Two dozen yellow T shirts, just after sunrise, are making their journey across Sheffield from Bramall Lane to the south to Hillsborough to the north.
The group includes both young and old, so they draw encouragement from passing cars. Each person has a reason for having started a 41-mile walk that will finish in Leeds the next morning.
They all share one thing in common: the impact gambling has on their lives. There are those who have overcome addiction and those who want to see change.
Kay Wadsworth was the mother of Kimberly Wadsworth. She was 32 years old when she took her own death from a gambling addiction. Kay can be found clinging to her daughter’s doll at the beginning and the eventual end of a walk carried out in her name, an emblem of what she has lost and cannot hope to replace.
Kay and her fellow walkers felt almost as poignant in their yellow T-shirts.
On the back of each is 409 — the number of lives Public Health England estimated were lost to gambling-related suicides in 2021 in England alone. This represents seven per cent of all suicides in Britain.
This is The Big Step’s latest initiative to get rid of gambling advertising in football.
It has been 10 times before. Each was designed to get the message across to professional clubs’ homes.
They marched from Edinburgh to Glasgow, between Manchester, Liverpool and Manchester. The Big Group walked 300 miles from Scotland to Wembley during the European Championship in 2021.
This one was Yorkshire’s. Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday
