Jason Roberts - "Is He Right to Take a Stance?"

Kick It Out

I happen to think he is.
The ineffectual way Chelsea have dealt with John Terry over the affair with Anton Ferdinand now that he has been found guilty by the FA (Chelsea have announced that he retains the Captaincy today) and the way that Chelsea requested that the legal action should be delayed until after the Champions League suggests at the least complacency, or worst still, lip service to racism in football. This was compounded y the FA taking JT to the European Championships.
This whole fiasco will be used by the Serbs to mitigate the problems at the U21 game recently.
Let's be clear, we have moved on from Monkey chants and bananas in the UK but the job is not yet done and I applaud Jason Roberts stand if only to add impetus. Venger and Fergie were wrong to have a go in the way they did.

As a benchmark of equality in football we could could talk about the integration of gays in the game..........................................................................................................

He is right to do so in my opinion, what better way to raise awareness and force action than to emberass the campaign publically? Liverpools reaction to Suarez's ban, whether guilty or not, was disgusting. If he's mistreated there is appeal procedures and internal methods, what you don't do is start a PR campaign that reeks heavily of 'we don't care if he's racist because he scores goals'. Likewise with your example of the John Terry saga, regardless of whether e did it or not you don't delay trials until after major competitions, as that again looks like success is more important than ANYTHING else. Trials should be given ASAP when this sort of thing happens. Then there's the obvious comparison of their punishments. There may well be lots of minor differences between the trials that caused it, but it just looks like being an English racist isn't as bad as being a foreign racist. Verbal racial abuse of a player should be a fixed penalty, it's that simple.

On the other hand though, I can see the point that racism accusations are tricky to deal with. Most the time you are dealing with simply one mans word against another, which has obvious problems. The calls for Terry to be banned from playing for Chelsea or England until the trial were unfair - you couldn't rule out the possibility Anton was simply being childish and deliberately trying to ruin Terry's career. You can't punish a man until he's found guilty, it's that simple. If you start banning players who are yet to be proven guilty it can open a real can of worms. Consider this mock scenario - Wayne Rooney is top scorer in the premiership, by a mile. Manchester United sit in first place in the league, Manchester City just behind them. In the amanchester Derby, City are defeated thanks to a Rooney hat trick and fall further behind United. After the match, Yaya Toure accuses Rooney of racist abuse. Because of the FA's new no nonsense approach, Rooney is scheduled for trial in two months time and is unable to play until that time. He misses ten matches, in which United lose many points, and City overtake them and go on to win the league. You've got to raise the question, could that of been tactical? It's an extreme version of possible events but it i hope displays what I'm trying to say, a no nonsense approach to racism claims could be misused.

Basically my conclusion is a mixed one. The FA and Kickitout have dealt with racist claims very badly thus far, but some of the critisicism is unfair simply because they have to respect both parties until one is proven guilty.

Note on Rio Ferdinand - he on the other hand is an idiot. He's one of these inividials that thinks racism only counts if its towards his family, it doesn't matter what he says. Having a laugh and joke about calling Ashley Cole a 'choc-ice' and then having the balls to say the FA don't handle racism properly? Pathetic.

Red614 wrote:

Basically my conclusion is a mixed one. The FA and Kickitout have dealt with racist claims very badly thus far, but some of the critisicism is unfair simply because they have to respect both parties until one is proven guilty.

Note on Rio Ferdinand - he on the other hand is an idiot. He's one of these inividials that thinks racism only counts if its towards his family, it doesn't matter what he says. Having a laugh and joke about calling Ashley Cole a 'choc-ice' and then having the balls to say the FA don't handle racism properly? Pathetic.

I'm not sure I attach much " blame " to campaigns like "Kick it Out" or "Show Racism The Red Card"; they only have limited budgets and probably well defined remits from the FA and/or EUFA. What I object to is the way in which vested interests were put before dealing with the Suarez and Terry cases in a timely manner, creating the impression that football in this country, whilst having made significant progress, actually is at best complacent or at worst, just paying lip service to the issues of racism and equality in general - hence my initial inclusion of a reference to the status of gays in football. If Rugby League has come to terms with this issue.....................
But then the attitude from the top, FIFA, says it all - Gay fans at the World Cup in Qatar where homosexuality is illegal? Sepp Blatter's advice? "Abstain!!"

Until FIFA, EFUA and the FA address all equality issues the maybe it is just "Lip Service" and parading around in T-Shirts just isn't going to cut the mustard.

