Awareness must remain on agenda
Former Bradford Town manager Danny Greave believes that discrimination at Southern League and Western League level is very rare, but it needs to remain firmly on the agenda to make sure it stays that way.
Racism and other forms of discrimination has been in the spotlight recently, with many players at Premier League and European level being subjected to horrific abuse on social media and pressure on these websites to do more to tackle the issue.
Fortunately for Greaves, who was a black footballer and now a black manager, there’s only been one major incident of racism that has affected him at the lower levels of grassroots football.
Speaking on a recent Toolstation Western League podcast with Ian Nockolds, Greaves said: “To be honest I haven’t experienced too many incidents of out-right racism either to myself or to my players or my teammates when I was playing.
“I’ve had one occasion where it was directed at myself and unfortunately that was when I was a 16-year-old boy making my debut for Mangotsfield playing against Redditch down at Cossham Street and it was horrendous to be honest.
“It got so bad the police were called, fans were evicted from the ground, it was all in the local press and that was a really unsavoury occasion. But I have to say in terms of my experience, that was absolutely an isolated occasion.
“[There are] Little things now and again that you hear or pick up and I think a lot of it comes down to ignorance rather than outright racism, calling you a name, and at times you do often walk into a room or walk into a ground and ask somebody and you just get the sense that something’s not quite right without actually being called a name.
“In terms of outright racism, very limited, but I don’t think it’s something we should take for granted.
“I think it’s something that’s in society, I think it is something that is still in our game as in everyday walk of life and not just discrimination against black people, just discrimination in general and it’s absolutely something we just need to keep an eye on and make sure we don’t stand for it and we’ve got things in place that if it does occur then we’ll deal with it straight away.
“So I do think it’s something that isn’t out of our game, yes I haven’t experienced it in a long, long time, but you do sometimes pick on little things and you do question certain things, for example, in the Premier League and Football League now players taking a knee and that’s not necessarily taking a knee to try and raise awareness of racism, that’s about equality and treating everybody the same it’s not necessarily just about black people.
“And I’ve heard comments saying ‘I hope that doesn’t come into our level of football’ or ‘I hope I don’t see our players doing that,’ and I just think that’s probably just a level of ignorance and lack of education around what people are trying to stand up for.
“I think it’s something that certainly needs to stay on the agenda and needs to be raised. I don’t think there’s enough happening in non-league football to educate clubs, players, supporters, managers.
“You only have to look around the non-league scene and referees for example, I don’t recall seeing a black referee.
“There’s still probably limited black players and certainly limited black managers.
“You’ve got to be good enough first and foremost to be a referee or to be a player or to be a manager, but I certainly think it needs to stay on the agenda and be raised within non-league football.”