Evra? It is of iceberg
fans and their players for what is acceptable. Before I went to Port Vale, people were telling me that the area was racist. But that is not something that is going to stop me going to a football club. The same when I came here. The same when I went to Rotherham.
“I never had a problem at these two clubs. I cannot let that be a factor in where I want to go.
“What happened between Evra and Suarez – things happen between players and things are said out of turn, as you can see with John Terry and Anton Ferdinand. Is Terry racist? Is Suarez? You don’t know because you don’t know exactly what was said, but people are punished and then it’s forgotten about.”
Geohaghon talks calmly about what happened, but there is still a simmering discontent that nothing was done. “It just disappeared and it got to a point where I went two months without playing football. The club did not get fi ned and I was getting investigated for my reaction,” he said.
“I have been at a club and incidents have happened and now all of a sudden it’s like whether anybody wants to touch me. The communications between the PFA, the FA, myself and the football club petered out. It was pushed under the carpet.
“Racism is probably not creeping back in; it is just more extensively being reported. It was always there. People are speaking up about it and beginning to realise something needs to be done about it. I thought about packing in football after that, most defi nitely.
“But I managed to fi nd another club. I am just trying to build back up and trying to make the most of my last years because I am 27 now and I am not getting any younger.
“You can’t afford to let it cost your career through some small- minded people who want to cost you a lifetime of earning good money and doing something that you enjoy. But for them not even to be reprimanded is probably the biggest thing, the club not taking any action, or the PFA or FA. That is what burns the most, more than what was actually said.
“People are a bit more shrewd in the way they distribute their racism now. You see people doing monkey chants and in the Premier League you cannot get away with it. They instantly go back to the video and pick someone out of the crowd.
“But then, as you go lower down through the levels, grounds are more compact, people closer in. So if somebody is doing it, you cannot pinpoint who it is, and the chances are that they will get away with it.”
Geohaghon – who played in the Kettering team that worried a strong Fulham side, managed at the time by Roy Hodgson, until they got through with two late goals four years ago – will look at Suarez and the other Liverpool p l a y e r s before the kick- off and quickly judge if they fancy a late Sunday match in unfashionable Mansfi eld.
He said: “If the Anfi eld players get out on our pitch on Sunday and immediately start stepping in puddles and they obviously don’t fancy what might be about to happen to them, then we will know straight away.
“We will know from the fi rst touch, from the fi rst ball, from the fi rst tackle.”
And then, ironically, Geohaghon added: “The thing is, we need to get under their skin and we’ll try our best to do that.”