A MESSAGE THE FA GRASSROOTS LEVEL

That’s the verdict of Havant mayor and Denmead keeper Prad Bains

last month every player in the Wales, Ireland, Italy and France teams chose to remain standing. In the Calcutta Cup tie, the majority of the Scotland team remained standing while six England players chose not to kneel.

Bains, though, is desperate for the practice to carry on.

‘I very much hope it continues. There’s no sell-by date on promoting awareness - that’s the message that needs to be put across,’ he said.

‘There’s a long way to go and the fact Premier League teams are still taking the knee tells you that.

‘It should be a message the FA are promoting throughout football. I’d like to see the FA put out guidance to all their clubs saying ‘we will support you’ if you want to take the knee as a symbol of solidarity.

‘It wouldn’t cost the FA anything to do that, and it would be a really good step.’

The subject of racism remains high on the news agenda with black players targeted with vile abuse on social media seemingly on a weekly basis.

It is, sadly, not a new problem at all - anti-racism group Kick It Out revealed back in 2015 they had found 134,000 abusive messages that had been sent to footballers and clubs from August 2014 to the following March.

In August 2019, following social media abuse directed towards Paul Pogba, officials from Twitter said they would

There’s no sell-by date on promoting awareness - that’s the message to put across Prad Bains

TAKING THE KNEE meet with Manchester United and Kick it Out.

Two years on, the sickening abuse has not gone away with Marcus Rashford, as well as his Old Trafford colleagues Axel Tuanzebe and Anthony Martial, among