All-Jewish Team Suspended For Not Fielding All-Jewish Team

He’s still eligible.

England’s Maccabi Southern Football League has suspended Holy Mount Zion football club from play for fielding gentiles on its squad in the all-Jewish league.

Opponents had filed complaints with the league that Holy Mount Zion had been fielding non-Jewish players. After the complaints, the league asked the team to provide proof of the players’ Jewish faith (kinda ironic, but not in the Alanis Morrisette way, the real way) but the team failed to provide proof by the deadline. (No word on whether the lack of earlocks was the giveaway.) After the team did not respond to the request the suspect players were suspended from playing.

After the suspensions the team was still allowed to play but the ensuing game confirmed the suspicions when the match official heard players being called by names other than the team sheet. The match official approached the putative Danny Potter and Simon Loeb asking them why they were being called Mariusz and Javier on the field.

Their response? Those were there nicknames.

Just a little investigative work and those stories apparently have fallen apart. A reporter for The Jewish Chronicle did some Facebook stalking and determined the players were “Mariusz Mielniczuk, a Polish-born personal trainer, and Javier Guevara, a banker who had previously studied and worked in Bogota.”

My how times have changed. Just seventy years ago Poles were attempting to hide any sign of their Jewish heritage and now they are faking their Jewish lineage.

Confronted with the evidence, team manager Rob Lerner said he did field the players but he did it only because he could not have fielded a team otherwise.

Holy Mount Zion is currently in sixth in its division unbeaten but having played only eight games to the other teams 12-14 games.

Humorous sidenotes:

Here are the tables for all the MSFL divisions and it leads to a lot of interesting stuff. First, my favorite team name is fourth division Jewventus, followed closely by league two Woodford Wanderers.

Second, the Holy Mount Zion page is quite interesting. It leads off with this description:

Peace, Love, Unity, Lambsbread collie, the centrality of reggae music and the everlasting damnation of babylon. Rob Lerner resumed control of HMZ in the summer. He hopes “to regain consistency of performances and the results should follow. And, a cup run would be nice too!”

And when you click on the ‘squad’ link there are a bunch of pictures of what appear to be rastafarians smoking presumably dank ganja. And then one picture of a very white “Terry Simpson.” Maybe this team should have adopted the “Zig Zag” name of the League Two squad.