Sunday league teams slam cuts to funding
Imam jailed for abusing young girls FEARS FOR FUTURE OF GRASS ROOTS CLUBS
AN Islamic tutor has been jailed for 14 years for sexual assaults against two young girls – prompting police to urge other potential victims to come forward.
Faruque Ahmed, 46, abused the victims over a two-year period from 2009 while employed to teach Arabic at a family home in Warley, West Midlands, police said.
West Midlands Police said the abuse came to light when one of the victims made disclosures to a nurse in 2016. The complainant said Ahmed, an Imam living in Stoke, abused her and hit her with a bamboo cane if she resisted.
Ahmed was arrested in February last year, and in police interview admitted tutoring the girls but denied assaulting them.
Officers charged the cleric with sexually touching a child and sexual assault of a child by penetration. He was found guilty on 10 of the 13 counts against him.
Ahmed, formerly of Cobridge, Stoke-on-Trent, was also given a sexual harm prevention order banning him from working with children for life, and was ordered to register as a sex offender for life. Reporter SUNDAY league football clubs have slammed council cuts as the “final nail in the coffin” for local teams after it was announced funding for sports pitches would be slashed.
Furious Gateshead teams have spoken to the Sunday Sun about the effects of the council’s decision to axe maintenance services for playing fields.
David Robson, manager of Division One side Gateshead Three Tuns FC, said the cuts could cause the death of Sunday league football.
The 38-year-old said: “We moved away from a council-run ground a few seasons ago because the upkeep was terrible, but I’m worried about the league as a whole.
“If the reports about the cuts are true, the league will die.
“It will be the final nail in the coffin and kill grassroots football.
“At our club we have a lot of young people who would otherwise be inside on their computers if it wasn’t for football.”
Tony Heslop, the secretary of defending Premiership champions Belle Vue, said that the scrapping of council services could mean the club is unable to carry on playing games.
The 61-year-old, who has been at the club for 32 years, said: “The council mark the lines on the pitch, they clean the changing rooms and cut the grass. Of course, we could get some brushes and clean the changing rooms out but we couldn’t do the rest ourselves.
“I don’t know what would happen, we may be unable to play.”
It is also claimed that the current quality of services is poor, with one football club having to wade through three-foot-high nettles to get to their pitch.
George Middle– miss, the secretary of Premiership side Highwayman, said that, while the club leases the pitch, the council own the surrounding parks.
“Some of their area has three-foothigh nettles, bushes and trees which we have to get through.
“Lots of our lads also don’t have a great shot on them, so when the ball goes out it’s a nightmare to find in the bushes.”
The funding withdrawal is part of a series of cuts by Gateshead Council to plug a £29m gap on the authority’s balance sheet next financial year.
A Gateshead Council spokesman said: “Due to reductions in Government funding and increasing demand for services, Gateshead Council has an estimated funding gap of £29m over the next year.
“When we’re facing funding pressures of this scale, we most look at all the options available to us; fairness is at the forefront of our minds while we look to balance the needs of local people and the resources available. Our focus has to be on supporting the most vulnerable in our communities.
“There are difficult choices to make so that’s why it’s so important that all concerns are fed into the consultation process so that they can help inform the council’s final budget decisions at the end of February.” DAVID ROBSON in the