BEARDSLEY ONCE KNEW POWER OF THE POSITIVE

ALAN HANSEN was trying to be sensitive the day he called black players ‘coloured’. He didn’t realise the meanings and nuances of race words have changed. He thought he was being polite. Black was the word that scared him; coloured, he felt comfortable with. He’s an intelligent man, so he should have known better — but language evolves very fast these days. Hansen comes from an age when coloured would have been an acceptable term. It is considerably harder to find mitigation for Peter Beardsley, accused of bullying young players and making crass, racially charged remarks at Newcastle. Telling African players, ‘You should be good at this’, on a climbing frame at an adventure playground goes beyond clumsy, if true. It is hard to imagine a time in Beardsley’s professional life when a link between man and monkey would not have caused offence. How did he imagine it was acceptable? Beardsley (right) denies the claims against him, although five team-mates have provided witness statements in support of complainant Yasin Ben El-Mhanni. How has it come to this? Before the 1996 European Championship, when Beardsley was still a player with England, he was part of an extended squad that needed to be cut by five for the tournament. It was well known that one of Terry Venables’s options pitted Beardsley against a younger rival for his position, Nick Barmby. Venables remarked that every day after training Beardsley would come to him, full of praise for Barmby — how well he was doing, what a player he could become. He offered Barmby advice, he was genuinely encouraging. Venables picked Barmby. Beardsley retired from international football, but with nothing but praise for the player who took his place. What happened to that man who was so positive around young players? How did he end up driving good prospects from Newcastle? He was a better person than he now appears, back then.