Middlesex’s Mike O’Farrell and Hampshire’s Rod Bransgrove shone an unintended light with their painful remarks at the DCMS racism hearing“The other thing in the diversity bit is the football and rugby worlds become much more attractive to the Afro-Caribbean community. In terms of the south Asian community, we find that they do not want to commit the time that is necessary to get to the next step. They prefer to go into educational fields.”“I know one Caribbean overseas player … who termed himself ‘Token’, so there was a degree of humour in it … It’s difficult to call it offensive.” Continue reading...
As the Qatar World Cup nears, football can learn a lesson from tennis: turning down money will make your voice heardSport is politics. There is no question about that at the beginning of the year when the Winter Olympics are taking place in Beijing and the World Cup in Qatar. You only have to open the newspaper these days. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Guardian, the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza and other quality media, which gather many voices to report on the world, deal on their sports pages with the diplomatic boycott of the Olympics by the USA, Great Britain and other countries, the “quiet diplomacy” of the International Olympic Committee and workers’ rights in Qatar.One news item received particular attention...
Swimming is the latest sport to become embroiled in discord but there are some signs of courteous, informed discussion tooIt is funny how times change. The Guardian has obtained a letter, written in 2003 by Dr Richard Budgett, in which he discusses the consequences of trans women competing in women’s sport. Responding to a government inquiry, Budgett, then at the British Olympic Association, states: “The effect of allowing male transsexuals to compete as women would be to make competition unfair and potentially dangerous in some sports and would undermine women’s sports.”This would have been an interesting answer at the time. It is even more so now. Society has shifted. Language has changed. Budgett is now medical and scientific director at...
Chairman Mao shares the floor with his comrades at a time of great victory after the collapse of the European Super League“Football is a private sector business and has flourished that way. Enforcing a philosophy akin to Maoist collective agriculturalism (which students of The Great Leap Forward will know culminated in the greatest famine in history) will not make the English game fairer, it will kill the competition which is its very lifeblood.”– Angus Kinnear, Leeds United chief executive, on the government’s fan-led review of football governance. Continue reading...
New eligibility rules are not without risk but they offer players new pathways and reflect the reality of multiple identitiesWhen World Rugby announced that eligibility laws would be changing this week I found myself joking that I’m actually available to play for Nigeria now. Joking because it’s just a little bit too late in the day for me – I’m not sure I’d be selected! – but it got me thinking whether there is something I can do to help grow and develop the sport in a country I have huge affection for, the place where it all started for me.I hope I’m not the only one because the change opens up so many possibilities for current players but also...