http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...hed-Liverpool-star-taunted-Brighton-fans.html the usual comments you'd expect in the replies: if the opposition had an indian player, and we chanted something derogatory about being indian, such as 'indian b*stard' or equally a pakistani player, e.g. calling him a 'p*ki' , would this be as these mindless idiots call it, banter? being welsh, pakistani or indian is irrelevant, they are all nationalities and not races, whereas one group gets protected from such abuse while another has to put up with it because its what these people call banter and therefore acceptable. if you watch a match in which bellamy plays he has to put up with this every week, i dont care if he has history of winding up fans, people wouldnt side with the bullies if adebayor or another player got abused for his nationality. one of our own ex players, michael chopra was subject to a comment about his indian heritage after a match by an opposition player and it was rightly condemned, if bellamy did the same thing then people bring out the same rubbish 'political correctness gone mad' 'so what he has to put up with worse than that'.
If they want to be as pedantic as that: "The human race is one race, that is made up of over 30 ethnic groups" Therefore if there is only one race, racism can't exist unless it comes from a non-human source. What the United Nations regards as racism and prejudice: http://www.un.org/WCAR/ Covers ethnic groups, colour, creed, country or nation of origin and gender. Now the question is do we believe the pedantic, arrogant, ignorant, small-minded morons. who spouted this rubbish originally? Or the United Nations committee that has made a serious study of prejudice? Difficult one this.....do we believe the experts or the idiots
So if I call a woman "love" I'm a racist? . Or does that come under prejudice(not racism), and if so, does xenophobia come under that title? By the way, you don't help matters by agreeing to call yourselves "foreigners"
You seriously think that calling someone a Welsh bastard is the same as calling them a Paki? Welsh bastard to me is no more offensive than 'Manc bastard', 'scouse bastard' or 'Swansea bastard'. Nationality is an arbitrary concept anyway - wow some politicians drew some lines on a map and we're called a nation, big whoop. Doesn't make the Welsh a race, no more than people from Cardiff or Swansea are a race. 'Paki' has come to be a racist epithet for all South Asian people whether from Pakistan or not. Very different terms semantically. Basically, if a Caucasian is calling another Caucasian an 'X bastard' (with X being their place of origin), it's pretty stupid to class it as racism. It's most likely just xenophobia or prejudice or whatever you want to call it, and it's part and parcel of the game of football. Something which, if they were talking to said Welsh bastard down the pub, they would drop immediately. Cheer up and stop playing the race card.
from your comments there you sound like the sort of person who would happily chant xenophobic chants towards welsh players, or anyone for that matter. you fit the sort of person we should be condemning by saying its 'part and parcel of football' and 'stop playing the race card'. no footballer, deserves to be abused in their place of work because of race, nationality, religion etc. its childish and ignorant, and should be stamped out of the game, not encouraged by people like you as light hearted banter, in the same way that racism or homophobia has largely been. black players dont have to put up with abuse in this country relating to their heritage so why should others have to endure it? 'The Wales and Liverpool striker was allegedly the victim of 'inhuman, degrading and vile' taunts by rival fans.' you think this should be part and parcel of the game?
"By the way, you don't help matters by agreeing to call yourselves "foreigners"" Actually we don't. We are Cambrogi (meaning: those of us [ancient britons] that are left) and we call our country Cymru - I'm sure you have spotted that. The "foreigner" link comes from the Saxon word Wahles. More significant is that we do not recognise england as a country, merely "stolen land" - lloegr.
I'm a "Jack Bastard" and proud of it and anyone can interprate that title anyway they like but if anyone calls me a welsh bastard then thats as racist as me calling someone an English .Black, Chinese bastard or any other RACE COLOUR or CREED
It is not so much what you say, it is how you say it. Using the same words in a totally different context can totally change the meaning of something.
