THERE'S ONLY ONE MISHI MORATH

Published in the National League South game v Eastbourne Borough on Saturday 4th January 2020 We drew 1-1 in front of 712

Every club has that one person who you can't imagine not being there. For Slough it was Chris Sliski, for Dulwich Hamlet it was Mishi Morath who sadly passed away just before Christmas.

Mishi always said if you cut him he would bleed pink and blue. His support wasn't just for the first team, but for all the teams that put on the Hamlet colours. Reserves, woman’s team, youth. He would be there if he could. He was eccentric, out spoken, a wordsmith who was proud of his Sarf London working class roots and staunchly Labour. He was a former alcoholic who had kicked the bottle a long time ago with many drunken tales of the Dulwich rabble away days. He loved non league football and was well known especially across London lending his support to all levels of football. He loved visiting museums, tweeting out odd nuggets of history, and of course couldn't pass a pie and mash shop. He was a librarian who loved his profession, and didn't enjoy seeing it being taken over by volunteers – 'you wouldn't have a volunteer bin man so why a voluntary librarian?'

Ironically it was Non League football that also saved his life earlier in the year when he was resuscitated by soldiers after having a heart attack while watching a Royal Engineers football match. This meant he finally got to see Dulwich play in the 1^st round of the FA Cup for the only time in his lifetime. Of course he got a starring role on Match of the Day where he even managed to have a dig at arch rivals Tooting and Mitcham. Infact he once produced a fanzine celebrating 100 glory years of Tooting and Mitcham – which was just empty pages!

A few days after his death Dulwich were voted the Football Supporters Association Club of the Year. Some achievement for a club a little over 12 months ago who were locked out of its ground and fighting to stay alive. Dulwich's community manager said “Putting on a community initiative is relatively straightforward. Getting everyone to buy into it and support in their thousands is the challenge. Finally, this award is down to the club’s work for many years. This type of recognition doesn’t happen because of one idea or initiative. This award recognises Dulwich Hamlet’s commitment to their community for many years. My involvement, as part of the community team, has been fairly recent. I inherited a role which has been built up and established by my predecessors. This is testament to their work as much as it is to the current community team. On behalf of the club, I would like to dedicate this award Mr Dulwich himself – Mishi Morath. Without his hard work and dedication over the years, this award would not have been possible.”

What I really liked about Mishi, is that he embraced all the new fans coming to the club. Infact he loved how little old Dulwich who used to struggle to get crowds of 200 now regular packed them in at over 2,000.

The Dulwich management team, celebrating 600^th games in charge, gave a moving tribute to Mishi "We've lost a part of Dulwich. He was one of the main factors I understood what the football club was all about, its traditions, what it meant to local people. Mishi was able to put that into words. What he done for the football club was unbelievable. A lot of the outreach work, the community work was started off from Mishi, the crowds that we see now and the legacy is due to Mishi.

"For a football club to be successful it needs more than players, more than management, it needs everybody and Mishi epitomized that. People often use the word legend loosely, but at this football club, what he did here, 100% an absolute legend.”

Football clubs are nothing without fans and if run properly are so much more than just 90 minutes of football. The Hamlet and Mishi's lives were entwined for so long that it's going to be hard to imagine one without the other.

There will only ever be one Mishi Morath. RIP

 

WHEN SATURDAY COMES

Printed in the National League South game v Wealdstone Boxing Day 2019. We beat the league leaders 2-1 in front of 1,307 people. Not a bad birthday present.

When Saturday Comes and if I can't get to watch Slough or Brighton are playing on a Thursday morning at 6am to satisfy Chinese TV, I still need to watch a game of football. Any level will do and I'm always amazed at how many clubs survive in this country. Within a few miles of my house I can watch a dozen teams who enter the FA Cup or Vase. Every year there's a Chichester City who get an FA Cup break, transforming the club from one recently on the brink of bankruptcy, to one with a lot more financial breathing space.

But it's not all a bed of roses. The other Wednesday I went to see Southwick v Arundel in the Southern Combination Division One, just below the Southern Combination Premier League, seeing as every league now boasts it has a Premier League. Their ground has seen better days, they've had to call time earlier in the season on their under 18's as too many players had work and college commitments. They've got a smart clubhouse that's opened every day of the week, but they have to compete with neighbouring teams for players, sponsorship and crowds. 

I managed to get along to near neighbours Shoreham for the first time since they got promoted to the Ryman League. Promotion was at the expense of Champions Haywards Heath losing points after failing one of those player registration bureaucratic puzzles where you need to be fluent in Latin and a mind-reader to understand. It was a promotion to far, financially crippling the club so I asked their friendly co-chairman Stuart Slaney how the FA could help clubs like Shoreham. 'Making funding more accessible to clubs to help with the stadium upgrade criteria when being promoted; in my opinion the criteria is far to strict. It can cost a club thousands of pounds to upgrade even before a ball is kicked.' In their one and only season at that level they finished rock bottom and were relegated back to the Premier then again last season into Division One where they are struggling. There's no doubt the ground grading rules has made the place smart but with average gates of just 57 (83 when the Albion play away) is a 250 seater stand the priority? Surely it should be pitch that should be receiving investment, as the more games it can take, the more income for the club, but like so many it bobbles and is full of divots that doesn't help the game flow. I ask Stuart about 3G 'That is every lower league clubs dream but again funding is not that straightforward and you need a dedicated person to try and process an application for funding and even if you application is successful you still have to find around 20% of the final costings which again is out of the reach of most clubs.'

