PROTECT, INFORM, PREVENT

Ched Evans, the footballer, was found guilty of the rape of a 19 year old girl in a hotel in Rhyl. For years footballers (and occasionally other sportsmen and women) have broken laws and at times not much has been done about it. As a result of Evans' crime and his subsequent attempt to get back into the game following his release on licence, the public have been made aware of the issues involved in his and other cases. Adam Johnson was allegedly in similar trouble recently.

Clubs have woken up and some are more advanced in doing something about this than others.

Brighton and Hove Albion are reported to be the first club to give their players training in the law of consent. The Sussex Police crimes' unit have provided the club with courses on sexual crimes and a rape counselling service. The U16, U18 and U21 male and female squads have been included in this very worth while education, which runs alongside the normal lessons taught in the academy.
Other Football League clubs have sought advice once this initiative was made public and hope to follow the idea.

The FL and PFA have established a charity called League Football Education for 16-18 year olds at their clubs, which includes the element on the law of consent and academy directors are meeting to hear about a pilot course held at Bury FC. Run by local solicitors, the course includes the law on assault, drugs, traffic offences, match fixing and issue with social media. Consent is not included and the LFE executive claims that it would be physically impossible to reach every one of the 72 clubs successfully. Maybe something for the future? By which time, we hope it will not be too late.

The Brighton course could help cover the ground, with their advisors Liberton Investigations, the company that co-founded the programme, taking on the initiative of presenting courses on behalf of the FL.

Note that this does not include the Premier League, from which many clubs failed to respond to an inquiry from “Inside Sport” about whether they provided their youngsters with specific training.

Chelsea said they did, Liverpool said they had a range of initiatives in their programme and Arsenal said they would be happy to explore training on consent. Not convincing is it?

Now that this is being aimed at the youngsters what about the over 21s?