Are the Cowfolk planning their Brexit?
With about 2,5 months to go and teams all over Europe preparing themselves for what should be another extremely enjoyable tournament, we heard through the grapevine that the hosts, the Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls, might be experiencing a watershed moment in their history. What’s going on? The Club’s been linked with one of most vile rags in the world, The Sun, that’s what’s going on.
Look up anything — really anything — about “Easton Cowboys/Cowgirls” on the worldwide web, and you’ll get results like: community-minded, punk, anti-establishment, refugee friendly, … You’ll find links to the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Homies in LA, anarcho-punks in Brazil and Palestinian women fighting for recognition and survival.
Ask anyone who’s ever played against them in a tournament, or joined them on a tour and he/she will tell you: they take their politics as seriously as they take their football. And their drinking. They don’t mess about. They are an absolute joy to travel, drink and play football with (or netball and cricket). I can vouch for that. I’ve known them for more than 20 years.
Go to Bristol, to Easton more specifically, and you’ll be made very much welcome. Not only in their headquarters, the fantastic Plough pub, but also in many Cowboys’ and Cowgirls’ homes. They will introduce you to old Jamaicans, middle-aged Iraqis or young Somalis and you’ll find out very soon that these people really care about and take care of each other. I can vouch for that.
Meeting people of Easton over the last 20+ years has made me LOVE that club. In fact, in my dreams they are something I hope Lunatics FC could be one day.
The welcome leaflet the club hands out to new members (http://www.eastoncowboys.org.uk/files/welcome.pdf ) couldn’t be any clearer. This is just one extract:
The Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls are a club who recognise the fundamental equality of all people, irrespective of age, class, culture, disability, gender, race, religion, or sexuality. We seek to enjoy sport as part of strengthening local and international solidarity, performing to the best of our potential, and enjoying being part of a team. We seek to further mutual understanding and respect for all people and to challenge discrimination. The club will not tolerate prejudiced or abusive behaviour.
Can it be put any clearer? Now, how do you explain that a journalist of The Sun newspaper can become a full member of the club? If, apart from The Daily Reich (sorry, Mail), there’s one “newspaper” in England that stands for exactly the opposite of what the Cowboys and Cowgirls’ leaflet says, it’s the Thatcherite Tory Racist Right-wing Sun. End of.
Yet, that’s exactly what happened. One of the cricket teams has a Sun journo playing for them. It’s unclear how this could happen, but the fact that over the years the Club has grown into quite a mastodon organisation, could have something to do with it. Going on the info on the Club’s website (http://eastoncowboys.org.uk/ ): 6 male football teams, 4 cricket teams, a women’s football team and a netball team. That’s a whole lot of players to keep track off.
One thing’s for sure: since the news has come out, a lot of people have been up in arms. They simply cannot accept the fact that their Club can in any way or form be associated with a representative of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, more specifically with a tabloid that defends Little Britain’s island mentality and is notoriously hostile to refugees.
The people who are airing their anger now don’t accept any excuse that’s been made by some other Cowboys on behalf of the journalist (I have no idea how many are actually defending him), like “Oh, but you know, when we were trying to prevent our mate Joel from being deported back to Cameroon, ‘the journalist’ gave us some important information on the channels we had to use.” (https://niceonemag.com/2015/09/15/joel-must-stay-easton-cowboyscowgirls-campaign-to-stop-the-deportation-of-local-footballer/)
The Anti-Sun forces are having none of it. It’s absolutely unacceptable to be linked with “The Scum”, no matter what. And if it means boycotting this year’s tournament, so be it… we’ve been told.
These people fighting for the club’s moral well-being — and we are talking veterans who formed the club AND fairly new blood here — are also thinking about the message this sends out to the other teams in the unofficial European network (see https://medium.com/fc-socrates/bier-bratwurst-brelingen-d5c4ec0eda29). Well, they are not simply thinking about it. They are dead worried.
Worried that notorious left-wing teams (think 1 in 12 Club from Bradford, Republica Internationale from Leeds or Bristol neighbours Red Star Bedminster) might have a word or two to say about this situation — to use an understatement.
Worried that overseas female teams think twice about crossing the Channel to participate in a tournament. You never know if a complaint about a man pinching a women’s arse after a game will be taken seriously by the organisers if they have someone in their ranks who works for a paper that is also known for his page 3 pictures of half-naked women. Are male-chauvinist pigs going to rule again?, they might ask.
Worried even that everyone who remembers the Sun’s headline on 19 April 1989 (https://medium.com/fc-socrates/de-schaamte-voorbij-d15ae694f837), only a couple of days after the Hillsborough tragedy, will travel to the tournament site with only one thing in his/her mind: let’s find the twat.
Subcommandante Nico