Punjab United Gravesend host grassroots Diversity Football Festival tournament
05.07.2021
Four non-league teams competed in a preseason tournament celebrating South Asian British diversity in the beautiful game. Organised by the BAME Football Forum (BFF), the festival showcased four prominent grassroots teams with South Asian heritage, including Punjab United Gravesend, Sporting Bengal United, Leicester Nirvana, and Sporting Khalsa.
Khalsa, the festival’s winners, made headlines this year as the FA’s non-league restructuring promoted the club to Step 4, the Northern Premier League. Founded by Punjabi Sikhs in 1991, the club celebrate their 30th birthday this year, crowned by a 3-1 victory over Leicester Nirvana to triumph in the Diversity Football Festival.
In truth, besides competing and warming up for the season ahead, the tournament’s main aim was recognising an underappreciated aspect of English football. The traditional Indian drumming group Kings of Dhol opened the event, and notable Sikh MP Tan Dhesi also featured. Such BAME activism follows the BFF’s four goals of Empowering, Representation, Diversity, and Inclusion, in the face of racism in football on and off the pitch.
Racism towards Swansea City’s Yan Dhanda, a footballer with Punjabi heritage, catalysed much of the sport’s anti-racism work in the last year. Dhanda’s club ranked among the first to implement social media boycotts, and the player now supports the Kick It Out organisation as a member of the advisory board.
While the BFF achieved their goal of celebrating diversity with an enjoyable and successful festival, work remains to be done to support BAME players from social media platforms, to pitches, to boardrooms. Hopefully, success stories like Sporting Khalsa’s, and the productive multi-culturalism displayed by the England international team, can lead the way.
