News

The Rangers Charity Foundation has donated a set of kit to Glasgow’s very own ‘Dream Team’ who come from as far afield as Sierra Leone, Kenya and the Ivory Coast.

The team, which includes three survivors from the Park Inn stabbing incident in Glasgow last year, are training for the Refugee Tournament Scotland scheduled for August as part of Refugee Festival Scotland 2021. The tournament was postponed last year due to COVID-19, but will now go ahead and involve mixed teams of ethnic minority groups, refugees and local communities.

Adam Paterson, a volunteer with Positive Action in Housing, where several of the players are clients, helped to set up the ‘Dream Team’ following conversations with the young men in the aftermath of the incident. He said:

“I’ve been volunteering with a charity called Positive Action in Housing for the best part of 18 months, which has involved helping people from Glasgow city centre hotels move into dispersal flats around the city, often requiring food, toiletries, medicine, clothes, and furnishings. Teams of volunteers were split into areas so that we could respond to requests for assistance and support from the asylum-seeking community throughout the COVID-19 global pandemic.

While a few of the team’s players were still recovering after the incident on the 26th of June last year at the Park Inn Hotel, the closest they could get to playing football, was playing FIFA on a donated Xbox”

At a picnic in June following the memorial marking the one-year anniversary for the victims of the Park Inn Hotel attack, the conversation turned to football, and the young men all stated that they missed playing football and would love to play regularly again.

When Adam heard about the Refugee Tournament in August, he knew what he wanted to do:

“I contacted the organiser of the event – Abdul Bostani – who was very receptive about the idea of Positive Action in Housing entering a team into the tournament. I began reaching out to organisations that I thought might be able to assist the team with donations of kit and boots to get the team started, and one of the first to get back to me, was the Rangers Charity Foundation.

They organised the donation of football boots, and to top it off, also donated brand new training kit for the team, including shirts, shorts and socks.

I couldn’t have pulled any of this off so far without the generosity, interest and willingness to help from a range of people. None of us can wait to hear the whistle for kick off at 11.00 on 8^th August!”

Rangers Charity Foundation Director, Connal Cochrane commented:

“At the Rangers Charity Foundation, we strongly believe in the power of football to bring individuals and communities together. We are delighted to assist with a kit donation to help this group of players who have been through so much to prepare for the Refugee Tournament in August.

We would like to wish the ‘Dream Team’ and all involved in the Refugee Festival and Tournament the very best of luck.

We are also looking forward to sending along some of the Foundation’s community coaches to assist with the event.”