Football helping prisoners: ‘I watch Match of the Day in my cell religiously’ | Ben Fisher
At a prison in Devon professionals from country rivals Exeter City and Plymouth Argyle are participating in an innovative pilot programme putting football at the centre of rehabilitationThere is a fiercely contested drop-ball during a five-a-side kickabout with a difference. Behind the barbed wire and through the giant blue main gate at HMP Exeter, in the gymnasium perched round the back of C wing, where a pair of tracksuit bottoms are drying out of the window of cell 32, a handpicked group of offenders are taking on a team comprising professional footballers from Devon rivals Exeter City and Plymouth Argyle. “Nice and fair,” says Mike Reece, one of five prison officers who specialise in physical education here, as the game...