IN DUBLIN’S FAIR CITY - COMMON GOAL

Euro 2020 is over. And with it football’s fairytale summer ended on a sour note. The final whistle at Wembley was followed by online racism — once again bringing the subject to the  fore.

Though football itself does not produce racism. It is a space where one of modern society’s most repugnant ills continues to rear its ugly head. Time and time again.

In a tournament supposed to be remembered as a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the UEFA European Football Championships, the first of its kind Pan-European format hosted across 11 different cities, will instead be forever tainted by hate.

Although Dublin was originally intended to be one of the 12 hosting cities, Ireland became the sole country from the original dozen to be stripped of its hosting rights due to Covid-19 protocols.

While an outlier when it comes to allowing fans into stadia, like London, Dublin is home to its own fraught exchange between racism and football; on the one hand playing host to a space of racial resistance against different forms of prejudice and the other an incubator to where the abuse takes place.

Similar to Dublin’s doors to the tournament, lockdown restrictions also forced Sport Against Racism Ireland (SARI) — a football-based community organisation — to shut up shop to the game.

The impact caused a huge disruption in the lives of some of the 6,200 young people who engage with SARI’s services on a yearly basis.

None more so than the young Muslim women from its ‘Hijabs and Hat-Tricks’ programme.

The all-inclusive approach, extending to women of diverse religions and ethnicities helps young Muslim women and girls participate in sport and society as active citizens, while tackling the twin scourges of sexism and islamophobia.

Read the full article here at: COMMON GOAL