The Chelsea fans were going berserk. The linesman was standing right next to me. He could see what Robbie was doing but did not take any action, not even to call Durkin over. Everyone knew what the gesture meant. There was not much room for interpretation. I asked the linesman what he was going to do. He stood there with a look of panic.
So I waited. Robbie could see he was winding me up and I suppose that gratified him, so he carried on doing it. I told the linesman I would not take the free kick until he stopped. It was a big moment, a stand-off.
What Robbie did provided a chance for people to confront a serious issue and I wish Durkin had sent him off for ungentlemanly conduct. Football had a chance to make a stand that day and Durkin would have been fted for it. There could have been a strong statement that blatant homophobia would not be tolerated and maybe it would have been a turning point, taking some of the stigma away for gay footballers.
But football did not make a stand. Durkin ran over and booked me for time-wasting. I was dumbfounded. I asked if he was just going to let Robbie get away with it. He did not say anything. He said later that he had not seen what Robbie was doing, but I wonder if he simply did not want to deal with it. No one did. My head filled with anger. I still did not want to take the free kick. Perhaps I should have just refused to and been sent off. That would at least have forced the issue, but it would also have made me a martyr for the cause and I did not want that. Robbie stopped bending over. I took the kick.
Some people compared what happened to sledging in cricket, but those exchanges stay between the players on the pitch. That is where I believe Robbie crossed the line and betrayed the sport. When a fellow professional does something like that to you, when he mocks you for public consumption, I cannot accept it as part of the game.
I never saw anyone do that to another player. I felt that Fowlers action because it was so blatant betrayed me, too. He broke the code. Black players have had plenty of abuse aimed at them, but no fellow player has ever made a public gesture like that. Robbie would not dream of miming insults to a black player, so why did he feel it was acceptable to incite me by sticking out his backside?
I was consumed with thoughts of vengeance. I could not calm down. I ran to the halfway line and tried to confront Robbie. I told him my family was in the stand. Bollocks to your family, he said. In his autobiography, Robbie wrote that I ran up to him and shouted but Im married and he replied so was Elton John, mate. It is a nice line and makes him look funny, which is the most important thing to him, but he used dramatic licence. He did not say that.
I should have come off, really. My head was gone. I was not even concentrating on the game. I felt humiliated, as if the anger of so many years was welling up inside me. Eventually, the ball was played down the left side and Robbie made a run towards our penalty area. I came across and ran straight into him with a swing of the elbow. Thankfully I am not very good at it. We had a few more tussles, then Robbie caught me on the calf and I had to come off. The most traumatic match of my career was over.
I was still incredibly angry after the game. I went to see Durkin. I had heard that the cameras had captured my elbow on Robbie and I wanted to explain why I had done it. Dermot Gallagher, the fourth official, said that he had seen the whole thing with Robbie jutting out his backside. He started talking about the amount of stick he had had over the years for being Irish. I asked Durkin about the booking. I asked why I had been time-wasting when we were playing at home and the score was 11. He did not have an answer. I asked the linesman again why he had not done anything and he did not want to engage.
The aftermath was awful. I got buried because I had tried to take out Robbie off the ball. That was fair enough. But it seemed bizarre that people focused on this rather than the extreme provocation. Because I had reacted, a lot of people wanted to excuse Robbie for what he had done. Three days after the game, the FA charged us both with misconduct.
I sent him a letter of apology and got a letter from him, too. Not an apology, just an attempt to save face, couched in legal niceties and drafted by a lawyer or agent, designed to appease the FA tribunal before it sat in judgment. It was a sad excuse, really, an insult to the intelligence.
Later, in his autobiography, Robbie wrote: Footballs a tough sport and to get to the top you have to be incredibly thick-skinned. A bit of name-calling never hurt anyone and the truth is I wasnt being homophobic, merely trying to exploit a known weakness in an opponent who had done me a number of times.
It is an interesting line of defence. According to Robbies rationale, it is OK to call a black man a n***** and pretend it is in the line of duty. I do not think so. I do not think even Robbie would argue that. He did not really have a defence and that was the best he could come up with. It was not a very good effort.
A month after Robbie offered me his backside, we were picked in the England squad. There was an awkward reunion at Burnham Beeches. Robbie did not have quite as much bravado in that situation. He looked like a naughty little boy.
Kevin Keegan was the manager and he wanted us to stage a public reconciliation for the press. I said immediately that unless Robbie said sorry, that was not going to happen. I did not want a public apology, just a private word would do. But he refused. He said that he had done nothing wrong, that it was just a bit of a laugh.