This season alone two teams in the Southern Combination, Siddlesham and Cowfold, have had to withdraw their first teams because of rows with their parish councils over lease agreements. 
And at grassroots level things are even worse. 
As I watched my eldest play on pot holed, sloping, mud bath I wondered how this was meant to help with his development unless he was going to make a career from planting potatoes. An FA report published in December 2015 found that 2,360 grassroots teams had disbanded over the past three years and the number of regular 11 a side players aged 16 or over had fallen by 180,000 since 2005. More FA Commissioned research spoke to players with nearly all citing facilities, finances and red tape as off-putting factors. 'Players don't want to play on shit pitches with cold showers when you can go play fives or sevens on 3G flat pitches with good facilities for the same price, and not get fined for bookings of wearing the wrong sock tape.'
The Tory Manifesto promised everyone the moon on a stick and to fix the things they broke in the first place. They said they will invest £550 million in grassroots football and "ensure every family in England will be, on average, 15 minutes from a great football pitch."
Our national game has been crying out for investment for years, thankfully Slough Council had the foresight to invest in new facilities not just for our club but for everyone in the borough. Meanwhile the FA stood motionless as Bury went bust, and other clubs can't pay players or staff. The government has starved local authorities of cash so they have no money to maintain their pitches, so I wouldn't hold your breath that things are going to change soon. 
So if you've been thinking of a New Years Resolution, why not go and help out your club and become one of the army of volunteers that keep our beautiful, bobbly pitch, game alive and kicking.

 

THERE'S ONLY #ONESLOUGH

Printed in the National League South game v Braintree Town Saturday 7^th December 2019 We won 1-0 in front of 739

I was recently at the funeral of my Uncle John. John was a black man growing up in Slough in the 1950's. In the swinging sixties he started dating a white woman. I remember listening in disbelief at the stories of people deliberately crossing the road to spit in her face for the crime of going out with someone a different colour. Although not so shocked at the stories of my dad and John taking on the world when people insulted him! When John started dating Pam, people told them it would never last and her parents wouldn't have him in the house. They were married for over 50 years and in the end her parents accepted John for who he was rather than the colour of his skin.

One of our players said that because of his mental health he needed a break from the game. Such honesty would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. Remember that dirtrag of a paper the Sun piling on boxer Frank Bruno for his mental health issues? But the outpouring of support to Simon Dunn was heart warming and will in turn help others to speak out, because we have a mental health crisis in this country. It's shocking to think that the biggest killer of men under 45 is suicide, so it was great to see people lose their flowing locks and raise over £2,000 for MIND at last weeks headshaveathon.

We all want to belong, to feel part of something, and football clubs like Slough have a massive part to play, but also have to be more than just about ninety minutes of football for that too happen.

If Slough Town wants to grow its crowds, we need to better reflect the place it represents. Since Mark Bailey's inspired appointment as Community Engagement Officer every game now feels like Non League Day with different ways being tried to get new punters through the turnstiles. Last week 61 people, mainly police officers, took advantage of free tickets for public sector workers. Today is the beginning of the #OneSlough campaign with free tickets handed out to mosques, temples etc. The club has also just signed up to the Kick It Out Equality Charter.

As Mark said “My remit will be to raise the profile of the club with the local community, the outcome of which should be a significant increase in attendance on match days, not only in terms of overall numbers but also the diversity of the crowd. My absolute focus from now to the start of the season will be getting more kids down to Arbour Park. We will be offering schools, youth clubs and youth football teams in the area free tickets and match day experiences at every home game. Alongside this, we will be targeting other areas of the population we feel are under-represented in our support base.”

It shouldn't just be up to governments to provide for everything but it shouldn't be cutting safety nets for those that fall on hard times. The charity I run works with adults with learning disabilities and children struggling at school often with their mental health. We have had to deal with a £36,000 cut in the past year – for a charity that had a turnover of just £100,000 that's a hefty slice. Adults with disabilities have their services shut and are then sent to us with no extra resources to look after them. School kids that don't fit into educations square pegs need support more than ever but schools can't afford to pay for our services. I'm a parent-governor at a secondary school which has had to cut £150,000 off its budget last year while the primary school I work in one of Brighton's poorest estates, has laid off a dozen staff and lost a staggering £388,000 in four years. Is this how the 5^th richest country in the world values education? The OFSTED inspectors then pile in. Instead of measuring where a pupil starts to where they end up, insist that all children are the same; forget the poverty, forget that some are 18 months developmentally behind their peers when they start nursery, apparently they are as equal as the most affluent schools in the city! Which is the footballing equivalent of complaining that Slough Town can't beat Chelsea despite the huge gulf in wealth and resources.

Everything has become back to front. We have a Minister of Loneliness while pubs, libraries, community centres not to mention football clubs where people can meet and feel less lonely, are closing. We have a Health and Well Being Champion while mental health support services are becoming increasingly impossible to access. My local primary school has free bagels for children at breakfast. Wouldn't it make more sense if everyone had decent enough wages with capped rents so they could afford to feed their kids properly? And according to Shelter at least 135,000 children will be homeless and living in temporary accommodation across Britain on Christmas day – the highest number for 12 years. So it's all very well for the Tories to shout about more nurses, more services, more sticky toffee pudding, but ain't they the ones that have been in charge for ten years busy dismantling it all?

Christmas can be hard for some, but I think the club creating Mark's community engagement role is such a positive step that can only be a good thing not just for the club but for the town of Slough. And maybe, just maybe get some people to realise, no matter how different we are, if you cut us, we all still bleed.