Chelsea still struggling to shed racism from the terraces - a black fan speaks out about the club he supports - Goal.com COMMENT By Ron Shillingford As I watched on TV and heard more than 1,000 travelling Chelsea supporters sing "Anton Ferdinand, you know what you are" just days after the QPR defender had formally complained to the FA that John Terry had racially abused him, I wish I could say I was shocked. The reality is, that as a black man and Chelsea supporter of more than four decades it all seemed depressingly familiar. As a 15-year-old I attended most of Chelseaâs home matches. The fans of Stamford Bridge's famous Shed knew me as âCrombie Ronâ in reference to the smart coat I wore in the winter. Crombies used to be uniform wear for self-respecting skinheads but for me, the thick, warm coat was mainly for practical purposes on the freezing terraces. 
 The Shed dedicated a song to me: âOh Crombie Ron is colourful, Oh Crombie Ron is colourful. Heâs a coon, heâs a wog, heâs a ******. Oh Crombie Ron is colourful.â It was the early 1970s and racism on the terraces was as normal as a half-time cup of tea. I remember one day, around this time, an hour or so before kick-off, someone near me had an epileptic fit. The police moved in. One massive police officer saw little me (I'm around Lionel Messi's height) amongst a sea of white faces and deliberately pushed me roughly aside insisting I got out the way although I was not obstructing him in any way. As I glared at the copper who was waiting to see if I said or did anything in retaliation, someone shouted: âForget the ****** and get the sick man out of here.â It sparked peals of laughter. Why did I put myself through this gauntlet of abuse each week? Chelsea was the club I chose to follow and once you choose a club you don't go back. Back when I was growing up you supported your local club plus a big one. So for me it was Brentford and in west London a choice of Fulham, QPR or Chelsea. In the late sixties Chelsea, were the most appealing with players like Osgood, Harris, Cooke and Bonetti. They played with a swagger and style that appealed to me. But something changed in me that day. I never went to a Chelsea match for years after, although my work as a sports journalist meant I did cover games elsewhere. As the seventies became the eighties, those kind of racist incidents were commonplace. Black players emerging in the game were getting abuse from racist fans and nothing was being done. The âKick Racism Out of Footballâ campaign started two decades too late. The National Front had a strong presence at football matches then and Chelsea had a high quota of skinheads. The notorious Chelsea Headhunters looked at the teamsheet and if there was a black player named for the Blues, they would boycott the game. In clashes with opposing teams such as Leeds and Millwall, the ugly hooligan underbelly that exists at Stamford Bridge was revealed as violent clashes broke out. But Chelsea today are a completely different proposition, no? Owned by a Russian billionaire, managed by a Portuguese coach and featuring stars from all over the globe including black heroes such as Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and Florent Malouda. "If he is guilty then he should be severely punished â and is not fit to lead a major multicultural nation such as England." The Premier League boom and Roman Abramovich's vast investment means that Chelsea fans support the team and are located all over the globe from Los Angeles to Laos. The fact is that racism on the terraces of clubs like Chelsea hasn't been banished completely - it's just suppressed. Terry, Chelsea and England captain, faces a serious accusation of racism and from what I've seen on YouTube he has a case to answer. If he is guilty then he should be severely punished - and is not fit to lead a major multicultural football club and skipper a multicultural nation such as England. While I have appreciated the footballing effort he puts in for the club I support, it's not the first time, frankly, that his behaviour has brought shame onto the club. And for Terry to be accused of such a thing and for such a sizeable group of Chelsea fans to follow up with that blatantly racist chant at Genk last week says to me that the club - and English football - has not done enough. Considering at least a fifth of footballers in the professional game in England are black, it is also a sad reflection of the pervasive feeling that even though it is over 60 years since black people started arriving in Britain en masse, second, third and even fourth generations are still not wholly accepted by sections of white society. The last time I went to Stamford Bridge was a year ago with my 14-year-old daughter. It was a pleasant, sunny afternoon and Chelsea smacked Blackpool 4-0. The atmosphere had changed for the better. There was no overt racism but I still remembered vividly the nasty incidents from my youth. The cost rather than the atmosphere is far more prohibitive now. Following Chelsea from a distance is easier, cheaper and less hurtful it would seem. Ron Shillingford is a former sports editor of The Voice newspaper and also author of 'From Prison to the Premiership - the Jamie Lawrence story'. He has supported Chelsea since 1968. How do you stay up to date with football when on the move? With http://m.goal.com â your best source for mobile coverage of the beautiful game. iReader http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2896...struggling-to-shed-racism-from-the-terraces-a
Thats a sad story but indicative of the times we lived in,lets hope the FA get there finger out and deal with this isue.
