Support For Ukraine: Norwich V Brentford Display

When you go to the game at Carrow Road tomorrow. You will see at least one.

A child going to their first-ever football match. Wide-eyed, and mouth open. Clutching mum or dad’s (or brother or sister’s) hand, in awe at this riot of colour and noise and people which seems to be at once something so massive but also feels right to belong to. Grown adults shouting and singing and swearing. Having fun. Laughing and joking with each other. It’s nothing like anything else they have seen of what the adult world is supposed to like, with their telling off, walking slowly and not wanting to play with a toy when asked a thousand times.

They are the visual representation of all intangible that makes this thing that we love, often against our better judgement, worth it. Spotting a first-time child match goer is an instant hit of emotional sickness as, even if you do not have children, they are everything that football is, was and forever shall be. Fun. Excitement. Nerves. Community. Belonging. Acting as silly as possible in an acceptable way.

But, when we see it tomorrow, there is something there in the back of all our minds.

There are children, out there in our world right now in the Common Era Year 2022, who – instead of holding hands with mums and dads and going to watch their first ever football match – are shaking with fear, hiding in underground railway stations, wondering in bewilderment as to why their mum and dad is carrying them to another country, and crying with shock as yet another loud explosion rings their ears and shakes the pit of their stomach.

Tomorrow at Carrow Road we will be putting on a display in support of the people of Ukraine. It’s a tiny move. Insignificant. Yet, in a world where men are dropping fuel-air bombs on children, we as fans of a football club – one of the few remaining big manifestations of community in the UK in the modern day – cannot simply sit idly on our hands and pretend that such aggression is meaningless to us. A war in a faraway land.

Sport and politics have always mixed and this has never been clearer considering the landscape of modern football.

Football has a very problematic relationship with chasing money, even if the sources are swept under a bloodstained carpet. As football fans, we must make ourselves known to all that we do not stand for this and will not become pawns in the games of dangerous and threatening regimes.

But the intention of this show of support goes even further than that. Because ultimately football, a sport which is just 22 people kicking a ball around as we are so often told, is meaningless here. And as such, we, as simply a collection of human beings who represent one massive community of very diverse and different people, must also say: we do not stand for this.

So please, join us in showing your support for Ukraine tomorrow by getting involved if you’re asked. But do not stop your support there. Donate to Save The Children. Donate to Unicef’s DEC appeal. Donate to the Refugee Council. Donate to any other charity we have missed. And if you can’t donate in these difficult economic times, then raise as much awareness about them as you can.

Hopefully, one day, Ukrainian children will be able again to watch their first-ever football matches. Squeezing mum and dad’s hand, not because they are scared from fleeing from bombs or rifle fire, but because they are so excited by the dizzying sight of a full and colourful football stadium around them. Because, after all, football means so much to us because it doesn’t mean anything at all.