After England beat Croatia 4-2 on Wednesday night, Reform MP Sarah Pochin posted a video on X about domestic abuse.
The caption read: “For the sake of women’s safety we need England to keep winning.”
In the clip, Pochin said: “England won the football last night. And thank goodness they did. Because on the occasions that England lose their football matches, the incidences of domestic violence go through the roof. So boys, keep winning.”
The backlash was immediate.
Labour MP Matthew Patrick replied with four words: “Or maybe ‘don’t attack women’?”
That was the problem with the video in a sentence. The responsibility for domestic abuse lies with abusers. Not with Harry Kane. Not with the scoreline. The framing of Pochin’s clip placed the emphasis entirely in the wrong direction.
Matthew Torbitt put it directly: “It’s hard to overstate how absolutely awful this framing is in just a 13-second video. Football players aren’t responsible for domestic abuse, abusers are!”
Former Labour MP Stella Creasy was equally clear: “Domestic abuse rises whether England loses or wins at football. Tackling that shouldn’t depend on the scoreline but the seriousness with which we take violence against women and ending the culture of misogyny that enables it. With views like this Reform continue to show they are part of the problem not the solution.”
Sharon Gaffka, who said she had endorsed Refuge’s “Show Domestic Abuse the Red Card” campaign, called the framing “vile.”
The research Pochin was referring to is real and serious. A Lancaster University study examining World Cup tournaments in 2002, 2006 and 2010 found that the risk of domestic abuse reports rose by 26% when England won or drew, and by 38% when England lost. Incidents also increased across tournaments more generally – not just on result days.
That research has been used by councils, charities and campaigners for years to warn that major tournaments can be a dangerous time for people living with abuse. Tower Hamlets Council cited the same study recently. Women’s Aid, Solace and Refuge all run campaigns around football tournaments.
But the point of those campaigns is never that footballers are responsible for the safety of women at home. And it is never that a win makes violence acceptable because it happens to be statistically less common than after a loss.
The point is that existing abuse can escalate around matches, often linked to alcohol, gambling losses, entitlement, emotional volatility and the behaviour of men who are already abusive. A result does not cause abuse. A result is one of several factors that can affect when and how an existing abuser chooses to act. Those are meaningfully different things.
Pochin’s video seemed to turn a serious safeguarding message into a “come on lads” appeal to the England squad. The damage done by that framing is not subtle. Victims are already subjected to the idea that they need to manage an abuser’s mood, not say the wrong thing, not ruin the evening. A message suggesting women are safer when footballers score does not help those people. It reinforces the wrong logic.
“This is f*cking horrific,” wrote Curtis Daly. “Pochin telling England to keep winning so blokes don’t batter their wives, instead of telling abusers not to abuse.”
Pochin may argue she was trying to raise awareness of a genuine issue. The intention and the execution are two different things. There was a version of this message that would have worked – one that named the research, explained that tournaments can be dangerous for survivors, directed people to charities, and made clear that abuse is a choice made by abusers that no scoreline excuses. That version would have done real good.
The version Pochin posted ended with “boys, keep winning.”
As we reported in our Pochin Special Forces piece, this is not the first time in recent weeks that Pochin has generated national attention for the wrong reasons. She has only been in Parliament since May 2025, when she won Runcorn and Helsby for Reform by just six votes. She was previously criticised for comments about television adverts featuring Black and Asian people, which Wes Streeting described as racist and for which she later apologised.
Reform has tried to position itself as a defender of women on issues including single-sex spaces, grooming gangs and public safety. But it keeps running into the same problem: its candidates and MPs repeatedly face criticism for how they talk about women, violence and responsibility.
A bad football result does not beat women. Men do. And that should be the message – not “boys, keep winning.”
If you or someone you know is affected by domestic abuse, you can contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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