All welcome at Champion Hill!

Tomorrow we show our support in spreading the message that any form of homophobia is not welcome in our national game

February marks LGBT History Month, and tomorrow when we take on Metropolitan Police FC in a Bostik League fixture, we take the opportunity for the Football Committee to work alongside our Supporters' Trust in showcasing Champion Hill as a place where all are welcome.

One of the Dulwich Hamlet Football Committee leads on community matters Mishi Morath includes this article in tomorrow's match day programme, which is on sale as usual for only £2...every penny made from these, as always, go DIRECTLY back into our Football club coffers.

Why we do what we do….
February is LGBT History Month. (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans) Here at Dulwich Hamlet over the last few seasons, as we have become more community conscious, we used this time of year to focus on the anti-homophobia message in football, as we continue to make Champion Hill as open and welcoming to as many fans as possible.

Just because you are LGBT does not mean that football is not for you. This is proven by the fact that Stonewall FC, from the Middlesex County League, who we played in a ground-braking mid-season awareness match three seasons ago, have been crowned the Gay World Football champions several times in the last couple of decades.

Football has changed for the better, and there are some great initiatives out there, some of which some of our players have supported, like the Rainbow Laces initiative, when over half of the team wore them, when supplied by our Supporters’ trust, when we played at home to Worthing in an FA Cup tie in 2014.

Today the Supporters’ Trust are also leading in spreading the message in that any form of homophobia is NOT welcome here at Champion Hill by producing and selling a special one-off Dulwich Hamlet scarf, incorporating a rainbow design, with part of the proceeds from them being donated to the Gay Football Supporters Network.

We have also we working, as a Football Club community initiative today to offer tickets for this afternoons match against Metropolitan Police FC to LGBT groups first and foremost that are from branches of our official back-of-shirt sponsor, the UNISON trade union. We also welcome other LGBT groups and their friends from other trade unions, and student groups.

Whatever their pre-conceived conceptions of football may be, we hope they are pleasantly surprised by their match day experience at Champion Hill this afternoon, where sadly unlike many professional and even non-league grounds, they won’t suffer any snide comments, or downright abuse.

And what if someone does? If it’s at a home game the most important thing is to come and see a Football Committee member, or find a Supporters’ Trust Board member, to bring it to the club’s attention. We need to be able to identify and approach any perpetrators on the spot to take action. And action we will take for as a Football Club there is no place for any racist, sexist or homophobic abuse inside our stadium.

Only the other week as I was walking round the ground selling ‘50/50’ tickets I saw a male couple linked arm in arm, and clearly what you would call ‘an item’ & nobody batted an eyelid. It brought a smile to my face, not because I found it funny, but because I was so proud of how ‘ordinary’ this felt at my ground. A ground where all are welcome, abuse is not tolerated. And, hand on heart, there are plenty of grounds, some in the professional game, where such basic tolerance would not be accepted many of their supporters.

But there is still a long, long way to go…what I believe football is crying out for is professional footballers at the top of their game to be able to come out as gay, as clearly a good number of them must be, without being hounded by fans and media alike, no matter of how ‘supportive’ the press pretend to be. When you have a current situation when a straight player like Arsenal’s Hector Bellerin turned up at the recent London Fashion Week & was ridiculed & labelled ‘gay’ by many a commenting fan widespread on social media, then we clearly have a long way to go.

As Dulwich Hamlet supporter Hugo Greenhalgh reported on The False Nine football blog on Hector we have a long way to go in football & society in general as research he shared from the campaigning gay charity Stonewall highlights a worrying trend among the younger demographic: 18 to 24-year-olds are twice as likely as the overall group to say they would be embarrassed if their favourite player came out as gay and twice as likely to describe anti-LGBT language as “banter”. It’s this sentiment that such language isn’t harmful that is perhaps most worrying.

What we are doing today is showcasing the fact that being gay is nothing to be ashamed, or to hide, and that-as stated-all are welcome at Champion Hill, apart from the nasty racist, homophobic types that we will never accept as supporters’ of our Club.