with Sunderland and Middlesbrough in the past, is carefully selected. Larger-than-life blokes with their tops off in a packed-out away end? Fantastic support, say the media. Boycotts and protests
over how the club is managed? Oh, there they go again, those daft Northern clubs with their outlandish expectations. Fanbases lauded for their loyalty, dismissed when they expect that loyalty to be repaid. Whatever your preconceptions of Newcastle’s team, often given that conceited tag of ‘functional’, they have players with hundreds of top-flight appearances. Such seasoned operators can only be appreciated live. Alternatively, just watch Allan Saint-Maximin. All the tricks, flicks, nutmegs and ultimately, often none of the points, yours for dirt cheap, as the Society take Durham students to meetings
with Brighton, Burnley and Brentford before Christmas. Sunderland, County Durham’s traditional club, is also best seen live. Experience a world where centre-halves are enormous, the referees somewhat laissez-faire and a game that just looks really, really hard work. Local lads Dan Neil and Elliot Embleton making the brutal helter-skelter of the centre of League One pitches their personal playground, young players on loan from City and Bayern and an Aiden McGeady who hasn’t even got going yet have Sunderland flying high early on. The biggest crowds in England
outside the Premier League mean it’s the place to be: and far superior than some TV documentary. For standard of football and ease of access, a trip to Maiden Castle to see Durham Women Fooball Club on a Sunday is unbeatable. After finishing second last season, the Wildcats will be aiming for another shot at promotion into the Women’s Super League. Since promotion to the sixth tier of English football, Spennymoor Town has been consistently in and around the play-off places, attempting once again this term to make it to within touching
distance of the fabled lands of The Football League. Regularly attracting gates of over 1,000 to their Brewery Field home, Town are a club at the heart of County Durham competing in a league rich with big names from the world below the EFL. Hereford and York City have already met the Moors, with Kidderminster Harriers, Bradford Park Avenue and Chorley, of more recent FA Cup fame, all also in residence in the division. No matter what your football fix is at University, the Football Supporters Society will have you covered with a complete sweep of what the great hotbed of the North East has to offer.
Anssi Koskinen
Local pride Spennymoor Town play at the Brewery Ground where they face Southport FC on Saturday (Middlesbrough FC)
Men’s football must set example against sexual assault George Simms Sport Editor On September 9th, a Munich court found former Manchester City and Bayern Munich centreback Jerome Boateng guilty of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. His brother says he distanced himself from Jerome: “I don’t identify with the actions of my brother ... I have nothing to do with him anymore.” But the footballing world hasn’t been quite so damning in their condemnation of the former World Cup winner. Boateng had signed for French side Lyon eight days before the ruling, and has appeared in all games they’ve
played since. Even when his own brother has drawn the moral line, his club don’t appear to care. Boateng’s is one in a string of recent cases involving sexual abuse or violence against women by footballers. Manchester United have signed Ronaldo and hosted Ryan Giggs in their Directors’ Box within the last month. The pair are accused of rape and numerous counts of domestic violence respectively. In 2018, Ronaldo admitted that Kathryn Mayorga, his accuser, “said no and stop several times” during sex. The criminal case has been dropped but a civil case continues. Giggs, a man whose own father refuses to say his name, has pleaded not guilty to
charges of actual bodily harm and common assault by two women. Man City defender Benjamin Mendy awaits trial accused of four counts of rape and one of sexual assault. Meanwhile, the entire board of the Icelandic FA, the KSI, resigned over sexual assault accusations against several players. Schalke FC tried to sign striker Sergi Enrich: he holds a twoyear suspended prison sentence for filming a sex act without the woman’s consent and posting it online. But Schalke terminated their interest in Enrich only after public outcry. The Icelandic board had seen accusations in 2017 and allegedly chose to ignore them.
Mendy played for a year after accusations were first made. An ‘I’m sorry I was caught’ culture is very clear across the footballing world, and the seemingly wilful ignorance of accusations against players is indicative of a total lack of respect and support for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence in men’s football. This must change. Given their incredibly significant social and emotional impact on society, men’s football clubs have a moral responsibility to lead by example in how they handle sexual abuse and domestic violence cases. Football clubs can afford to suspend players at the first sign of accusations: it would send
a clear signal that they stand with victims and genuinely care, rather than only care because the accusations have gone public. It would suggest that moral issues take precedence over Premier League points. A hardline stance on the perpetrators of sexual abuse and violence against women could have a massive impact on male views of it. When there are accusations against footballers that we still see on our pitches every weekend, there should be weekly public outcry. But there isn’t. We must believe Kathryn Mayorga and force football to lead by example in how it handles violence against women.
