Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:00 pm
From the premier league owl.
“In the course of a search by the Club in early 2014 of 10,000 private text messages sent to and from another member of staff during Mr Mackay’s employment at Cardiff, in relation to other matters, it emerged that Malky had, it seems, sent a couple of one line texts that were, with the benefit of hindsight, very regrettable and disrespectful of other cultures. These were two text messages sent in private at a time Malky felt under great pressure and when he was letting off steam to a friend during some friendly text message banter.”
That’s an extract from a statement released by the League Managers Association (LMA) this evening on behalf of Malky Mackay and in response to the accusation that he and Iain Moody exchanged a range of racist, homophobic, anti-semitic and misogynistic text messages during their time at Cardiff City.
The statement – to which there’s a link at the foot of the page – is an extraordinarily clumsy bit of work, and it’s also symptomatic of the internal ‘not a big deal’ attitude which seems to accompany any instance of prejudicial behaviour which occurs in football. The LMA is a union and its default function is to protect its members, but even an organisation as traditionally one-eyed as this one has to see the distinction between a worthy cause and one which it cannot, for the sake of its future credibility, fight on behalf of a member.
In what world did it ever seem like a good idea to incorporate the ‘banter’ excuse? That’s not the free-pass it seems to be, because claiming ‘banter’ is a defensive position taken by someone who has said something indefensible.
Think about how long the statement took to write, think about how many sets of eyes it passed underneath, and then consider just how many people within that organisation saw no problem whatsoever with releasing it.
It’s breathtaking – and it’s a very serious problem which suggests that archaic thinking is still rife in one of football’s most visible organisations.
The game is a boys’ club; it’s an incredibly insular community stuffed with poorly-educated people who, because of the industry they’re in, have never had to adapt their thinking to real-world standards. There’s isn’t a land of equality and respect, it’s a playground of ‘banter’ and perennial excuses centred around the false perception that political correctness has gone mad.
“If Malky has caused any offence by these two isolated matters he would, however, wish to sincerely apologise.”
If ?
Organisations like the LMA don’t take these kind of offences seriously. Even in such a situation – in which somebody implicated in wrong-doing is essentially admitting to an error – they deem it acceptable to offer this kind of faux-apology. It’s such a sneering, arrogant dismissal of any guilt and, like all other non-apologies, it tries to shift the onus from the offender to the offended.
“If you were offended – which we don’t think you should be etc”.
Wake up, grow up, stop making us cringe. Come join us in the 21st Century, football.