Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. This is club 69/92. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here
In Mal Benning’s home, there is a shirt and medal in a frame on the wall.
It celebrates Port Vale’s League Two play-off final victory in 2022, but it is an intensely personal memory too, one that extends beyond football. The Shrewsbury Town defender scored the third goal in a 3-0 win. He became the first Punjabi Sikh to score at Wembley Stadium.
Benning had spent the week talking about South Asians in football and the lack of representation, saying that he didn’t care who it was but that the community needed more role models in the game.
With that goal, he became a leader. That frame on the wall represents what he achieved, but also what he hopes to help others achieve too.
Benning has been a professional footballer for 15 years. He has played over 450 matches for English clubs. At 31, he had to wait for that first honour in 2022 but by any measure this has been a successful career.
You battle to be one of the few who make it through a professional academy and then you battle again to be one of the few who graduates from it and sticks around.
For most of his peers, that is enough. That is a strand of privilege: your success is your own.
You get to bask in what goes right and deal with what goes wrong yourself. You are not cast as an inadvertent spokesperson for an entire community, nor bestowed with added responsibility.
For Benning, professional life has been different. When he was in Walsall’s academy, he saw few other faces like his. When he made the grade as a professional, the same.
Shrewsbury Town 0-1 Stevenage (Saturday 22 February)
- Game no.: 70/92
- Miles: 168
- Cumulative miles: 12,545
- Total goals seen: 183
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: Gareth Ainsworth is a unique touchline presence: long hair, skinny jeans, brown brogues and a faded dark green waxed leather jacket.
Fifteen years on, as a senior professional, has much really changed?
A report quoted in a BBC article in 2022 revealed that of the 15,000 players and academy members involved in UK professional football, only 115 came from the largest ethnic minority community in the country.
As of last summer, only 22 male players out of approximately 3,700 professionals have South Asian backgrounds.
The numbers are stark, and Benning didn’t believe that they were improving quickly enough. He had to think beyond his own career. The position of role model is not something that should be forced upon anyone.
In this case, it is something he is honoured to hold.
“When I was a young lad growing up, I really didn’t have anyone like that, someone who looked like me and had made it in the game,” Benning tells The i Paper.
“I want to be that shoulder to lean on, if other players in the system need some advice or just someone to talk to who has made that journey.
“I can only thank every single club that I have been at; it’s because of them that I feel able to do this.
“Starting at Walsall at Under-8s level, I’ve always been able to seamlessly fit in and I have never had to change who I am.
“I’m a young Sikh lad and that never had to change a thing because every club was incredibly welcoming. I never felt any different. That is the only way this works.
“I have to stay true to who I am if I am to be an effective role model – if I had changed to fit in then I’m not worth following.
“I’m proud to be Sikh. I’m proud to be Asian. I love football but I would never have changed who I was to be a part of the sport.”
Religion plays a huge part in Benning’s life. He goes to the gurdwara twice a week, as he did with his family as a child. He will continue to go after he retires because his faith will always persevere.
There is little professional sacrifice here: he can go any time, any day of the week. He says that every time he spends time at the gurdwara, he leaves feeling entirely refreshed. That has helped to underpin his career too.
“Football is a mentally straining game and my religion helps with that,” he says.
“I go to the gurdwara twice a week. Religion helps me to relax and to meditate, to forget about the stress of the world and football.
“It has helped my game, no doubt, because it helps to keep me grounded and level-headed. It has prolonged my career.”
The lack of British Asian representation is a historic, established issue within English football.
In January, the Football Association published its first plan focused specifically on making football more accessible to the largest minority ethnic group in the country.
It will work on three distinct strategies: attracting children into organised football, attracting adults into organised football and attracting more coaches into the structure of qualifications.
That is a necessary, and overdue, element of change. For all that Benning can act as a role model to inspire others by example – and that work is vital – it can only be as part of a concerted effort, from top to bottom, to approach the issue.
“Role models are important, but they only work in conjunction with the wider backing of governing bodies, government and organisations,” he says.
“I read the strategy announcement and I thought that it was a positive start, full of good intentions. Hopefully I can be involved in some of that to shape the creation of greater pathways. This is a numbers thing and right now they are too low.”
One of the barriers, Benning believes, is an established unconscious bias. He remembers, when he was 13 or 14, his dad sitting him down for a chat. His dad would take Benning everywhere – home games, away games, training in evenings – and Benning stresses just how influential both his parents were in him making the grade – “I am eternally grateful for their love, support and hard work”.
During that chat, Benning’s dad explained that, as somebody viewed as different, he would always have to work 25 per cent harder and be 25 per cent better to be noticed. It was part-motivational tool, part-reflection of the reality as life as an ethnic minority in an environment that had long been alien to them.
“I think that still applies: you need to shine that little bit brighter to be recognised and to be on the same playing field,” Benning says.
“We have come a long way, but that’s just the way it is. The more representation that there is, the more South Asian faces are seen in the game, the less that will apply. But until then, it does.”
One point that Benning wants to make is about the perceived societal barrier between British Asians and football. You will have heard the stereotypes, that British Asian families prefer their children to play cricket to football and focus on education over physical activity.
But the evidence presents that as a myth. In 2022, a Sport England survey demonstrated that more than double the number of British South Asian adults played football than played cricket. In 2024, Sky Sports estimated that the percentage of South Asian grassroots footballers was 6.5 per cent.
That needs to grow, but it also doesn’t equate with such a low number in the professional game.
“I think that stereotype probably held within those of my grandparents’ generation,” Benning says.
“But nowadays, it just isn’t there. It’s done and dusted, an outdated stereotype has been heavily eroded over time.
“British Asian kids adore football and their parents do too.
“Instead what you have is parents with young kids thinking, ‘There just aren’t many Asian faces around here – how is this ever going to work?’
“Hopefully my example can change that. I’ve had children and parents approach me and tell me that my career has been an example, and that’s something that I’m incredibly thankful for.”
That’s the crux of this issue. The biggest barrier isn’t a barrier at all but an absence, a vacuum where a large crop of British Asian players should be. When covering the Lionesses during their European Championship triumph in 2021, players repeatedly used the same phrase about creating pathways for young girls coming after them: to be it, you have to see it.
That’s why the position of role model is so important to Benning. At 31, he is already helping young British Asian academy players through the Professional Footballers’ Association’s Asian Inclusion Mentoring Scheme (AIMS) programme. As he enters the later stages of his career, he understands that he has a unique opportunity to provide something more lasting even than hundreds of league appearances and scoring at Wembley.
“Your thoughts turn to what might come next,” he says. “I’ve been looking into working more with the PFA and the FA just to be an agency who has been there and done it and lived it. I can pass on my experience and knowledge to organisations to identify more talent.
“I’d love to see a young Asian lad playing regularly in the Premier League. I have played mostly at League One and League Two level, and that means a lot. But to have that poster boy at Premier League level would just bring a whole new level of inspiration.
“But I’ve been saying that for a long time now. So I have to make it my mission. And if this interview is read by one parent, child or young footballer who does need some advice, I will always be there for them.”
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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