Yeah, I might call your players sheep-shaggers or Welsh bastards when we play you this month. If you seriously class that as xenophobic then fine, that's me. I don't care if Cardiff fans call Leeds fans English bastards or Yorkshire bastards or Leeds bastards. Football's tribal like that. I'm descended from the Welsh (ethnically Welsh as you'd probably put it) - have a Welsh surname, the stereotypical dark Welsh hair runs in my family and I'm sure I have ancestors who came from your part of the world. But I don't give a toss. Nationality is arbitrary and means nothing. Race is a different kettle of fish entirely. There's no need to conflate the two just so you can play the victim card with 'RACIST' scrawled on it. So you don't want supporters to create a hostile atmosphere at matches? I for one do, and if a footballer seriously can't handle being called a Bradford twat or a Cardiff twat or an English twat or a Welsh twat, they need to grow up and get a thicker skin. Xenophobia is no different from geographical banter in this instance. Again, this comparison with black people is astounding. Welsh people don't have a distinctive skin colour or distinctive genetics. They're made of the same stuff that indigenous English, Scottish and German people are, pretty much. Prejudice is obviously an inconsistent and foolish way of thinking if you're being rational, but football is meant to be an escape from stifling, boring rationality and if someone wants to call Craig Bellamy a ****er for whatever reason they like, I'm not going to condemn them. The Welsh and black people cannot be equated. I don't know what the chants were. The press tend to call any football fan behaviour which isn't sanitized and family friendly "vile", so I'll view that quote with some scepticism. PGFWhite makes a good point. Language is dependent on context, and swamp has totally mangled all idea of perspective with his bizarre 'racism' analogy-thing.
put yourself in the position of a welsh player playing in england, week in week out they will have to put up with this crap. if the player in question was foreign they'd be on to the fans in an instant, but what you're saying is that he should just put up with it. its not ok to taunt someone because of their skin colour so why should nationality be excluded? and i can assure you that the taunts bellamy has to put up with go far beyond 'sheep shagger' or welsh tw*t. if you keep calling a black person the n word eventually they will become immune from being offended from it, which is what has happened with bellamy, now that doesnt mean its now become acceptable, as you seem to believe. i know racism and 'xenophobia' are different, but my point still stands, how come indian players dont have to put up with the abuse (or at least abuse they get is condemned) whilst welsh players have to take it (and people like you dismiss it as harmless banter)? whilst you might think its fine to abuse someone because of their nationality, i for one dont stoop so low and i believe it should be stamped out.
Simple questions, why is it regarded as comical by opposition fans and some radio and TV commentators/pundits when blow up plastic sheep that are tossed around the stadium, brandished at Cardiff and Swansea fans and on occasion thrown on to the pitch, and why do club stewards turn a blind eye to it? If I was to restart the abhorrent practice of waving bananas, and throwing bananas at black players (as happened frequently in the 70's) would the pundits et al find it comical? Would the club stewards turn a blind eye? I'd (rightly) find myself chucked out of the ground, and would be lucky not to end up in court. Look at some of the sectarian chants that go on in Old Firm matches, and are roundly condemned by all right thinking fans, why is it regarded as OK, even funny to suggest that a Welshman indulges in bestiality, yet terrible to suggest that a Catholic might love the Pope or whatever? The "ah I was only joking" defence doesn't work....if a chant is abusive, it's abusive.
I don't think a 'French bastard' or 'German bastard' should particularly be "onto the fans" either, whatever that means. Okay, give them the ****er sign and have a word if you want, but if it entails Cantona-style spitting or violence, then that's just stupid. Because nationality's arbitrary. Meaningless lines on a map. A fake thing in people's heads which is only manifested by the fact a series of people called governments exist and have buildings. Skin colour isn't. If we're logically following your argument, why should cities be excluded? Why should any geographical 'insult' be excluded? String up any Cardiff fan who calls someone a jack bastard! Like I say, you're conflating two seriously different things and you know full well that you are. I think it's totally acceptable for football fans to abuse opposition players. It's part of creating an atmosphere. You're ignoring the points I make and rambling on about the same old stuff. If Bellamy's been called a white **** or a caucasian ****, then fair enough, he can rightly be offended because he's being racially abused. How do you know what the exact 'insult' was anyway? It could have been any minor nonsense knowing the hype of the press. Because there are no Indian players in the UK? If they were being abused for their Indian nationality, it's just the same as a Frenchman being abused for his in my book. If he's being abused for his skin colour and racial background, that's a separate matter, as I keep saying. You can call abusing people 'stooping low', I just call it a bit of fun on a Saturday afternoon when I've had a couple of pints. If that makes me a tit then fine. Football's meant to be a place where you can be a childish tit for 90 minutes. The Boring Brigade should keep their necks out. Because the sectarian stuff contains content about people dying and about ethnic alleigances. Much heavier than a blow up sheep. Jesus Christ, I'm a Leeds fan and we get 'sheepshagger' jibes off Man U all the time. Do I care? Do I ****. It's banter based on the sheep farming heritage of the place I come from. and I don't really care about that - it's their joke and they're welcome to it.
