http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19636473# Morning all No real surprise in this article but I've been shocked and angered by the amount of racist abuse heard at grounds recently. I even encountered it on Saturday at the cricket from some Warwickshire fans towards Kabir Ali. I complained and they were escorted out. Question is do we all do enough when we hear these types of comments? How many of us just laugh it off or ignore it instead of taking appropriate action? We should all be working together to stamp this out! Views
I can genuinely say I have never heard any racism whilst at the football (either St. mary's or sincil bank) its not to say it doesnt happen though. If i did hear it? Hmmm, tough one. I'm more likely to say something to the person saying it then to grass them up to the stewards i think. I think there will always be racism, but i think the English game is doing all it can about it
Garth Crooks and Theresa Coffey were on telly earlier making the point that it's not really about abuse shouted from terrace to pitch, which happily appears to be mostly history. I haven't read the report yet but it seems to be more about issues such as low participation from some ethnic groups (eg asian), the lack of ethnic minorities in coaching/management (both professional game and grassroots), and other things such as the FA reporting system and the effectiveness of education programmes. BTW the report is here - http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmcumeds/89/8902.htm
The report pisses me off a bit going on about how there's only one black manager in the Prem. Umm maybe because the rest are ****?, I remember people calling football is racist because Barnes wasn't a manager.
I see both Mikel and Defoe gota lot of abuse from the Italian fans this week. Seems to be a much bigger problem in Europe!
Where are the black referrees? I only remember Uriah Rennie and he was bollocks. There is however much more black English players than is representative of black English people! Racism is negligable here compared to Spain/ Italy/ everywhere else!
Referees are a race apart anyway. I know that people worry about a Ref moving in next door and lowering property prices but, well, ...they do have a terrific natural sense of rhythm! On the serious point, I have not heard racist comment at St Mary's in the last ten years that I have been a regular attendee. I would hope that anyone doing so would get a robust reaction from those around them.
Channon I'm glad to hear that Part of the reason for starting this thread was that I recalled someone posting that they had heard racist remarks at the Emirates. There is just no room for it!
Well wherever you go in the world, you're going to hear racist remarks every so often. I don't think it's a common enough occurrence to say that it's a problem with football. The amount of racism in football is probably proportionate to the amount of racism in the country as a whole, which isn't a lot compared to other places.
Isn't the problem more subtle than this? Shouting out "You black bar steward" is not heard now, it is true. But I know I'm not the only Saints fan who worries that criticism of black players may be driven by more covert racism. It is also surely true that the absence of asian players and ethnic minority referees and managers could be the result of systemicl racism. A black colleague of mine once told me that he and I were inevitably racist as we were both products of a racist society. Not sure I totally go with this, but it's a point to ponder. Thought for the Day, fellow Saints!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20003368# Bumped. What do people think about some players refusing to take part in tomorrows day of action. Should they all wear the shirts? Is it time for more dramatic action?
I'm getting pretty tired of all this talk of racism. No-one would be talking about it unless two players who aren't racist made somewhat racist remarks under dubious circumstances. There is no problem with racism at the top levels of English football. There's problems elsewhere in Europe sure, but as soon as I start seeing English fans throwing bananas on the pitch every game and making monkey chants, then I will start getting all up-in-arms about it and tolerate seeing a new news story about it every day, but at the moment, couldn't give a **** to be quite frank. It's gotten to the point where most people that are complaining and campaigning about racism in English football are only looking to serve themselves rather than actually trying to stamp out racism. Might have worded that a bit strongly but am just getting bored of some of this nonsense. Despite all that, don't really understand why Roberts is protesting against Kick it Out, complaining about them not doing enough with the Terry case... They're not the FA, they're not the Crown Court, they have no grounds to be able to make any sanctions against Terry, don't know what he expected them to do. All he's doing is boycotting a legitimate cause to complain about something they had no control over. Bit of a muppet.
I can sympathise with Jason Roberts' stance. He's as fed up with racism around football as anybody else, and he obviously doesn't believe the present campaign does enough, quickly enough. But big things tend to be slow in reacting, and I think it would probably better serve the cause if he did wear the shirt, but voiced his discontent with the progress that is being made, as a whole.
As Arsene Wenger said, racism will never be totally eradicated, so we're always going to be fighting it. There may not be as much racism here as there is in other countries, but it still happens from time to time, and one racist person is one too many racist people. You still see it on the pitch from time to time, you hear it in the stands, and occasionally you can even read it on this forum.
