When I read about the abuse of footballers today it makes me think that nothing’s changed fundamentally – it’s simply a case of social media taking over from the old voice on the terrace or the anonymous letters that players used to get. It has always been around, sadly. After all, in sport people judge you all the time. In the old days, fans would work hard all week, go into the ground smashed, slate somebody … and then go home happy. What that did to the person on the receiving end wasn’t in anybody’s mind.
I remember somebody in the crowd having a go at me once when we were losing a game at Everton and I told him to f**k off. I was forced to make an apology in the paper afterwards even though I didn’t want to. My feeling was if you’re abusive to me, why can’t I have a go back? That fan might have been frustrated but I was trying my best and the last thing I needed was some clever arse in my ear telling me I was rubbish – I was going to get that message in the dressing room anyway.
As a footballer I faced abuse to my face too. When someone told me I was s**t outside the ground one day, I said, ‘Who are you talking to?’. He replied that he was talking about another of our players, Dave Watson, so I went, ‘You can’t say that about him either’ but he just walked off.
There was another time, after I’d retired, when I was sat on a train waiting to leave London late one night and some fella knocked on the window and made a wanker sign. I was alone and he was alone. Bizarre. But certainly preferable to the death threats I got through the post many years ago. That was somebody sending handwritten notes to say they’d come round and burn my house down and kill us all. Everton never took it seriously but I did. The reaction would probably be different nowadays when players are worth 50 or 100 million quid.
All of the above means I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who gets abuse. Look at Darren Drysdale, the referee who squared up to the Ipswich player Alan Judge recently. My first question is why should players be allowed to invade a referee’s personal space and shout at him? Instead, that referee has been charged with improper conduct and has no game this weekend.
It’s even worse for black players, of course. I played in the Merseyside derby when John Barnes had a banana thrown at him and that was disgusting. I remember the monkey noises too. The Kop responded by throwing leeks at me but I was lucky – I never got abused for the colour of my skin. When you look at Gareth Southgate’s England side today, they simply wouldn’t have the team they do without black players yet the abuse goes on. I do wish there was something better than taking the knee before each game as I feel the players have done their bit now. Yes, there’s been a groundswell but real change needs to come from the top. Given some of Boris Johnson’s comments in the past, I’ve no real confidence in our government, and nor in the football authorities either. I’m still waiting, for instance, for a team to be binned from a competition for racist abuse. I also wonder why a good organisation like Show Racism the Red Card is still relying on donations and not better funded.
As for how players deal with all of this, if I were advising a footballer now I’d probably get someone else to manage their Twitter account so they wouldn’t see it because social media can be the most vicious thing in the world. People seem to see it as giving them free rein to let their feelings go. Yet most of these people aren’t so much keyboard warriors as keyboard cowards. They go home, get pissed, write something ridiculous and then change their accounts. And I know from personal experience that it’s not easy reporting people for abuse – I tried once and was told the terminology used didn’t qualify.
Ultimately, Twitter is like the Argument Clinic in Monty Python. If you say it’s a great day, somebody is bound to come on and say, ‘No it’s not’. It’s like living with Mr Angry and I do feel sorry for our young people. It’s easier for me at my age because I don’t give a s**t but we live in a judgemental society and have a problem with truth and trust. What you see on the tin isn’t necessarily inside it.
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