A football team of police officers beat Shields United 1-0  in the first ever Shields Challenge Cup 2007 and collected their trophy at Lesser Hampden, last month.

 Pollokshields Councillor Irfan Rabbani is spokesperson on Equalities for Glasgow City Council so he approached Police Divisional Commander Robin Howe about using football as a medium to integration in Pollokshields. The outcome was the Shields Challenge Cup which coincided with the Show Racism The Red Card fortnight campaign to tackle racism in football.

Three teams took part in the Challenge - Strathclyde Police G Divisional Team, Glasgow Ansar and Shields United.

Before the game, Kakz, played an Indian Drum (Dholi) and led Scotland Manager, Alex McLeish, Divisional Commander Howe and all the players onto the pitch.

They posed in Show Racism The Red Card T-shirts, before the games started (see picture above)
After the games, the trophy was presented to the winning team. The cup was collected by manager PC Gordon Fairfull, Gorbals Police Office with the ‘behind the scenes’ winner Jim Biggam of Cathcart CID. Gordon said, ‘We are really delighted to have won. We certainly didn’t think we would have.’

A trophy for the Player of the Tournament was won by PC Jamie Crossan of Aitkenhead Road Police Office. He said, ‘I thought I’d played quite well throughout the tournament so I was not surprised to have won. I feel really proud, though.’

Atta Yaqub, captain of Glasgow Ansar and Stephen Dunlop captain of Shields United both said they were disappointment at not winning but they enjoyed taking part which was just as important and pledged to win next year.

The games were followed by speeches and dinner in the Queen’s Park Social Club. Guests included, councillors, MSPs, police officers, SFA Chief Executive Gordon Smith and Steven Purcell Leader of Glasgow City Council among others.

Alex McLeish told the LOCAL NEWS, ‘The ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ campaign is very important to help to end racism within the game. We hope that through football, we can understand each other better.’

Divisional Commander Howe added, ‘It’s very important to provide something for young people -something they enjoy. Everybody loves football, so this is the perfect medium.’

Councillor Rabbani said, ‘Despite the freezing cold weather which kept a lot of people from attending, I’m really happy with the outcome because we have built good links between all the people here. This was supposed to be a one-off! However, next year we hope to have it again on a bigger scale and possibly in Hampden itself.’