A Sicilian Rugby Team Fighting the Mafia - And Ukraine Update

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Danny's in Ukraine, and Sean's cover story at Sports Illustrated—about a Sicilian rugby team facing down the Mafia—just dropped. So we're combining the two, first with a rundown of Danny's movements in Kharkiv and beyond - then with an SI Weekly audio documentary about the rugby feature. That part chronicles the trials and tribulations of Briganti, a club in the depressed neighborhood of Librino, "Catania's Bronx", that has fallen prey to Cosa Nostra mobsters in recent years. Founded to keep kids away from crime, the club has come under heavy fire: its clubhouse was torched, team bus destroyed, equipment stolen and bullets fired into its changing room door. But it's going strong—in no small part to a short, bushy-haired agronomist who saw a chance to pull locals off the corners with sport. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	At Barclays, we're here for the land of football.
0:06.4	We're here for the Premier League.
0:09.0	And the Barclays Women's Super League.
0:12.1	We're here for the football chance for giving more girls a chance. We're
0:18.0	here for the grassroots and all the muddy boots. From schools to stadiums, we're here for it all.
0:27.6	Barclays, here for the world of organised podcast where every week we take you into a crazy and wonderful story from the
0:44.2	world of organized crime. I'm your host Sean Williams. I'm coming to you from
0:48.2	Berlin and I'm joined amazingly by my co-host Danny Gold.
0:54.0	Yeah, yeah guys, I'm in Ukraine, so I haven't really been available the past couple weeks and
0:59.0	very sorry about that. I will never leave you alone with Sean again for this long in the future but yeah it's I think
1:06.8	this is a pretty great episode and Sean you've been on the road a ton recently too yeah
1:11.2	Yeah, I've been all over I was in in Belize, the states, all over Germany doing some crazy story about Vladimir Putin, and now France, but something different, but yeah, yeah, more stuff about, more about that soon, but are you crane are you right now?
1:23.6	Yeah so I'm in I'm in Harkey right now which is in northeast Ukraine close to
1:28.8	border with Russia to second biggest city and it had been under pretty intense shelling since the beginning of the war. In recent days, they've really pushed the Russian army back, some units like all the way back to the border so they're having some great advances.
1:43.2	I was able to get out to some of them recently I think yesterday or two so be on the
1:47.5	lookout for that and we'll probably do maybe a bonus episode getting more into
1:51.4	the details of this stuff but I had a big story
1:53.4	rolling stone last week about these guys that deliver aid to the front line one of themselves
1:58.9	a hangover remedy drink it's a it's a good time but uh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I've I've kind of slacked on the episodes. I will make that up to you guys but Sean's got got a really interesting one coming right here, yeah?
2:13.0	Yeah, so folks might know, but I was in Catania, Sicily, in Italy a couple of months ago now,
2:20.0	doing a story for Sports Illustrated about a rugby club that's kind of standing up to the mafia out there.
2:25.4	Doing some great work, really interesting guys, it was a wonderful trip.
	...

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