HAWAY ALL THE LADS

When I was about nine years old I heard someone behind me in the Roker End shout ‘go on midnight, kick the black bastard’. And when Gary Bennett obliged, the fan behind me cheered on his hero. It was the moment I realised how mad racism was.

If they’re yours, they are heroes, irrespective of the colour of their skin, where they came from, who they used to play for. If they’re the opposition, they’re fair game – fat, thin, black, white. The worst is when they are usually your hero and something has gone wrong. Then, some fans turn in a heartbeat based on no more than skin colour.

Of course, back then, Benno had to suffer the racist names we gave him. We didn’t know we were wrong and we learned, some of us. But it seems we haven’t learned as much as we should have.

Racism has no place in football, in society, in life. The fact we are still having to talk about this is a tragedy. The fact our team has so many role models for ourselves and our children who have various skin tones and come from all over the world should be the biggest clue that where we come from and how we look just doesn’t matter. And yet, here we are again.

I suspect the man who stood behind me that day wouldn’t consider himself racist. It was probably banter. A laugh. Not meant. I also suspect he would never have said it to the player’s face. Even then there was a safety in being racist anonymously, in a crowd, and we now live in a world where that safety is equally found behind a keyboard. By cowards.

Romaine Mundle had a shocker against Fulham. I suspect he’d be the first to admit it. But getting on his back in any way isn’t going to make him better. Isn’t going to make him think ‘these are the people who’ll pick me up when I’m playing badly and will celebrate together when I play well’. And what message does it send to the other players in the team? Not just the black players, what about the Frenchmen, the Swiss, the Dutch players? The bond between our players is clear to see. If we get at one of them, we get at them all. It’s madness. And that’s ignoring the biggest fact of all that he’s a human being who literally and metaphorically bleeds red and white – just like you.

We all get frustrated, we all hoped to beat Fulham, we all hoped this injury crisis wouldn’t come but it has and this is where we need to step up and support the lads more than ever. Not getting on their backs during games and certainly not attacking them for any reason on social media, least of all something as ridiculous as the colour of their skin.

Haway the lads, whoever they are.