Ninian, I've argued the point for some time. The Celts are the Brits and the the English are the foreigners. Hadrians Wall and Offa's Dyke not only kept the the Celts out of Lloeger, it prevented the dillution of the Celtic blood by the hoardes of Roman, French and Norse invaders who created the English bloodline. I love irony. But that would be taking things too seriously. Truth be told we're all a mixed bag anyway given the mobile nature of the World's population. Apart from a few remote cultures, there aren't any pure races. We're all decended from 5 pockets of humanity, so if we go back far enough most of us related. Some just deal with the fact better than others. I'm a Welsh bar steward and proud of it! And just to be ageist stop being pedantic Proph, you OLD git!
leeds 18, you make a good argument. all i am trying to say is that i dont think welsh players should have to put up with this as 'banter' because its worse than that. i still think its not acceptable to give stick based on nationality but hey, lets wait to see what happens of this in terms of an inquiry about the abuse. if you happened to watch the liverpool everton derby a week or so ago you would have seen the vile abuse bellamy had to endure when taking a corner, not to mention objects being chucked his way. totally unacceptable. now i know any liverpool player would have received this treatment but it shows how things can easily cross the line from banter and ' creating atmosphere ' to chanting stuff that would get you arrested outside the stadium. but i admit you back up your points well so good discussing the matter with you
Some people on here seem far to touchy. If an English player fouls one of ours (even if ours is English aswell), theres always chants of 'You dirty English bastard'... It's all just football banter, nothing that should be taken seriously. Lighten up.
To say this is heavy reading would be an understatement. Forced to agree with what you Cardiff fans are saying though regarding anti Welsh comments/chants etc etc. Went to Derby last season, with my 12 yr old son and got told to sit down you welsh barsteward by the stewards. When I complained to the police they just shrugged their shoulders and got told to watch the rest of the game, says it all really. If I was of Pakistani/Indian origin they would never have been allowed to get away with it. If and when the Cardiff fans insult me I couldn't care less, in fact it's to be expected but it's never racist abuse, it physically can't be ! As for the English, I couldn't care less what they think. I don't hate them they can't help it some are good some are bad and the racists are simply ****ers. A lot of it from some of these clubs, especially in the championship is because the Welsh clubs have been strong contenders for promotion over the last few seasons, as Cardiff are again this season and it's jealousy. Didnt experience racism at places like Scunny or Ipswich who had no chance of promotion but places like Forest and Leeds now that's a different story.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion but in this case I can't see how anyone can get offended by anti-Welsh chants at a football match, which rarely consist of anything other than 'sheepshaggers' anyway. Like Betty has said above, we sing enough anti-English chants plus what happens when we score?...usually a chant of "1-0 to the sheepshaggers" breaks out (or whatever the score is). Surely by calling ourselves sheepshaggers nullifies any attempt at abuse by the English?... so to be offended by something we call ourselves but happily do the same to opposition fans is just hypocritical. "He that is without sin among you, cast the first stone" (or some **** like that) Anyway, at the recent Saints game, I was close enough to their 1200+ fans to hear a decent fart and not one anti-Welsh chant came from their direction... but that didn't stop many Bluebirds from dumping in Aust. We're all guilty of the same and I'm not arguing the case of whether it's right or wrong but in my 40 years of being a Bluebird, I've never known it be any different... it's just part of match day. As for the players, the last person on this earth who would be offended by it (in football terms) has to be Bellamy? Do we stop to think about Heaton, Huds, Gez, Whitts or Taylor when we're '****ting on the English side of the bridge' etc?... hmmm, I don't think we do. The same as Leeds, Forest, or whoever, don't stop to think about any Welsh players in their team. The views expressed above are purely my own and blah blah blah
Let's not let common sense or reasonableness get in the way of a decent argument. It's been quiet enough on here over the last week or two. We need some light hearted vitreol on here to get us in the mood for the football on the weekend. Oh, and the rugby as well. Looking forward to the France game big time, though am still catching up after two early starts on the weekend to catch the two 6 am kick offs.
