Malice 1 Banter 0 A social media legacy

BACK in 2014, when Jimmy Greaves was still writing his weekly column for this newspaper, he told a story about a day when he and his Chelsea team-mates Les Stubbs and Peter Brabrook had been walking to a lunchtime kick-off.

A hulking, great bin lorry had pulled up alongside them and, as one of the dustmen emptied a big, old metal bin into the truck, the air had practically turned black.

“For Christ’s sake”, Stubbs had yelled, “There’s a load of c**p flying around here.”

“Not half as much as there’ll be out on that pitch in about an hour’s time,” came the dustman’s reply. Imagine that now. Imagine three of the current Chelsea team walking to Stamford Bridge two or three hours before a game, with life just carrying on around them.

In fact, imagine players from any club in any of our four professional divisions doing that. They couldn’t, could they?

And certainly not without running a gauntlet of hostility that would make a binman’s pithy putdown pale into insignificance.

There’s no point trying to pretend things never got nasty, or escalated, back in the days when players and supporters mingled far more freely.

There would be plenty of pub landlords the length and breadth of the country who would be begging to differ.

But at least everything was said face-to-face and, when required, things were sorted out man-to-man.

Unlike today, when so much vitriol is spewed at our footballers under the cloak of anonymity via social media.

The drip, drip effect of this abuse and criticism is starting to have a bigger impact than ever on the increasing number of players subjected to it. Last week, the Professional Footballers’ Association revealed that a record 653 of its members had contacted their counselling services in 2019 – an alarming rise, up almost 50 per cent on 2018.

Of those who contacted the PFA, 48 per cent were current players.

That equates to roughly every member of every first-team squad at the top 12 Premier League clubs contacting their union for help with their wellbeing. A staggering number.

The PFA laid the blame for the upturn squarely at the door of social media.

Now, everyone is entitled to an opinion and not every opinion is going to be positive.

There’s nothing wrong with criticism either, if someone deserves it, providing it’s constructive and measured Or better still, if, in the case of Stubbs’ bantering binman, it’s laced with mischief, not malice. But, sadly, old-fashioned terrace witticisms are increasingly a thing of the past.

Everything seems so venomous these days, particularly on social media.

Just because our footballers, by and large, are highly paid does not mean they are immune to mentalhealth difficulties.

And just because we pay to watch them play, it does not give us a divine right to hurl abuse at them from the stands or online.

We need to start asking ourselves two questions before every social media post.

“Would I say this to someone’s face?” And, more importantly, “Is it really worth it?”.

Because if things don’t calm down soon, and the number of mental-health cries for help to the PFA continue to rise, then you begin to worry where one day it all might end.

IT really doesn’t matter where the measurement for offside begins or ends – as long as video technology is employed to rule on the matter

we will be arguing over millimetres and bemoaning the fact the joy is being sucked out of our

game.