Keegan started to back off at that point. He was not qualified to deal with it, but I felt more confident. I was determined to stand up for myself. I confronted Robbie while we were in Keegans room. I pointed out that if he had taken the p*** out of someone like that in the middle of Londons Soho, where the gay clubs are, he would have been chased down the street and beaten up.
Even then, Robbie could not resist it. When I mentioned the gay clubs, he muttered: Youd know where they are. I told him I would be professional on the training pitch, but that there was no way I was going to shake his hand. I felt bolstered by the debate the incident had caused and relieved that the issue was in the open.
From that moment, there was less animosity in the chants. The debate about what happened had exposed it for the puerile cruelty, the out and out bullying, that it was. I do not feel any animosity towards Robbie now, but the stuff he sought to justify nearly drove me out of the game.
On April 9, six weeks after the original incident and six days after Robbie had got himself in more trouble by pretending to snort the white lines on the pitch at Anfield during a goal celebration in a Merseyside derby, we attended separate FA disciplinary hearings. I got a one-match ban and a 5,000 fine, but they hammered Robbie. He was dealing with the fallout from his mock cocaine-snorting antics as well as what he did to me and it provided a fascinating glimpse of the governing bodys moral code.
It gave Robbie a much harsher punishment for making what was clearly a joke than it did for his attempt to humiliate me and encourage homophobia. I wonder if Robbie appreciated the irony of that. He did something as a retort to malicious rumours, yet was happy to exploit a malicious rumour spread about me. Robbie got a two-match ban for taunting me and a four-match ban for his goal celebrations at Anfield. As I said, interesting.
The debate about what Robbie had done and the FA hearing gave me a form of closure. It was a watershed for me. After that I still got the taunts from the crowd, but the venom seemed to have gone. What Robbie had done had always been my worst fear. Now it was over, I knew that nothing could be worse than that ordeal, so nobody could offend me any more.
After the hearing, the distress I had always felt about the taunts began to ebb away. So in the end, I got there. But it did not wipe out what I had been through. It did not wash it clean. It is an indictment of our game and the prejudice it allows, but I felt a great surge of relief when I retired.
Fowler the legend.
never liked fowler- vastly overated- followed the huns & a cock as well - le saux paints him in a terrible light
Robbie sounds like a witty guy. “I’m married” “So was Elton John mate” Legend.
What was said recently by the French manager about what Matterazi did to Zidane?
Two complete arseholes.
FingalRaven wrote:
He broke the code. Black players have had plenty of abuse aimed at them, but no fellow player has ever made a public gesture like that. Robbie would not dream of miming insults to a black player, so why did he feel it was acceptable to incite me by sticking out his backside?
Later, in his autobiography, Robbie wrote: Footballs a tough sport and to get to the top you have to be incredibly thick-skinned. A bit of name-calling never hurt anyone and the truth is I wasnt being homophobic, merely trying to exploit a known weakness in an opponent who had done me a number of times.
It is an interesting line of defence. According to Robbies rationale, it is OK to call a black man a n***** and pretend it is in the line of duty. I do not think so. I do not think even Robbie would argue that. He did not really have a defence and that was the best he could come up with. It was not a very good effort.
Some of that is kinda pathetic from Le Saux. Bit of a difference between racially abusing a black man and provoking a straight man by calling him gay. Doubt Fowler’s a homophobe although I don’t know him personally. Think it’s far more likely that he was indeed “merely trying to exploit a known weakness in an opponent who had done me a number of times.”
By Le Saux’s rationale, you could agrue then that what Robbie did at Everton by sniffing the line was correct insofar as he was escalating bullying by the Everton fans. Fook off. Be a man. Deal with it. Don’t be such a h0m0.
Spot on Clarkey except calling a black man a n!gger is not as bad as calling a straight guy a h0m0 though. Black people are black so all your doing is speaking the truth. Calling a straight guy gay is lies henceforth it’s worse.
Flano wrote:
Spot on Clarkey except calling a black man a n!gger is not as bad as calling a straight guy a h0m0 though. Black people are black so all your doing is speaking the truth. Calling a straight guy gay is lies henceforth it’s worse.
Flano, you’re a big gay you are.
everton fans slagging stevie G that his kid isnt his is fair game
but I think society has moved on & that slagging someone about being gay is unacceptable
ClarkeyCat wrote:
Flano wrote:
[quote]Spot on Clarkey except calling a black man a n!gger is not as bad as calling a straight guy a h0m0 though. Black people are black so all your doing is speaking the truth. Calling a straight guy gay is lies henceforth it’s worse.
Flano, you’re a big gay you are.[/quote]
Shit, who told you?