I remember Viv Anderson getting abused when he became the first black player to play for England,couldn't believe English fans were doing it,yet alone to someone on their own team.Why didn't this guy choose the Superhoops over the scum!
I would like to sympahize but this guy chose the scum over QPR even when we were in our heyday and when their fascist reputation was already very well known throughout West London and beyond. Just what was he expecting at the Bridge? Perhaps he is a masochist as well as being moronic about his choice of club. That's not to say that he should not have the right to attend any club he likes without being racially abused - of course he should. But then I should have had the right to walk through Fulham Broadway in the 70's in my QPR scarf without bottles being lobbed at me. That didn't happen either. I just hope he got all the swagger and style he was looking for.
Things have improved, no doubt, but the Neanderthals he refers to in his article will never go away or change their ingrained views. It will take at least another generation before we really do rid the game of this poison...
Very interesting post. Let's hope Chelsea and QPR are both punished if the alleged racist chanting is proven, whether songs about Anton or the Didier Aids song
I think this thread should be renamed 'Chelsea FC still struggling to shed Hammersmith Blue from their ranks of pointless morons'
Well then maybe your moderator should not post it on the Chelsea board to provoke. He PMed me asking me not to multithread rangers and chelsea posts. I have agreed ansd stuck to my word. I requested he refrained from WUMming the Chelsea board. He has not.
Why did you edit my username to remove the capital letters, hammersmithblue? Just wondering, because I can't work out what the hell you're trying to say.....
Just goes to show how thick as **** he is, I post an interesting article for their perusal and he calls it 'wumming'! Complain to Whinger, I'm sure he'll be happy to delete it. BTW You're being a good boy, keep it up
Racism in a global game like football is as perverse as hate in love. At a time when boneheads used football to underline their proud heretage and 'superiority' as imperialists and war-winners, oblivious to the significant roles played by foreign whites and a spectrum of other races to that end, they did so fully acknowledging the grace and excellence of the Brazilians and others - and Pele, Didi, Garrincha, Eusebio, Jairzinho etc. in particular as absolute masters of the world game. Weird or what? A few years later and we saw West Hampsters as NF personified, firm-handedly abusing non-whites with all the lurid vitriol they could muster one minute - and jumping all over each other and swinging from the gantries in triumph as Clyde Best or Ade Coker blasted the Hammers in front, the next. Principles? **** that for a game of soldiers. Our coons them! And so it goes with Chelsea and Terry. Dinosaurs you'd think - until you review clips of the Anton abuse thing. Who's standing there alongside them? Privately educated Frank Lampard. Mr Clean himself... the thinking man's modern footballer. Not a peep it would seem despite Terry's subsequent lies. And what about Chelsea's black stars - and their take on their skipper's racist agenda and embarrassing denial? Water off a duck's back probably. He's probably black-****ed them all off in training at one time or another. They tolerate his hypocrisy - and anyway, the majority are Frenchies where isms and skisms are regarded as rather cute, little more than a cultural kink. So what are the FA likely to do in the event of a guilty finding? Equal ops course at the EHR Commission? If it were down to me though, I'd go for something guaranteed to score enduring change: a year as kit shifter with the the Kaiser Chiefs, Reggae Bwoys or coaching a Chicago projects team should do the trick!
Very good that Brixton. I suspect they are going to say there is not enough hard evidence, and drop charges. But if they don't bottle it and come up with a guilty verdict, I agree wwith your proposals. But as Terry just possibly has 2 years left in his mouth and arms, not so sure about his legs, add a ban from all football and make it 2 years. Maybe then he and a few others would take notice.
Case for Action On Hearing Loss (formerly RNID) Oz. Ample supply of competent lip readers in that organisation for anyone who needs proof of what Terry said...
Still struggling with the claim that anyone wore a crombie up the Shed in the Seventies just to keep warm...
What did he expect? Chelsea are who they are. Right wing from wandsworth. I grew up in Harrow. All the jewish / cypriot / arabic etc supported Spurs, the indian kids did not support football, the hard white kids who hated the diversity supported chelsea, sunderland and leeds, a mixed bag of random people and and couple of teachers supported QPR and the rest had discovered girls or dungeons and dragons. Random posh kids supported Arsenal. I had never met anyone who supported WHU / Milwall or Palace. Chelsea fans used to walk around with swastikas, seig heil all the time, make monkey noises and pick on the indian kids. This was 1976. I saw a black kid get a coffee poured over his head and then a cigarette stubbed out on his head at a match where the police would not believe I was a QPR fan (mental block on the goal keepers name) and I had to stand in the shed. They were always scum. Are the other players at chelsea are used to it? 'Calm dowm mate - only having a laugh - call me a white C**t and I won't care' Why is this such big news with everything else going on in the world - who benefits from stirring all this up?
