Last night I witnessed a fine example of bigotry right in front of my eyes.
Dressed in a Norwich City shirt one of our own spent the whole game shouting "You Welsh prick," "Sheep shagger" and "Fuck off back to Wales" at Gareth Bale. Was it funny? To him, shouting the same thing all game was fine, to others hearing him repeat it again and again got annoying, and to others, once was too much.The steward sat a yard away from him however spent the whole game laughing along with him.
Quite apart from the fact that we have a Welshman in our own side, there was a Welshman sitting right behind him too and he didn't find it very funny at all.
I don't believe it is until we have a zero or at least a lower tolerance policy on abuse of this sort that we can stamp out full blown racism. It is up to you whether calling someone either a f**king Welsh c**t, a f**king fat c**t, a f**king poof, a f**king black c**t or whatever is acceptable or not but I don't think the gap between what Anton Ferdinand said to John Terry and what he said back should be so great.
To me, Anton Ferdinand lost a huge chunk of any moral high ground for all the abuse he was giving Terry. Why are people who so routinely abuse each other for all sorts of reasons able to take such great offence when the colour of one's skin is mentioned?
I'm not saying racism is acceptble, on the contrary in fact, I just think a lot of other forms of abuse are unacceptable too and taking a tougher stance on them would help stamp racism out too.
I don'think you'd ever have heard Ron Ashman or those of his ilk calling a fellow professional by the sort of terms Ferndinand and Terry are used to using.
And I doubt you'd have heard the sort of insults that fan was using last night at Carrow Road back in those days.
Posted By: Chalk Hill Bitter, Nov 1, 12:23:10
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