Football must learn lessons from Sheldon report but survivors need help more than ever

Football can hunt for systemic failures, football can promise to learn from them.

Football can confess to a warped sense of priorities, football can vow to make the welfare and safeguarding of children and youngsters its priority.

Football can sombrely, but probably briefly, reflect on Clive Sheldon’s report and move forward.

Lucky football.

Because there are hundreds and hundreds of survivors out there who cannot move forward.

There are hundreds and hundreds of survivors’ families out there who cannot move forward.

Hell, there are survivors … who did not survive.

There are survivors who have shown remarkable strength, remarkable courage and found a way of coping.

The victims of Barry Bennell and others sexual abusers in football are still fighting for justice (PA)

In Gary Cliffe and Steve Walters, I am privileged to know two of them.

But no matter how much strength, how much courage, there are those who will not have been able to cope.

And as the game pores over the details of this report and considers its ramifications, let’s not forget one group of people today.

Yes, there are lessons to be learned, safeguarding structures to be stringently enforced, consideration given to the Football Association’s role and many, many other concerns.

But let’s not lose sight of the survivors and their families.

Let’s not believe, for one moment, they need help any less right now than they needed it when it was so unforgivably absent.

There may be no heads on stakes, no smoking guns in this review, but what happened to these survivors happened on football’s watch.

That is why support for the survivors and their families must be redoubled.

And if that means financial support, then so be it. Football can afford it.

Lives and families’ lives have been destroyed on football’s watch. They are still being destroyed.

In investigating the horrific past, no stone can lie unturned. In trying to make sure it does not happen again in the future, no effort should be spared.

But those still living in the nightmare present - and the families of those who did not survive still living in the nightmare present - should not be forgotten.

Not enough has been done to help them.

Not enough CAN be done to help them.