The John Terry affair has been a horrid episode indeed, but after the draconian or, as some would have it, insufficiently punitive FA tribunal decision, paradox and ambiguity surely remain unresolved. I believe strongly what I’ve always done — that the case should never have gone to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court at all.
It did so, may I remind you, because some off-duty police officer was sitting at home watching QPR play Chelsea on television when, as a self-proclaimed lip-reader, he saw Terry emit the damning racist obscenities which caused the criminal proceedings. Once the Metropolitan Police have received such a complaint, they are supposedly obliged to act on it with the exclusion of any other body.
So we came to the expensive fiasco of the Westminster trial, which rolled on for days to the huge profit of the two fat cat QCs who appeared for either side. The ultimate irony surely being that Terry, now fined £220,000 by the FA tribunal, would — had he been found guilty — been fined a mere £2,500. Since even the large fine imposed on him by the FA remains easily within his compass, such a drop in the ocean would have been parodic and starkly showed up the irrelevance of the court trial.
Had the FA been allowed to handle the case in the first instance, as they sensibly should have done — it doesn’t need Dickens to tell us that the law in an ass — everything could have been done and dusted long ago. An FA commission may decide a case on the basis of probability rather that proof. This indeed they did.
Comparisons, odious as ever, have been made with the recent Luis Suarez case, when the word “negrito” was aimed more than once by Liverpool’s Uruguayan attacker at the Manchester United defender Patrice Evra. Suarez’s fine was substantially smaller than Terry’s, reportedly because he earns far less money, but his eight-match suspension, allegedly again because the insult was repeated, was twice what has been imposed on Terry.
Terry is an excellent defender whose retirement from international football is a huge blow to England and my old friend Roy Hodgson may surely be forgiven for wanting to keep him on board. But, beyond doubt, he is no moral example for all his playing qualities; the word that alas springs to mind is recidivist.
But that doesn’t explain or excuse the abrupt decision of the top man at the FA, David Bernstein, to take away the England captaincy from Terry as soon as the racist charge was made — it being a constant of English law that a man is innocent until proved guilty. Fabio Capello, who had his own troubles and problems with Terry in the past, not least Terry’s attempt to initiate a kind of mutiny against Capello’s training methods in South Africa, resigned in justifiable protest.
Terry deplorably had himself sent off playing for Chelsea in Barcelona in the European Cup last season for kicking an opponent. He has tried to make money out of showing fans around the Cobham training quarters. He was one of the Chelsea players who in a Heathrow bar mocked American passengers after the carnage of 9/11. But his authority and prowess on the field are undoubted.
And surely we and the FA should see his case in perspective. For though British football was long blemished with appalling racism, not only among the crowds but among the players, too, huge strides towards decency have since been made. By comparison with many another country — Ukraine, Spain, Italy, you name them — English fooball is largely free of the racist disease.
News that Oleg Blokhin will be leaving the managership of Ukraine to move to club football reminds one of his shocking outbursts against black players. While Lazio fans recently at Spurs jeered two black Tottenham players — Lazio will be punished, but their numerous neo-Fascist fans will be unrepentant.
It did so, may I remind you, because some off-duty police officer was sitting at home watching QPR play Chelsea on television when, as a self-proclaimed lip-reader, he saw Terry emit the damning racist obscenities which caused the criminal proceedings. Once the Metropolitan Police have received such a complaint, they are supposedly obliged to act on it with the exclusion of any other body.
So we came to the expensive fiasco of the Westminster trial, which rolled on for days to the huge profit of the two fat cat QCs who appeared for either side. The ultimate irony surely being that Terry, now fined £220,000 by the FA tribunal, would — had he been found guilty — been fined a mere £2,500. Since even the large fine imposed on him by the FA remains easily within his compass, such a drop in the ocean would have been parodic and starkly showed up the irrelevance of the court trial.
Had the FA been allowed to handle the case in the first instance, as they sensibly should have done — it doesn’t need Dickens to tell us that the law in an ass — everything could have been done and dusted long ago. An FA commission may decide a case on the basis of probability rather that proof. This indeed they did.
Comparisons, odious as ever, have been made with the recent Luis Suarez case, when the word “negrito” was aimed more than once by Liverpool’s Uruguayan attacker at the Manchester United defender Patrice Evra. Suarez’s fine was substantially smaller than Terry’s, reportedly because he earns far less money, but his eight-match suspension, allegedly again because the insult was repeated, was twice what has been imposed on Terry.
Terry is an excellent defender whose retirement from international football is a huge blow to England and my old friend Roy Hodgson may surely be forgiven for wanting to keep him on board. But, beyond doubt, he is no moral example for all his playing qualities; the word that alas springs to mind is recidivist.
But that doesn’t explain or excuse the abrupt decision of the top man at the FA, David Bernstein, to take away the England captaincy from Terry as soon as the racist charge was made — it being a constant of English law that a man is innocent until proved guilty. Fabio Capello, who had his own troubles and problems with Terry in the past, not least Terry’s attempt to initiate a kind of mutiny against Capello’s training methods in South Africa, resigned in justifiable protest.
Terry deplorably had himself sent off playing for Chelsea in Barcelona in the European Cup last season for kicking an opponent. He has tried to make money out of showing fans around the Cobham training quarters. He was one of the Chelsea players who in a Heathrow bar mocked American passengers after the carnage of 9/11. But his authority and prowess on the field are undoubted.
And surely we and the FA should see his case in perspective. For though British football was long blemished with appalling racism, not only among the crowds but among the players, too, huge strides towards decency have since been made. By comparison with many another country — Ukraine, Spain, Italy, you name them — English fooball is largely free of the racist disease.
News that Oleg Blokhin will be leaving the managership of Ukraine to move to club football reminds one of his shocking outbursts against black players. While Lazio fans recently at Spurs jeered two black Tottenham players — Lazio will be punished, but their numerous neo-Fascist fans will be unrepentant.
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