Clyde women’s team quit after David Goodwillie’s return
Clyde Ladies players have said they no longer want to play for the club after the return of former Scotland striker David Goodwillie to the men’s squad.
The Cinch Scottish League One side confirmed they signed the 32-year-old, who was found by a judge in a civil case in 2017 to have raped a woman, on loan from Raith Rovers until the end of the season.
In a statement, the Clyde Ladies squad said they will no longer play for the club as a result.
Mass departure
The statement said:
We can today confirm the general manager/secretary of Clyde Ladies has resigned on hearing the news of the return of David Goodwillie to the club.
Read on...
All of the players in the ladies team have discussed the situation with the general manager/secretary and they are all in agreement that we no longer wish to play for Clyde FC. This will start with immediate effect.
As a group of female footballers all we wish to do is play the sport that we love, but due to the current circumstances we are unable to do this.
The club can confirm that David Goodwillie has rejoined the club on loan from Raith Rovers until the end of the seasonhttps://t.co/DRvCszGpBI
— Clyde FC (@ClydeFC) March 1, 2022
Clyde revealed on Tuesday that Goodwillie had rejoined The Bully Wee (Clyde’s nickname) following the backlash over his move to Raith. A club statement said:
Following an initial approach by Raith Rovers, and subsequent agreement between the two clubs, we can confirm that David Goodwillie has returned to Broadwood on loan until the end of the 2021-22 season.
This enables David to return to first-team activities including training and playing and, in doing so, continue his career in football at the current time.
“Disgusted doesn’t even begin to touch it”
Author Val McDermid, who withdrew her backing of Raith Rovers when the club signed Goodwillie earlier this year, said of his move to Clyde on Twitter:
Disgusted doesn’t even begin to touch it.
All that mealy-mouthed stuff from the board about contract-ending negotiations? Do @RaithRovers think we’ll all have forgotten about this by the end of the season?
North Lanarkshire Council, which owns Clyde’s Broadwood Stadium in Cumbernauld, said it is now reviewing its commercial partnership arrangements with the club following the announcement.
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This is an interesting turn of events.
Mr Goodwillie had been playing for Clyde FC for the previous 5 years and the women’s team was associated with club during that time. This fact has been used by some to attack the decision of the women’s club for its current stance.
I support the Clyde Women in their decision.
Despite the removal of barriers to women’s participation in Scottish football in recent years, many of the male attitudes which created these barriers are still held by a number of people. Essentially these men still see football as a men’s sport and that it somehow exists outside of society. Yet the same people often speak of football as ‘the people’s game’ and of ‘community clubs’, seemingly oblivious of the fact that women are people and part of the community.
Because of difficulties in getting access to good facilities many women footballers had to put up with a number of nasty related aspects to get access and to develop as players. They were in the horns of a dilemma.
When Mr Goodwillie moved to Raith Rovers, Raith Rovers had the formidable football fan and powerful woman Val McDermid in a leading position and the Raith Women’s club, because of their confidence in Ms McDermid took their stance and, in that were supported by many male members of Raith Rovers club and by a substantial section of the community in the Kirkcaldy area. The support of the First Minister was significant.
This was a transformative moment for women football players. The Clyde Women seeing that solidarity felt empowered and felt their dilemma had disappeared and took their decision.
The fact that despite the severe criticism in Kirkcaldy the Board of Raith Rovers felt they could make a commercial decision to loan Mr Goodwillie back to Clyde and the board of Clyde FC seem to think they exist in a vacuum and that the transformative attitudinal change in Kirkcaldy had not influenced people in North Lanarkshire and so things could continue as they had during the previous five years with Mr Goodwillie as a player.
I hope that such changes empower more people in society to speak out and act against unfairnesses and injustices.
But the man has not been found guilty in a Criminal Court. In a Civil Court, yes, where the burden of proof is lower.
He is, in the eyes of the Criminal Court, innocent.
Still, no smoke without fire, eh?