I don't want Ched Evans playing for my football club Sheffield United have announced that Ched Evans would begin training with the club, with immediate effect. As everyone who has not been living on Mars for the past two months knows, Evans had been cracking in the goals for Sheffield United in the 2011-12 season before being convicted of rape and sentenced to five years" imprisonment. He was released on licence last month, sparking a vociferous campaign calling on the club not to re-sign him. United's statement yesterday suggested that the decision was taken at the request of the players" union, the PFA, and did not imply that United were going to re-sign him. Frankly, that sounds like bollocks. It seems like they are seeing if he is still any good after his enforced sabbatical - if he is, they will sign him. I'm a United fan. Born and brought up in Sheffield, taken to Bramall Lane by my dad (we lived 20 minutes" walk from the ground) when I was six, I've been passionately attached to them through good and (mostly) bad times these past 40 or so years - the archetypal story. I'm also pretty much the stereotypical lefty - university in the 80s, political activism, civil liberties lawyer and so on. Consequently, this case has raised all sorts of conflicts for me about what it means to be a football supporter. Ever since Evans went down, the possibility of United re-signing him on his release has been rumbling around. My initial view was the standard "right to rehabilitation" one - he had done his time and was entitled to resume his chosen career without being subject to further, extrajudicial punishment. That seemed to me the civilised and reasonable approach to anyone who had served a prison sentence. However, as his release became imminent, the feminist blogger Jean Hatchet started a petition asserting that Evans should not be re-signed by United as this would only trivialise and normalise rape in the eyes of a large number of football supporters. Hatchet's campaign was an amazing success: she got 150,000-plus signatures on her petition, and the media focus on the case was astonishing, given that this was about an otherwise obscure third tier footballer. And that success brought out the worst in certain elements of the United support. Hatchet was subjected to virulent internet abuse, some fans at United games sang songs naming and abusing his victim and declaring that Evans would "shag who he wants." Perhaps most significantly, there was a large amount of indignation that Hatchet should dare to interfere in the matter when she was not even a United fan. Frankly, many of the people on the pro-Evans side had no appreciation that there was more to the issue than whether Evans might be any good if he did re-sign. Even more startling, some supporters were willing to state that the success of their team was more important to them than the issue of rape. It seemed that feminists like Hatchet had a point when they said that some supporters simply did not get the issues around sexual violence, and that allowing Evans to go back to his old job at Sheffield United, as if nothing had happened, would be saying that football was the most important thing in the world and sod anything else. I consequently took the view that United should state that they would not be re-signing Evans, and he should seek to re-build his career lower down the football ladder. However, it seems that ship has now sailed, and that - unless the post-release Evans turns out to be rubbish - he will be signing a contract at Bramall Lane shortly. And that saddens me. I see months more of my club being dragged through the mud and becoming known to the casual fan as "that club who signed the rapist." Some will say, "So what, who gives a toss what other fans say, if Evans scores goals and wins us games." But to me that is just another symptom of the myopic world so many supporters inhabit. I do feel a degree of sympathy for Evans. He has become a symbol of a political issue rather than an individual, which must seem rather unjust. There is also some degree of de haut en bas snobbery from the mainly middle-class campaigners against the culturally working-class Evans. But I feel more sympathy for the victim. She was raped by Evans: a jury of 12 people decided that unanimously, and he has been refused permission to appeal. She was outed on Twitter and had to move from her home town and be given a new identity. She is still regularly called "liar," "slag" and the whole gamut of misogynistic abuse on internet message boards and at football grounds. All this because a footballer was convicted of raping her. Evans maintains his innocence. He has made an application to the criminal cases review commission. Unless he is successful he will remain a rapist; a rapist who will be playing for my team. Will I stop supporting them? It's too deeply ingrained for that, but what this case has done is to ever so slightly lessen my commitment to my team and the whole idea of football support. It is, after all, only a game.