Anton Ferdinand Article

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

there's more than one kind of bigot

[Tactical Genius]

there's more than one kind of bigot

Agreed.

most of the black players at the time were at second tier clubs with smaller budgets who couldn't afford or attract white players with a similar skillset.

Fashanu from Norwich to Forest, Crooks from Stoke to Spurs and Moses from West Brom to Man U were the first big signings from memory. The latter two were way less than Fashanu.

I am refering to anti-black bigotry, not any other kind.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Stuart Pearce as a racist surprises nobody on here then.

[Jah Womble]

Watched the BBC doc yesterday.

Given the footage available and the plainly nonsensical defence from Terry, the court judgement was simply baffling - and for once the FA showed itself to have done some good by refusing to accept it. (However, his club - concerned only with its own interests - failing to make any kind of gesture or statement to support the ongoing campaign probably wouldn't have surprised anyone. But I've been called out on here for making that comment before.)

Victim-blaming a go-go, as I'd anticipated. One merely ended up with a feeling of hopelessness about the whole issue.

[johnr]

I watched it last night too. The decision wasn't baffling in the legal sense - from the readout, it seemed that the Magistrate just couldn't pin it on Terry 100%, so couldn't convict - and I was very glad that the FA followed up as it did. For shame to anybody that employed the racist fucker after that though.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Watched the BBC doc yesterday.

Given the footage available and the plainly nonsensical defence from Terry, the court judgement was simply baffling - and for once the FA showed itself to have done some good by refusing to accept it. (However, his club - concerned only with its own interests - failing to make any kind of gesture or statement to support the ongoing campaign probably wouldn't have surprised anyone. But I've been called out on here for making that comment before.)

Victim-blaming a go-go, as I'd anticipated. One merely ended up with a feeling of hopelessness about the whole issue.

Terry was able to hide in the hole in the footage, by claiming that his words "I never called you" were occluded by someone's head. And scramble through the reasonable doubt gap miraculously left open even though ferdinand testified that no prior exchange took place. Though if the magistrate is going to be this trusting, they must have a zero percent guilty rate.

The fa on the other hand took one look at his defence and gave him and gave him a 4 match ban for his defence because you can't make reference to skin colour on the pitch, even in "reported speech", unless you are making a complaint to an official. In the same way that even if the fa had completely believed luis suarez's incredible defence, he would have been banned for four games.

[Jah Womble]

I believe that the FA could - and should - have done way more, but they at least for once showed fortitude in (to some extent) circumventing both the court judgement and the ongoing public defence of Terry. (Suarez, given his culture/background, was almost certainly 'less guilty', but was given a stiffer and more appropriate punishment.)

I was sure I'd read somewhere that Terry tried to claim that he'd called Ferdinand a 'blind c***' but this wasn't mentioned in the programme.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

They could have, but it would have dragged everything out even further. The ban came the guts of a year after the event. They did the bare minimum. You get a four game ban for saying "I never called you a black cunt." and that's what he got. He couldn't avoid that punishment and they couldn't avoid giving it to him, without completely collapsing their own system for combatting on pitch racism.

Suarez's case was very different. He was accused of saying a series of things, mounted an incredible defence, and when that collapsed under its own implausibility, all the accusations were left standing, and they threw in another incidence for his defence which was that he made reference to skin colour but in a friendly way, to a black man, while pinching his skin. I don't understand what suarez's culture or background has to do with it, what he said was pretty awful, and there was quite a bit of it.

[Tony C]

I watched it last night too. The decision wasn't baffling in the legal sense - from the readout, it seemed that the Magistrate just couldn't pin it on Terry 100%, so couldn't convict - and I was very glad that the FA followed up as it did. For shame to anybody that employed the racist fucker after that though.

As I understood it the magistrate actually could 100% pin it on Terry that he had said the words to Ferdinand but was prepared to give Terry latitude in terms of the context in which the words were said - namely Terry repeating back to Ferdinand what he thought he had been accused of saying.

That's a huge benefit of the doubt call in Terry's favour - huge beyond credibility in the opinion of most people.

[Jah Womble]

^Yep, that was pretty much my reaction to it.

They could have, but it would have dragged everything out even further. The ban came the guts of a year after the event. They did the bare minimum. You get a four game ban for saying "I never called you a black cunt." and that's what he got. He couldn't avoid that punishment and they couldn't avoid giving it to him, without completely collapsing their own system for combatting on pitch racism.

Suarez's case was very different. He was accused of saying a series of things, mounted an incredible defence, and when that collapsed under its own implausibility, all the accusations were left standing, and they threw in another incidence for his defence which was that he made reference to skin colour but in a friendly way, to a black man, while pinching his skin. I don't understand what suarez's culture or background has to do with it, what he said was pretty awful, and there was quite a bit of it.

Oh, Suarez's culture isn't an excuse - he said these things on a playing field in Lancashire and was rightly punished - but (as we've also seen in far milder terms with Cavani this very week) certain expressions have different connotations in South America. I don't like it and it absolutely cannot be said here, but it's not my decision as to what's deemed less offensive or even acceptable elsewhere. All players should be advised of such when they play here.

