No one likes it and we do care

By Longsider
March 1 2004

We bring you 3 media stories today about the game at Millwall. The reports come from the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and a long feature from Burnley fan Alastair Campbell.

MILLWALL REJECT RACIST ABUSE CLAIMS
The Guardian

Defending Millwall from their detractors must often seem like trying to hold back the tide. On Saturday the chairman Theo Paphitis was again forced to go out to bat for his club, on this occasion following allegations of racism levelled at the Millwall fans by the Burnley manager Stan Ternant.
The Burnley left-back Mo Camara had been roundly booed by the home fans after an incident during the FA Cup game between these sides two weeks ago, when the Guinean clashed with Millwall's defender Matt Lawrence.

"The crowd abused Mo again, which I think is scandalous really," said Ternant. "I feel very sorry for Theo and the Millwall people because they are trying extremely hard to eradicate it and there is no place for that sort of behaviour.

"I didn't mention it in the FA Cup game because it may have seemed sour grapes but I think those people should be surrounded and locked up.

"I don't mind if they want to boo him - that's OK. The monkey chants were here in the FA Cup the same as today. That is racist in my book."

But an angry Paphitis, seated only a few yards from the Burnley manager during the game, was quick to rebut the allegations. "Burnley lost - it was a fair game and they lost 2-0. That is it, it's a game of football," he said. "But to try and mix it, because you lost, with racism is beneath contempt because it is such a serious issue.

"The police didn't see it, I didn't see it, no one else saw it, so Stan's got tremendous ears obviously. The player got booed and he'll get booed again. I'm certainly not going to criticise our crowd for that."

For Paphitis the frustration must be close to unbearable. Following the riots that marred Millwall's exit from the play-offs in 2002, the club cracked down heavily on antisocial behaviour at the New Den at great financial cost.

A membership scheme was introduced and away fans were banned from some matches - measures that saw Millwall's arrest figures fall last season. Microphones are also used in all the stands.

The club could certainly not be accused of being unprepared to combat racism or of being unaware of the issue and on Saturday there were no monkey chants audible from the press box. The booing was keen but not unusually so for an opposition player returning to the scene of his perceived crime, though members of the press present at the Cup meeting remain divided as to whether Camara was subjected to racist abuse during that game.

The police match commander in charge two weeks ago did not report any racist abuse. Nevertheless extra measures were taken in reaction to reports of racism that appeared in several newspapers.

"In view of the allegations made after the Cup tie, we had additional resources including plainclothes in all the stands," said Ken Chapman, the chief of security at the New Den. "All we have reports of [today] is persistent booing."

Camara was non-committal. "I don't care about the Millwall fans," he said. "I'm just doing my job. Maybe it's not because I am black. Maybe it is because they do not like me as a person."

Paphitis said: "We work our nuts off to deal with what we consider to be an incredibly serious issue in society - racism. We do more than any other football club. We work harder than anyone else and all we get is nonsense."

It would be a shame if the issue was allowed to overshadow a successful period for the club. A workmanlike victory here, which lifted them into fifth place, came when the impressive Paul Ifill calmly rounded the Burnley keeper Brian Jensen to open the scoring and then crossed sweetly for Peter Sweeney to slide home the second. Tranmere visit the New Den next weekend to battle for a place in the FA Cup semi-finals.

Man of the match: Andy Marshall (Millwall)


MILLWALL DENY FANS' MALICE
Daily Telegraph

Theo Paphitis, the Millwall chairman, described as "beneath contempt" allegations that his "racist" supporters had taunted Burnley's black left-back.

Stan Ternent, the Burnley manager, accused the Millwall fans of making monkey-chants at Mohammed Camara. He also suggested their booing of Camara's every touch was racially-motivated.

"The fans' abuse of Camara was absolutely scandalous," Ternent said. "The people who did this should be surrounded and locked up. Of course it is racist."

Ternent said that Camara had also been abused on the same ground a fortnight earlier, during their FA Cup fifth-round defeat.

