In 1998, Manchester City player Justin Fashanu was found hanged after receiving a torrent of homophobic abuse. Then, in 2004, legendary football pundit and commentator Ron Atkinson caused a considerable amount of controversy when he referred to black player Marcel Desailly as a 'lazy n****r'.
In that same year, live game commentary had to be shut off momentarily when Spanish fans began a racist chant aimed at the English players, and then there's the likes of Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney and David Beckham - all are infamous for their away-game antics, so to speak.
As if all that hadn't cast enough aspersions on the so-called 'beautiful game', consider the case of Kevin McNaughton, the latest in a long line of barbaric 'professionals' and the man who shouldered female linesman Sian Massey to the ground without so much as an apology.
Sian Massey was recently embroiled in a sexism row that resulted in both Andy Gray and Richard Keys losing their jobs at Sky Sports News, after it emerged that they had made some rather derogatory comments on the oft-precarious relationship between women and football.
The whole debacle sparked furious debate in Britain. Were they being sexist? Or was it simple, blokey pub-talk? After all, their microphones were turned off and they didn't know they were being filmed.
Despite the all-too-predictable right-wing fervor that this was all 'political correctness gone mad', they were being sexist - whether their comments were intentionally pernicious or not - and Sky executives gave them the red card almost instantly. Good riddance!
Yet with all that behind her, it came as a huge surprise to see her name in the media a second time, and at the center of a second sexism row. On Monday, Kevin McNaughton - the 28-year-old Cardiff City defender - violently knocked Massey to the ground with such force that her head snapped back before she was sent sprawling on her hands and knees.
Youtube footage clearly shows McNaughton chasing after the ball, and then deliberately steering himself around another player and in to the path of the oblivious assistant referee. After knocking her to the ground, he simply runs off in the opposite direction without offering to help her up or apologizing for the collision. This has understandably enraged thousands of football fans all over the UK, and many are now calling for an FA investigation in to the incident.
His agent, however, has hit out at claims that this was a deliberate act of sexist violence, calling those who questioned McNaughton 'crazy' and 'unfair'. According to John Viola, it is 'complete nonsense' to suggest that the incident - more like a rugby tackle than anything seen in football - was deliberate.
He has even gone as far as to blame Sian Massey herself, saying that she was 'probably just in the way.' How typical. He finished by stating that McNaughton has nothing to apologize for, and that he will not be contacting Massey privately to resolve any differences. 'He's a good footballer, and is solely focused on the game.' So freakishly focused, it seems, that all manners and decency appear to have evaporated from his tiny little head.
Judging by the current state of football, this reaction isn't even remotely surprising. A few weeks ago, Wayne Rooney was given a poultry two-match ban after shouting numerous obscenities in to a camera in front of a live family audience, and even that punishment was doled out reluctantly by the FA. It's almost as if they're scared of the players - more akin to overgrown and overindulged toddlers than actual men - and want to avoid any accusations of having taken 'political correctness' too far. And we all know how that goes down in Britain.
According to the far-right media, such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, political correctness is a tyrannical leftist concoction designed to restrict freedom of speech and thought. Fortunately for the those of us living in the real world, the far-right is always blithely unaware of the stinging irony in it's own vile diatribe.
The fact is, political correctness is about as prevalent as McNaughton's 'accidental' shoulder tackle. It doesn't exist. It's a right-wing term used to bemoan the fact that they can no longer shoulder women to ground without so much as an apology.
Indeed, there exists this sense of thoroughly British entitlement to be able to be as downright rude and bigoted as we bloody well please, in public as well as in private, and if anyone speaks up about it, it's comparable to sheer lunacy. Richard Littlejohn, our regular BNP posterboy, published a reaction to the Sky Sports sexism row that was all too predictable: 'Sexism? You couldn't make it up!' Sadly, he often does.
Consequently, we have this vivid image of Englishman as hooligan, the lager-fueled, flag-waving, johnny-foreigner-hating lout that seems to appear red-faced and shirtless at almost every game, intent solely on causing trouble. And the more bigoted and off-colour the trouble, the better.
And now we're faced with the Sian Massey incident. Having viewed the footage and read Viola's deplorable reaction, I'm pretty convinced that it was a deliberate revenge attack, designed to put the 'little woman' in her place and to avenge the sacking of two 'legendary' male pundits.
The video, available on youtube, shows how he dodges another player and, instead of stopping, veers left, drops his shoulder, and collides with Massey. The fact that he then saw it fit to waltz off as if nothing had happened highlights even more glaringly just how deliberate and premeditated this act of sexist violence was.
Indeed, if there's anything more disturbing than the attack itself - and it must be seen as such - it's the mass reaction from the stands. When Massey hit the ground and McNaughton sauntered off, the fans cheered. But Massey, in a perfect display of poise and professionalism, got straight back up and awarded a goal kick.
Someone should have reminded her that this is football. She could have won a great deal more sympathy had she rolled around on the grass in the fetal position, clutching her ankle and sobbing like a spoiled toddler, like most of the men!
No comments:
Post a Comment