However, his defence can and did offer that up as the tiniest shred of a mitigating reason (which one cannot under any circumstances apply the same to Terry, regardless of what people might try and claim). With Suarez, if he wasn't, he should have been advised to pursue damage limitation: the fact that he and those about him continued not to do so exacerbated the situation and his club's pathetic response helped nobody, least of all the player himself.

[EIM]

Terry and Suarez were basically found guilty of the same thing, but Suarez was treated more harshly because he's foreign, and even in dealing with racism we manage to be racist. There's nothing this country likes more than pointing a finger abroad while ignoring what goes on here.

[EIM]

Incidentally, what Suarez said only had one interpretation. He claimed he'd said something else, but this was contradicted by teammates. What he said to Evra was as unacceptable in Montevideo or Amsterdam as it was here.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Terry and Suarez were basically found guilty of the same thing, but Suarez was treated more harshly because he's foreign, and even in dealing with racism we manage to be racist. There's nothing this country likes more than pointing a finger abroad while ignoring what goes on here.

Suarez was treated more harshly because he was found guilty of eight counts of the same offence as John Terry. And er, he conducted his own defence, which was.....unwise.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Incidentally, what Suarez said only had one interpretation. He claimed he'd said something else, but this was contradicted by teammates. What he said to Evra was as unacceptable in Montevideo or Amsterdam as it was here.

Just to keep it straight, suarez got his teammates to change their stories, to the effect that two people misunderstood him in the exact same way in Spanish and in Dutch. It did kind of look to the tribunal that suarez was changing his story to fit the video, and getting the others to go along with him. They effectively said as much in the judgement.

Also cavani is an eejit for using that word on social media and is going to get banned for it. But suarez didn't claim that he said "negrito", that was a story that found its way into the uk press before the case was heard. Someone had to sit down and make that up.

[Foot of Astaire's]

As I understood it the magistrate actually could 100% pin it on Terry that he had said the words to Ferdinand but was prepared to give Terry latitude in terms of the context in which the words were said - namely Terry repeating back to Ferdinand what he thought he had been accused of saying.

That's a huge benefit of the doubt call in Terry's favour - huge beyond credibility in the opinion of most people.

It is but since no one heard it at the time, the magistrate only had the footage and Terry's weak explanation to go off.

Does Terry have previous for this kind of thing? He was presumably reacting to Ferdinand's "Go home and shag your teenage wife!" (What's all that about, by the way?) and didn't just overstep the mark but rather leapt several miles beyond it. An appalling remark and clearly a racist one. He's always come across as a risible individual but does this one incident mean he should forever be viewed as a racist?

I'm not defending him by the way, just throwing it out there. He obviously wanted to hurt Ferdinand and get back at him. Did his racist mask slip in the red mist?

[DCI Harry Batt]

What he said to Evra was as unacceptable in Montevideo or Amsterdam as it was here.

Something's being acceptable in Montevideo or Amsterdam is not any kind of proof that it isn't racist, of course. There are racists freely wandering those streets as well.

[DCI Harry Batt]

does this one incident mean he should forever be viewed as a racist?

It means he's racist, having been actively racist, yeah.

[Nocturnal Submission]

He was presumably reacting to Ferdinand's "Go home and shag your teenage wife!" (What's all that about, by the way?)

I think it was "teammate's wife," or Wayne Bridge's ex-girlfriend to be more accurate.

[Jah Womble]

He was presumably reacting to Ferdinand's "Go home and shag your teenage wife!" (What's all that about, by the way?)

To be accurate, it was (approximately, and as NS suggests) 'you're a c***, you shagged your teammate's wife', according to Anton Ferdinand himself. Which obviously was a reference to Terry's high-profile dalliance with Wayne Bridge's partner.

[NHH]

For which there is no evidence that it ever happened.

[diggedy derek]

NHH, thanks for that, that's a fascinating read.

[Eggchaser]

On the South American front, Argentina rugby's captain has lost the gig and he and two other players have been suspended due to 2011/2013 Tweets containing racist abuse (the words blacks and negros). They have at least owned it and apologised for being twunts unlike Captain, Leader, Legend, who is an appalling human being and has been dogged by controversy of his own making his entire professional life.

Not that they shouldn't get the book thrown at them.

[nmrfox]

On the South American front, Argentina rugby's captain has lost the gig and he and two other players have been suspended due to 2011/2013 Tweets containing racist abuse (the words blacks and negros). They have at least owned it and apologised for being twunts unlike Captain, Leader, Legend, who is an appalling human being and has been dogged by controversy of his own making his entire professional life.

Not that they shouldn't get the book thrown at them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/55173053 and has regained the gig.

[nmrfox]

The Anton Ferdinand documentary was aired on Monday evening. There was, rightly, a lot of previews and mention prior to it being shown. So you'd imagine that everyone in footy-world would be pretty much aware of this and would certainly be aware of its context and subject matter and the names of those primarily involved. So, the following night on Sky Soccer Special, the pundits were nearly soiling themselves with delight that Terry was amongst the favourites for the Derby job, and discussed his merits at length, but not at one point did anyone think to mention, "hang on, that documentary thing that was on last night might be a bit of a spanner in the works for good old JT".

[Eggchaser]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/55173053 and has regained the gig.

I love my sport but they make it hard sometimes.