I appreciate your point of view Mikey. I genuinely don't believe there is an issue in this country. Yes, there are one or two pillocks who'll rear their heads from time to time but that's an inevitability I suppose. However, I don't agree with your view on Roberts' stand. It's about time the tail wagged the dog in my opinion as those running the game worldwide are so out of touch that farcical situations arise. John T***y was found guilty of using racially abusive language. He gets a four match ban. Joey Barton throws a powder puff punch at someone and is to all intents and purposes, exiled. I don't care what you think of either of these two people, the message is simply wrong. In fact, wrong isn't even strong enough - it's ludicrous. Purely because I can't be arsed writing it all out again, here's a FB rant I had the other day: I don't usually go in for all this "like if you think...." stuff, but I just thought I'd share this with you because it's important. Not just moderately important or quite important. It's hugely important because it's an indictment on all of us. Football is our global game. It's something that matters to people in just about every country on the planet. It's popularity is such that certain games reach worldwide audiences of over a billion. I know of nothing else with that kind of pull over such an enormous swathe of humanity. Yet we somehow allow the game to be run by a dinosaur who is so very concerned with keeping his omnipotent little snout in the cash trough that is FIFA, that all sight of what makes football so great just passes him by. One could go so far as to say that under his stewardship, FIFA has completely lost touch with what football means to people across the globe. One could say that, and one would be absolutely right and here's why. We don't tolerate racism anymore Mr Blatter. None. Nadda. Zero. Apparently, neither do FIFA. Their own articles state: âDiscrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group of people on account of ethnic origin, gender, language, religion, politics or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.â So let's just pick a few examples of where racism has been proven and see if that tough talk is delivered upon. Why were Croatia fined just £65,000 for their fans abusing Balotelli during EURO2012 instead of being kicked out of the tournament, especially when you consider that in the same tournament, Nicklas Bendtner was fined more personally for displaying sponsorship on his underwear? A first offence? No. They were fined £14,000 in 2008 when Heskey was abused in Zagreb. A second offence? No, They were fined £10,000 during EURO2008 for abuse aimed at Turkish players. Porto were fined £16,000 earlier this year for abuse aimed at Man City players. Going back a little further, in 2007 Serbia were fined £16,000 for racist chants in an under 21 fixture against England, again in a high profile tournament. These were so bad that the public address system was used during the match to tell "fans" to stop. Sadly, there are countless more. So what message does this send out Mr Blatter, bearing in mind that ALL football federations including UEFA take their lead from you? Please allow me to elaborate; it's the wrong one. And the result of your complete inability to deal with a huge social issue by setting and maintaining standards? Well, witness what happened to Danny Rose in Serbia last night, hang your head in shame and get the hell out of OUR sport. Please share if you think it's time we put an end to this.
I'm not saying there's absolutely no racism and that nothing needs to be done, there will always be idiots out there who will judge and insult others for any pathetic reasons including their ethnicity, and there needs to be continuing work done to make sure that racism continues to be stamped out as much as possible. BUT, at this time in English football, racism is not at a level where there needs to be a top news story about it every day, with some random ex-footballer or some such saying how two isolated incidents have 'highlighted' the issue of racism and that more needs to be done blah blah, and then mention that they have a new auto-biography coming out next week or they're doing some after-dinner talk at some retirement home in Rotherham. There is still work to be done in destroying racism of any form throughout our society, but it doesn't need to be front page news with the same stories every other day. I'm not against the actual work that is being done to combat racism, or legitimate issues that have arised, i.e. Serbia, I'm more just getting bored of constant news stories about ridiculous non-issues and the incredibly drawn out sagas of the Suarez and Terry affairs. Yes, Suarez used some words which were understandably mistakenly construed as racist by Evra due to cultural differences (to me the way Suarez and Liverpool handled the whole case was more offensive than what actually happened). And yes John Terry may have in the heat of the moment used a racist term, or said something mistaken for it and then repeated it whilst trying to clear the confusion, and then apologised, cleared up the situation and shook hands after the game, only to have a youtube clip spark months of criminal and FA hearings only for a small fine and slap on the wrists. But were those two issues worthy of huge media followings and people acting like all of the sudden we're in the 70s again and racism is a huge issue at the forefront of society? No they bloody weren't. I entirely agree that the way FA handled Terry's case and punishment was ludicrous, and that UEFA and FIFA are pathetic in their non-action over clear wide-spread issues of Racism in some other countries. But what good is there in boycotting Kick it Out? A perfectly innocent organisation that has no control or involvement in either of those issues. I'm completely behind him making a stand against the FA or UEFA, but all he's doing at the moment is undermining a charity that has done nothing wrong, and smearing them in national news on the eve of their biggest week of action. I just don't see what good he's doing.
George Best is the best I have seen (not live) , his control of a ball (on crap pitches) still today has not been beaten .
