On and off stage, the Welsh actor Michael Sheen has often starred in football roles: he has played the football manager Brian Clough, captained the winning Soccer Aid team at Old Trafford, helped fund the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff and is the vice-president of Port Talbot Town FC.
Now Sheen, 56, is supporting a five-a-side team who play on Monday night near Aldgate — all trainees of Switchback, a prison rehabilitation charity supporting young men leaving the justice system.
The monthly football sessions provide an outlet and regular sense of community as the trainees navigate probation, trying to find employment and adjusting to life on the outside.
Sheen, who described football as his “first passion” growing up, said: “One of the great things about football is that it’s a great leveller. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the rest of your life, or where you are socially or economically: playing football on a football pitch, everyone is sort of the same.
“It can help, especially if you’ve got stigma around other elements of your life. You can just let that go on the football pitch.”
Sheen as Brian Clough in The Damned United
ALAMY
Sheen lifts the Soccer Aid trophy at Old Trafford in 2010
SHIRLAINE FORREST/WIREIMAGE
The conversations during the match certainly resembled every other on five-a-side pitches across the country: where were the bibs, who was the rushback goalie, how could someone miss an open goal …
“It was a tough game but I’d like to thank my manager, I’d like to thank my mother,” one of the men joked as he came off the pitch, steaming.
The group — which lacks a team name or kit of their own — has played other charities and partners, and has even had two members play internationally in the Homeless World Cup.
The team pose for a photo before the action begins, below
AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES
AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES
Sheen said that as well as health, the sessions helped trainees with teamwork, collaboration and discipline. “You can find positive role models, especially if that’s not something that has been around for you,” he said, “That sense of camaraderie, being part of a community can be really important. It’s something that can provide structure.”
Ash, a 23-year-old winger who has only been out of prison for 12 weeks, scored most of the goals for the team in bibs.
Ash said Switchback had kept him on a “simple path”
AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES
“I’ve not been here long but I appreciate how quickly everyone gels and how open everyone is to chatting with one another and hearing each other’s stories,” he said. “I don’t have any friends that have the same lived experience, so getting advice from them is kind of naïve, in a way.”
Ash, who is now training as front of house through Switchback at The Dusty Knuckle Bakery, said he was poor at organisation, but Switchback had kept him on a “simple path”.
He said playing football in prison had “re-sparked” his joy for the sport after a childhood playing at an intense academy level. “There were a couple of decent players,” he added, before the group started laughing. “Then there were a couple of guys who just wanted to get out of their cell.”
Switchback, one of the charities supported by The Times and Sunday Times Christmas Appeal, provides eligible prisoners with a mentor during their final three months inside to prepare for release, before 12 weeks of structured real-work training and therapeutic mentoring to establish stability.
As well as Dusty Knuckles, Ash’s teammates had trained on a railway safety course, as mechanics at XO Bike, a repair shop run by ex-offenders, and Inside Out, a fashion brand designed by former prisoners.
Almost 91 per cent of the trainees who successfully complete the programme do not reoffend within a year of release, compared with about half of prison leavers nationally.
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The charity hopes to increase the football sessions to twice a month and potentially join a league but is limited by its budget and resources. Pitch hire, even with a charity discount, is £81 per hour.
Freddie Harding, one of the charity’s ten mentors, who played in the match, said: “A lot of the day-to-day work is one-to-one — which obviously works well — but the thing that is really positive about the football is bringing a sense of community.
Freddie Harding
AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES
“The football brings people together. They’ve all got something in common by being on a Switchback programme already — but also it’s something else to talk about when people are in the office.”
Tashan Lane-Pierre, a former Switchback trainee and now a mentor himself, played for the non-bibs. The striker, 30, has also travelled with another charity, Street Soccer, to football tournaments at both Dutch and Serbian prisons.
Tashan Lane-Pierre
AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES
“It was very different,” he said. “The Dutch prison was amazing, they had five-a-side pitches. Even when you went inside, the buildings were all new.
“Even the Serbian prison was better than the majority of the prisons I’ve been to here as well. It was connected to a hotel and the waiters were the prisoners.”
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