Indecent rituals that shame the game
NO ONE ever said a career in football was for the faint-hearted, though the initiation rituals recalled by Manchester United’s Class of 92 revealed that the fabled bulldog mentality of youth team coach Eric Harrison was just the beginning of the challenge.
David Beckham has described having ‘to look at [team-mate] Clayton Blackmore’s calendar and do certain things.’
Robbie Savage is the player from that era who has most recently described such a ceremony, though his own challenge was slightly less punishing.
Savage had to pretend to chat up a mop and then simulate a sexual encounter with it on a training ground treatment table in a darkened room occupied by team-mates.
‘I was 15,’ Savage said recently. ‘I didn’t know the world. I was a virgin; a late developer. I was a young lad from Wrexham going to the biggest football club in the world.’
All of this paled by comparison with the testimony given at Preston County Court, four years ago, by George Blackstock, the former Stoke City apprentice who claimed damages for allegedly being subjected to a ritual known as the ‘The Glove’ and ‘The Finger’.
This entailed keeper Peter Fox allegedly daubing his glove in a deep heat treatment and inserted it up the 16-year-old’s backside while he was pinned to the treatment bench.
Several witnesses also testified to Blackstock getting ‘The Teapot’ — in which the hot receptacle was held to his backside. Mick Mills, Stoke boss at the time, denied turning a blind eye.
Blackstock’s damages claim was rejected but the case prompted dismay among some in the game that 1980s practices might provoke a spate of litigation.
The allegations were certainly grim. The court heard that former players George Berry, Carl Saunders and Steve Parkin allegedly held down the Northern Irishman while Fox applied the glove. Yet many felt it was far removed from the kind of sexual abuse from that period which saw former Celtic Boys Club manager, Jim Torbett, being jailed for 30 months in 1998. Torbett was convicted after abusing boys, including the future Scotland international Alan Brazil, between 1968 and 1974.
It is thought that the Professional Footballers’ Association have even had some complaints about seemingly more gentle initiation ceremonies, involving being forced to stand up in front of teammates.
But there is substantial evidence to suggest that this problem does not reside in the last century. Anne Tiivas, head of the Child Protection in Sport Unit since 2008, recently said she had been notified of incidents sanctioned by adults and overlooked by parents.
‘There was a lot of acceptance of behaviours in sport you would never tolerate in a school,’ said Tiivas, whose organisation are a partnership between the NSPCC, Sport England, Sport Northern Ireland and Sport Wales.
‘We would have people ringing up from sports saying, “We just had this dreadful initiation ceremony, where these children have been sexually abused by their peers as part of the initiation”.
‘And, actually, highprofile, well-connected parents have managed to persuade police that, for instance, “This is just part of the culture of sport and what you have to do to get involved. And it’s just a bit of fun”.’
Tiivas said one instance of this abuse, about a decade ago, had helped force changes which have made sexually-abusive initiation ceremonies ‘comparatively unusual’ today.
It seems there will be a substantial volume of testimony for QC Clive Sheldon’s investigators to examine.