Camara, a 28-year-old from Guinea, was not surprised by his reception on Saturday. "I was expecting that. It's always the same when you come to Millwall," he said. "I don't care about the Millwall fans. I'm just doing my job."

Camara was booked late on for dissent, a yellow card sourced in frustration.

Paphitis strongly denied any monkey-chanting. "I'm fed up with people translating boos into racist chants. The player was booed because he had history from the Cup game," he said.

Camara, it was suggested, had not endeared himself to the New Den during the knock-out fixture by rushing to bash into Millwall players and trying to stop a team-mate from being sent off.

"He would have been booed whether he was black, white or green. I'm fed up with this nonsense," said Paphitis.

All this overshadowed a scoreline that flattered the home side. Andy Marshall, their on-loan goalkeeper, was the busiest player on the field. Somehow, the only goals came from Paul Ifill and Peter Sweeney, each supplying the assist for the other.

NOBODY LIKES IT AND WE DO CARE
By Alastair Campbell



WHEN MILLWALL knocked Burnley out of the FA Cup a couple of weeks ago, Keith Pike’s report in TheGame made some play, rightly, of the unpleasant atmosphere in which the match at the New Den was played. I wasn’t convinced, however, when he said that the constant abuse by Millwall supporters of Mo Camara, Burnley’s only black player, had been racist. I thought Camara was being booed because he had been involved in the first of many unpleasant incidents on the pitch that set the pattern for a very Dennis Wise kind of game, which saw several bookings and one Burnley player sent off. Having been back to the New Den on Saturday, this time to watch my beloved Burnley in the Nationwide League first division game, I realise that Keith was right and I was wrong.
Nor, apparently, was Keith alone in his view, for I subsequently discovered that Burnley fans had complained to their club, who had, in turn, complained to Millwall. The moment Burnley’s left back touched the ball on Saturday, the booing started, accompanied by the kind of monkey-chant undercurrent that, thankfully, has disappeared from most grounds and which sounds as disgusting now as when it first began to pollute the game three decades ago.



The reaction of most of the Burnley fans, first time, was to ignore it. Some wondered aloud how the Millwall fans reconciled the abuse with the fact that their own team has several non-white players, and what those players would think about it. After a few occasions, a few of our fans began to get angry. Some began gesticulating at the Millwall fans and decrying them as “racist scum”, which seemed to please some of the racists. One or two complained angrily to stewards. But then, as the taunting of Camara went on, a minority — several of whom I had never seen at an away game before — began to hit back in kind.

Millwall have more black or mixed-race players than we do, so before long the game was peppered with loud booing every time Camara got the ball and less loud boos and a few cries of “Paki” every time any of Millwall’s non-white players touched the ball. One youth tried to get a chant going playing on the rhyme of Paki and Iraqi but, thankfully, nobody seemed interested in joining in.

It may have been that, so small in number were the Burnley fans involved, none of the Millwall players would have heard. But I doubt it and I know how sickened I felt on hearing it start, so can only imagine how they felt if they had heard it. As for Camara, he had no choice. The booing followed him down one wing for the first half, and a less voluble version followed him down the other wing for the second half. In the away end, I spotted only two black faces, not really dressed like your average fans, and I wondered if they were friends or relatives of his. And, if they were, I wondered how they felt. What I do know is that Camara was genuinely upset and it showed when the game was over.

Sadly, despite the club’s efforts, there are very few blacks or Asians who follow Burnley, home or away. The town’s racial problems, and the British National Party’s activities in the area, are well known. But the club and the police have just about managed to stamp out racism at home games and the vast majority of Burnley fans are fantastic people and fantastic supporters.

People such as David Burnley, sitting a few rows behind me on Saturday, who has changed his name to Burnley by deed poll and has missed only one game, including friendlies, in 34 years — and that a Texaco Cup match away to Newcastle United in the 1970s, rearranged without notice to take advantage of a gap in bad winter weather. People such as Nigel Blackburn (who most Burnley fans think ought to change his name), who for decades has followed Burnley home and away from his residence in Dover.

