It is a thin line though. I worked at a company who hired a whole bunch of Brits and Irish

and had great success (I was one of that initial group and it was a great bunch of lads and lasses). The following year they went and got some more developers from Britain and Ireland.

Turns out most of these guys had heard stories of our parties (it was IT in the 90s. Work hard play hard) and sadly only wanted the play hard bit. We had shocking behaviour. Being drunk at work, not showing up, stealing from the company bar, even a sexual assault in the company canteen on a Friday evening and another alleged one on a company weekwnd offsite. It put the entire company off and they would avoid British and Irish employees for years and those of us still ther, regardless of our previous behaviour, were suddenly tarnished with the same brush. Bad experiences with one group prejudiced them against anybody from that part of the world. In the end I left after four years because of it.

Mind you, they weren’t stupid enough to actually voice that policy but it was quite clear.

It’s thoroughly wrong but on a certain level I can understand it. He’s talking about African players, not black players. They had some bad experiences and they clearly also underestimated the culture gap and did nothing to address it. There’s also a certain ignorance of course - not only are people very different and part of scouting is to research every player’s personality, work ethic and influence on the team. And Africa is a continent although I’d stay away from that as it’s no better to label everybody from, say, Ghana (to randomly pick an African country).

Posted By: Steve in Holland, Feb 1, 11:45:54