One of the problems of Social Networking and services like "Twitter" is the egalitarian nature of the beast - any half-wit has access and they have caused themselves problems by what they "Tweet". To be fair to Rio Ferdiand, he did not create the "Choc-ice" quip, but made it known he found it amusing, and in the process, undermined his personal standing on Racism issues.

However he was the player perceived to have been left at home to allow Terry to go to the Euro's; whether he deserved to go or not.

Kick It Out shouldn't be blamed. It hasn't done anything wrong. And creating a black footballers association is also wrong, this should be about saying everyone is the same, not segregating everyone by race even further

I don't think he is really. He's not helping the cause at all by doing so. By all means criticise and demand more action but breaking away and causing friction I don't think can help everyone pull in the right direction.

While I understand Ferdinand's and Roberts anger (and agree with them entirely about the farce that is the FA/UEFA and FIFA) their protests strike me as more petulant than constructive and serves to undermine the cause as a whole. We find ourselves talking about them instead of the actual and important issue.

I was disappointed by the large number of players in today's matches who didn't wear the Kick It Out shirts before the matches. I'd expected the Ferdinand's and Roberts but there was a lot more players as well as them

Arkay v2.0 wrote:I don't think he is really. He's not helping the cause at all by doing so. By all means criticise and demand more action but breaking away and causing friction I don't think can help everyone pull in the right direction.

While I understand Ferdinand's and Roberts anger (and agree with them entirely about the farce that is the FA/UEFA and FIFA) their protests strike me as more petulant than constructive and serves to undermine the cause as a whole. We find ourselves talking about them instead of the actual and important issue.

The protesters have sent a message to the FA - "Kicking racism out of football" means a lot more than getting the players to wear T-shirts and the managers to wear lapel badges. It's now emerged that the FA could have taken action against John Terry independently of any legal action. it took a sordid 12 months to deal with JT which is hardly "Kicking Racism out of Football" it's more like asking it to leave quietly by the back gate, if at all.
Action always speaks louder than words.
I do not agree that their actions have been "petulant"; if anything, they have prompted a timely debate.

Fair enough.

Ultimately though, as long as the end result is that the relevant authorities take a much harder line with fan and teams alike, then that's a result.

Richard Langley gives his view on the issue - with an insight into the Terry situation that I hadn't considered before:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20028336

I say it again - you can't punish players just because they've been accused of something. It could be a complete and utter lie manafactuers purely to damage a teams title chances.

Put it smaller scale, in the forum context. You post something I feel makes me look silly, so I go to Rhys and tell him you sent me racist messages privately to my email address. Rhys then ban you until he can investigate properly. Is that fair?

Red614 wrote:I say it again - you can't punish players just because they've been accused of something. It could be a complete and utter lie manafactuers purely to damage a teams title chances.

Put it smaller scale, in the forum context. You post something I feel makes me look silly, so I go to Rhys and tell him you sent me racist messages privately to my email address. Rhys then ban you until he can investigate properly. Is that fair?

Red614,

It is interesting how we appear to have different points of emphasis about these events. You have focused on the potential injustice to the individual if actions are take on false accusations (a genuine concern) in an environment where tougher anti-racism rules are in place, whereas I'm more concerned by the complacent, at best , attitudes of the football Industry to equality in general.
In my opinion both points have validity.
I applaud the non-T shirt wearers for provoking a much needed debate.
The talk of a "Black Footballers Association" is worrying and to be discouraged. It's up to the FA to ensure this is not necessary. However, when a Senior Official of one of the Anti-Racism in Football organisations is quoted on "Five Live Radio" as saying "My job is NOT to represent wealthy black players" one has to question what their remit actually is?

I guess I just see as these cases become more and more frequent, the chance for it to be misused becomes more and more frequent. There was a newspaper article which declared a La Liga player has accused Messi of racial abuse a while ago, that disappeared very quickly leading to the whole thing sounding like a malicious lie.

These procedures do need to be sped up, if an incident occurs it should be sorted out ASAP. Investigations should begin with the week, and end within a month, maximum. It shouldn't be delayed for any reason, be it World Cup finals or champions league. All I'm trying to say is that the investigation should be carried out as efficiently and quickly as possible, te solution is not to immediately discipline a player that in my opinion should be considered innocent until proven otherwise.

If that guilty verdict then arrives, throw the book at them. Massive fines, season long bans, permenant bans. You need to be harsh on this if its going to be sorted out.