Graham Rix and Gwyn Williams accused of racism and bullying while at Chelsea • Three former Chelsea youth players launch legal claims against the club • Chelsea and Football Association investigating allegations dating from 1990s • Rix and Williams deny allegations in statement issued by their solicitor please log in to view this image Three former youth-team footballers at Chelsea have launched legal claims against the club after allegations that black players were subjected to horrific racism by their coaches, including physical attacks and one instance when Graham Rix allegedly threw a cup of hot coffee in the face of one of the young prospects. Rix, then the youth-team coach, is named along with Gwyn Williams, a prominent figure at Stamford Bridge for more than 25 years, in a case that contains such serious allegations Chelsea felt compelled to notify the Football Association and the police were brought in. The police decided after a seven-month investigation there was insufficient evidence to take any action but Chelsea have launched their own inquiry and the FA’s safeguarding team have so far interviewed two of the players. Chelsea have also offered in-house counselling to at least one of the players. Rix and Williams declined to comment to the Guardian but later issued a statement through their solicitor denying the allegations. Chelsea have released a statement about a civil claim that was instigated in a letter to the club last February and, until now, has never been reported. “We take allegations of this nature extremely seriously,” Chelsea’s statement said. “We are absolutely determined to do the right thing, to fully support those affected, assist the authorities and support their investigations.” Rix and Williams were key members of the backroom staff at a time when Glenn Hoddle, Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli put in place a pre-Abramovich transformation to re-establish Chelsea as one of the more glamorous clubs in the country during the 1990s. Behind the scenes, however, evidence submitted to the FA and seen by the Guardian describes it as a “feral environment” for some of the black players in the youth team, one allegation being that they were treated “like a race of ****ing dogs”. please log in to view this image Williams, 68, joined Chelsea in 1979 and was so close to Ken Bates he later followed him to Leeds United as technical director. His period at Chelsea also included a spell as assistant manager to Claudio Ranieri and he was involved in the scouting department for José Mourinho before leaving the club in 2006. Williams, who is credited with discovering John Terry, has been accused in the past of making homophobic comments to Graeme Le Saux, the former Chelsea defender. “He would wander up to me before training and say: ‘Come on, ****, get your boots on,’” Le Saux wrote in his 2007 autobiography. Williams was dismissed by Leeds for gross misconduct in 2013 after emailing pornographic images of women to a number of colleagues, including a female receptionist. Rix, 60, also has a chequered past after admitting, in March 1999, two charges of unlawful sex with a 15-year-old girl and indecent assault and being sentenced to 12 months in prison – serving six of them – as well as being put on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. He was reinstated by Chelsea immediately after his release from Wandsworth prison and was the first-team coach when Vialli’s team won the FA Cup in 2000. Rix had previously been the assistant manager to Gullit and had a brief spell as the caretaker manager after Vialli’s departure. After that, he managed Portsmouth, Oxford United and Hearts, as well as coaching at the Glenn Hoddle Academy in Spain and having a brief spell as manager of a club in Trinidad. His last managerial job in England was at AFC Portchester of the Wessex League Premier Division but he left the club last August. Rix and his solicitor have not replied to a question from this newspaper about whether the FA temporarily suspended him after the allegations surfaced. The FA, asked the same question, has refused to comment and Paul Kelly, Portchester’s chairman, was due to speak to the Guardian before changing his mind after consulting the governing body. He had previously said the club was aware of the allegations and had followed all the procedures and guidelines set out by the FA. The allegations from the player are also that Williams seemed to target him by “flicking my scrotum, flicking my penis, patting my bum” when he was still a minor. There is no suggestion Williams was getting sexual gratification but it was deemed serious enough to form part of the questioning when David Gregson, the FA’s safeguarding team leader, and Stefania Sacco, the safeguarding investigation manager, interviewed the player at Wembley on 23 October. Williams has been informed by the Guardian of the allegation. The player says he tried to ring Graham Kelly, the chief executive of the FA, years later to talk to him about what had allegedly happened but says he was not even put through. “The FA have failed me in the way of not protecting me as a minor,” he says. “I was failed in terms of there not being enough parameters for protection.” please log in to view this image According to that player’s account, seen by the Guardian, the racist abuse at Chelsea started after joining the club on schoolboy terms. “Even at 12, 13, the vernacular he [Williams] was using was: ‘You little black bastard, you coon, you little wog, how are you doing?’ I was a minor, I’d never heard those words being said to someone [in football]. He addressed me like that every time he saw me. He’d walk in [the dressing room] and go: ‘Hey, look at the ****ing blackies here then. ****ing rubber lips. Look at their ****ing big noses. You black bastard. Been ****ing robbing cars, have you?’ Let me tell you something – that is the most demoralising feeling you could ever have.” In his interview with the FA’s safeguarding officials, the player adds: “I knew it was unacceptable but I was a minor. When you’re in that position, where this guy is a powerful guy at the club … I didn’t know how to handle it. I thought it would stop. I just didn’t know how to handle it and it was constant … the racial slurs of ‘coon’, ‘wog’, ‘monkey’ … ‘smoking wacky-backy’, which is marijuana, or ‘black bastard’, ‘****ing black bastard’, ‘mango-muncher’, ‘******’. “Gwyn Williams has been at the club since 1979. He was powerful. He was Ken Bates’s mate. The guy [Williams] is a walking piece of dirt but he had power. It was said he had the biggest black book in London – he knew everyone. That guy was the governor. No matter what role he had, that man had power.” When the player, then 15, was offered YTS terms Rix was the youth-team manager, with Williams in the role of youth development officer. Hoddle, who had been the manager, left Chelsea to take the England job and Gullit took over at Stamford Bridge. “The amount of times I wanted to say something to Ruud Gullit,” the player says in his FA interview. “But Ruud Gullit didn’t even know what was going on. They didn’t do these things in front of Ruud.” It burned my face. I went to grab him. I wanted to kill this guy … I had to hold myself in The player goes on to state in the same interview that when he asked Rix to stop “digging me out” he was struck on the back of the head and, later in a training session, kicked twice while sitting on the floor. Rix, he says, was singing the Billy Ocean song When the Going Gets Tough as the alleged assault took place. In another training game, Rix joined in and, according to the player, hurled the ball into his face from a throw-in, leaving him on the floor with a bleeding nose. The same player is said to have decided to stand up to Rix when, according to the evidence, the coach asked him whether he had “tried to **** any of our white girls” at the weekend. In the ensuing argument, Rix allegedly threw a cup of coffee in his face. “It burned my face,” the player says. “I went to grab him. I wanted to kill this guy. Then I had to think … black boy, six foot whatever, hits a white coach – he’s out of football. So I had to hold myself in and I went in to put water on my face because it was burning.” In a follow-up legal letter to Chelsea, another alleged incident refers to the teenager asking Rix to stop making his sister feel uncomfortable by making what were, in the player’s view, suggestive remarks. Rix allegedly went red with anger and replied: “I will do whatever I want and if I fancy a bit of black I guarantee her black arse will get it,” and then punched him in the scrotum. “Our client fell to the floor in excruciating pain and Rix walked off laughing while looking over his shoulder.” Rix and Williams repeatedly told the Guardian through their solicitor, Eddie Johns, that they did not want to comment but Johns said in a statement after the story was published that his clients “deny all and any allegations of racial or other abuse”. He said Rix and Williams had cooperated with the police investigation and were cooperating with the FA. Johns added that the allegations had not been made directly to his clients but that they would deal with them if they were.
I'm A Celeb hopeful Dennis Wise defended ex- Hearts head coach Graham Rix - who was jailed for having sex with an underage girl. Football ace Dennis, who admitted he joined the ITV show to win over fans, spoke up for former Jambo Rix after he was jailed for sleeping with a 15-year-old girl - saying his pal "made one mistake." In his autobiography the Chelsea star lamented father-of-four Rix' fate writing: "Despite how it looks and what the facts say, I can assure you all is not how it seemed. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image Former Hearts boss Graham Rix please log in to view this image Rix was appointed at Tynecastle in November 2005 during the Vladimir Romanov era. He was axed just four months later. Dennis met Rix when he was at Chelsea - before Rix went on to serve six months of a year-long jail sentence. Speaking about his 1999 stint in jail back in 2013, Rix said: "Wandsworth Prison is not a very nice place to go, I can assure you. It was tough in there. But it's a great leveller. It doesn't matter in there what car you drive, what house you have, how much money you've got, you're all in there together. There were some bad people in there, but there were also some people who had made a mistake but were essentially good people. "It taught me a few things, like what was important to me and who your real mates are. Glenn came to visit me, when he was England manager; Vialli came to visit me. They didn't have to do that if they didn't believe in me and trust me." Dennis went on to say: "You shouldn't lose everything you have worked for in life because of one mistake." Rix, who pleaded guilty to having sex with his victim, claimed at the time there were mitigating circumstances in the case. After jail he returned to Chelsea - causing outrage amongst fans.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football-wise-sentenced-to-three-months-in-jail-1611244.html So the bully defends the bully.
Fooking Bates and his double standards. He got rid of Grayson because he shagged a member of staff, obviously Bates was chasing her too. Seriously though folks, the world was a different place back even in the early 2000s, not just football, every industry looked different, racism, sexism, non PC it was a different era with different values. Ron Atkinson was the best pundit on telly but he opened his gob and the 80s came out. Gone. Rix is still a ***** in any era though
