The Peterborough United women’s team has strongly expressed its stance on the harassment faced by its players on social media following their 10-0 victory against Long Buckby AFC in a Northamptonshire FA County Cup game on 19 November. What should have been a moment of celebration turned into a challenging situation for some athletes from the English club.
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Peterborough’s official social media profile provided live coverage of the match, following its usual practice of publishing images of players scoring goals. In this case, there were 10 images celebrating the top scorers. However, engagement on social media was unusual. Although most profile posts, followed by 10 thousand people, normally receive less than 100 likes, the photos in this game reached up to 20 thousand likes, unfortunately, for inappropriate reasons.
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Photos of Tara Kirk, scorer of two goals, received between 17 and 20 thousand likes, while another player, Perkins, had one of her images reaching 6 thousand likes. However, the negative emphasis was on the comments, which were the main focus of the repudiation note issued by Peterborough. Compliments on the players’ appearance and even obscene harassment overshadowed discussions about their performance in the game and their significant victory.
The club responded by publishing a statement to “strongly condemn all forms of abuse on social media”. They expressed shock at the comments directed at the players and stated that anyone involved in creating or sharing these comments will be reported and will not be welcome to interact with the club at any level. They pledged to continue supporting the affected players and to collaborate with authorities to find solutions against future abuse. The statement also urged social media companies to implement relevant legislation to prevent any form of abuse in the future.