LIP SERVICE IS NO SERVICE...

A YEAR ago I hosted a seminar at Wembley to address the issue of racism in football on the back of Raheem Sterling’s comments.

Fifty people or so turned up and genuinely wanted to affect a change.

But here we are, 12 months on, and football is still paying lip service to the problem, as evidenced when Leeds keeper Kiko Casilla was found guilty of racially abusing West Brom’s Jonathan Leko.

After that get-together I unfollowed on social media all the anti-racism authorities – including Kick It Out’s Troy Townsend, who I like and respect as a person. Why?

A lot of these organisations get funding from one of the game’s governing bodies. And if they are receiving their money from such sources, then there is a clear and obvious problem.

Can they criticise the Premier League, FA, or whoever, if they are receiving cash from them? No, they can’t. Not properly, anyway.

There was a story which leaked last season suggesting that the Premier League were going to mount their own in-house anti-racism campaign.

For me that was a shot across the bows of organisations such as Kick It Out – a warning to toe the line or else.

They’re fundamentally compromised.

Leko said he received zero support from Kick It Out or the PFA.

It took 22 weeks for it to be decided that a comment was made to the Baggies player that would have been an arrestable offence had it been uttered on the

street. It’s like my own battle with mental health. I was the first player to come out, in 1998-99,to say: ‘I’m struggling with my mental health. I need help’.

The PFA could contact me in a heartbeat. They have my email, phone number. The lot.

I’ve never received one single message from them. Not one. Ever.

Now they are making a big deal about it with the Heads Up campaign – they are getting players to talk about mental health.

They’ve got the likes of Prince

William sitting in West Brom’s training ground talking to current players about it. Seriously, well done to whoever organised that one – magnificent public relations guff.

Angry

But the players who have struggled with it, like me, aren’t being contacted. It’s exactly the same with racism.

The reality is that football’s antiracism bodies in this country are not fit for purpose, as the Leko case so clearly underlined. It makes me so angry.

So when I hear people like Townsend saying: ‘I should have done more,’ I say: ‘DO MORE’.

Don’t accept the money from the Premier League or wherever.

Find government funding or get some more from the PFA. Badger PFA bigwig Gordon Taylor for it.

Townsend can then sit in front of TV cameras, saying: ‘This game is institutionally racist. We’re not doing enough’.

Instead of which, we’re getting people saying: ‘We’ve not done enough’.

Not good enough.

Leko has said he’s unsure if he would report another racial slur. How is that moving the issue forward?

This whole situation is a stinking disgrace.