There are the Times readers who wanted to talk to me about Lance Armstrong after reading my interview with the cyclist on the coach down and the people who tapped me for sponsorship for a walk they are doing to raise money for the club. People such as David Thomas, from Leeds, who is writing a book about the club — proceeds to go towards the campaign to stave off administration, a cause I will be supporting when Sir Alex Ferguson and I speak at a fundraising dinner at Turf Moor on Friday.

So, in writing about Saturday’s shameful, tiny handful, I want to emphasise what a minority they are. These days, at home games, it is very rare that black players from opposing teams are abused and I have seen Burnley fans turn on individuals who shout racist remarks. I have confronted them myself.

On Saturday, there were just a few too many to turn on, just a couple of handfuls maybe, compared with hundreds of Millwall fans doing it, and the couple of handfuls would say they were only doing it in response to the Millwall lot.

So what do you do? For my part, I complained to a steward, as did others, and I discussed it with a police officer. The steward, like many of the stewards at the game, was Asian and if he was a regular at the New Den, I’d be surprised if he hadn’t suffered a bit of racist abuse himself. He was very pleasant but he clearly felt that if he tried to do anything, it could make matters worse. It is hard not to blame him. Stewards are regularly insulted for asking supporters to sit down and doubtless he would have let himself in for some more if he had tried to pull someone out for racist abuse.

Yet, as I told the policeman I raised the matter with, racist abuse at a sports ground is an offence. His attitude, and again it is one I can sympathise with, is that, come Saturday, they just want to get through Millwall games without too much hassle. Considering that they get crowds of about only 10,000, Millwall probably have more police on duty per supporter than any other club in the country. And those police have experienced their fair share of unpleasant violence, often directed at them.

They came into the Burnley end only once, in fairly large numbers, and took one man away. I’m not sure what for, but I’m confident it wasn’t for racist abuse. They went in among the Millwall fans once, but the taunting continued and nobody, so far as I could tell, was removed.

So as we trailed 2-0, and as I knew we were going to be held in for half an hour at the end to minimise the risk of post-match violence, I began to think about what would make a difference. And I concluded that, like so much else in public life, the answer lies in leadership. I wonder whether Wise, for example, thinks he has responsibilities that go beyond being the Millwall manager during the week and a player on Saturday. I wonder whether, as the abuse of Camara began, he noticed and whether he thought it mattered that it reflected badly on his club, or that it was morally wrong.

I don’t pose that in an accusatory way, I’m just curious. And I wonder what effect it might have had if Wise had picked up the ball, marched to the touchline, got hold of the pitchside announcer’s microphone and said “as the manager of this club, I am asking for the abuse of Burnley’s only black player to stop”.

I suspect it would have done him, his club and the game a bit of good. But we’ll never know. I wonder if Theo Paphitis, the chairman, couldn’t have done something similar. But it is hard not to be discouraged by his response to the post-match attack of Stan Ternent, the Burnley manager, on the Millwall racists. Paphitis claimed that they were picking on Camara because they didn’t like him and that they would have booed him whether he had been black, white, red or green. In the same breath, he said that Millwall do everything in their power to stamp out racism. It is hard to reconcile that first statement with the second.

I also wondered whether the referee might not have been able to do something. Referees can stop a game if crowd violence gets out of control. A serious threat to take the teams off until the racist abuse stops may be a way of getting the silent ones to speak up against those who are committing the offence.

There will be some who were there on Saturday who think I am overstating things, Paphitis among them. One Burnley fan I spoke to, as we hung around waiting to be let out at the end, said that it was not nearly as bad as ten years ago. She’s right. But it is still inexcusable. It is still a criminal offence.

If you tolerate a little racism, it won’t be long before there is a lot of it back in the game. The police and the stewards won’t stamp it out alone. The decent majority of supporters, the clubs, and the communities they operate in have responsibilities, too. And people in positions of leadership have more responsibility than most.