The latest from Chairman Ben Clasper, from the Programme of our Home game against New London Lionesses on January 16th.

It was great to see so many fans back at Champion Hill last weekend after the holiday period break and in what is becoming a regular occurrence, we are pleased to be able to report another record crowd for the season so far and thank you again for your support.
It’s been an interesting journey for the club since we re-introduced women’s football at Dulwich Hamlet and one of the most important learning curves has been how to balance equality with preserving the different identities of the men’s and women’s games and match day experiences. A lot of articles about the growing popularity of women’s football are too quick assume success for women’s football is to match the men’s game whereas anyone who regularly attends both men’s and women’s games at Champion Hill will know that there are two very different experiences on offer and it is important that whatever happens in future either on the pitch and on the terraces we preserve what we all love about both of them.

Whilst I tend to always want to focus on the positives there are though times we have to address the negative elements in our game. I know some people advise against giving oxygen to any minority that seeks to divide and destroy but as a club we have always believed it is not enough to just ‘distance’, ‘disown’, ‘call out’ or any of the other vague words many clubs use in statements which you might as well just follow up with ‘…but we’re not actually going to do anything’. We believe in standing up for what is right.
So I do have to address the distressing events that occurred during and after the game last weekend and showed that women’s football is not immune from the poisonous elements that infiltrate our game. On Sunday Millwall fans stickered the club with anti-refugee and pro-Nazi propaganda and continued to do so even after our staff removed them and pleaded with them to stop as there were children and families present. This came one day after another distressing incident at the men’s game at Dartford and so we understand why fans who witnessed one or both events have been keen to hear the club making a statement in public.

We take these sorts of incidents extremely seriously, so much so that we are adamant that we want to see action taken and we have learned that not making public statements too early that could prejudice that action is critical. With both incidents we contacted the clubs whose fans were responsible and then once we understood whether they had fulfilled their obligations or were willing to fulfil their obligations we moved to the next step which was to contact Kick It Out and seek police advice.
The main offender at the game at home to Millwall was quickly identified and their actions confirmed using CCTV. We know that they were not the only offender so we will continue to expand the investigation.

We will not let this lie and the statements we will issue when the time is right will go beyond the usual unsatisfying ‘the club condemns…’ box ticking exercises you see from other clubs as standing up to this is a core belief for this football club and racist, homophobic, islamophobic, anti-refugee and neo-nazi abuse plus physical violence (all of which we encountered within a 24 hour period) all deserve a fierce response.
I am unsure whether these attitudes are on the increase in this country but I am sure there is an increase in the number of people who feel safe voicing them in public compared with a few years ago and that is why we don’t believe statements condemning behaviour go far enough, we have to mobilise not only to take action against offenders but also to try to deter others from following that example.

The game already has some extraordinary leaders in this area and I would like to highlight and thank Kick It Out for their help and advice working through our process this week and it is important that we give our strong support to organisations who are the leaders and also try to help clubs who may have challenges in their fan bases as only then will we see real progress. Condemning is easy, affecting change is the tougher goal we should all be setting ourselves and it’s what we at Dulwich Hamlet are committed to doing.