Football club Unitas’30 in Etten-Leur wants to make it clear once and for all: you don’t swear with cancer on a football field. Anyone who does will receive a red card. Rinse your mouth, take a shower and think about your action on the couch. “You hurt people with it.”
“Every time it happens, that’s one time too many,” says referee and secretary Kees Halters firmly. The subject grabs him. “It triggers people and it makes them emotional. I lost both my parents to cancer. If someone swears with that, you try to put it into perspective. But sometimes it just goes too far.” The red card is therefore also a kind of figurative red card, according to the referee. It’s about more than just the game.
If anyone understands that, it’s soccer mom Helga Oomen. In the sun she is watching the game of her sons, who play in the team under 14. She has been clean for one year now, after being diagnosed with breast cancer. “Chemo, radiation, operations: you name it,” she says about this intense period. Even if a child swears with that without malicious intent, it still hurts her a lot.
It is no different for her children. They were very close to their mother’s disease process. When an opponent used the disease as a safe word while playing football, her eldest son’s lights went out. “He then punched that other boy,” says Oomen. “Of course we don’t approve of that behavior, but you can feel how much it hurts him.”
That is why the board of the football club from Etten-Leur is completely done with it. “It is called on the field all the time, so we want to send a clear signal. Swearing with cancer means that you are immediately put on non-active for four weeks,” says chairman Ton Staaltjens.
The youth must make sure that it is not a safe word, expletive or swear word. If you are angry, then you have to express it in a different way. ‘The K-word’ is no longer tolerated in Etten-Leur, also to prevent it from spreading to younger generations. Now the term is mainly on the tongue of the selections under 19, up to the age of 12. According to the club, whether it is a boys’ or a girls’ team does not really matter.
“Of course it’s really not possible, swearing with the k-word.”
The young players themselves are only happy with the rule. “I like it,” responds 13-year-old Rick. Together with his teammates Loek and Noud, he has just played an away match against Unitas’30. They play at football club Cluzona, from Wouw, in the under 14 team. “Of course it is really not possible to swear with the k-word. It is a disease and you hurt people with it”, teammate Loek continues. “It’s a stupid disease, so I think it’s good that they are taking action against it.” That’s the nail on the head, if you believe the club’s board. A stupid disease, no safeword.