If John Terry were Scottish, chief magistrate Hamish McRiddle would probably have returned a verdict of ‘Not Proven’. Only Scottish courts are capable of declaring a case not capable of being judged either way. Back in the real world, John Terry is an innocent man, except, of course, it is not as simple as that. We can divide the population into four broad categories according to their response.
First, there is the ‘sticks and stones’ group, who believe that calling somebody a ‘black’ such-and-such is no different to calling them a plain old such-and-such; that footballers are paid more than enough to take whatever insults come their way and if the loony-liberal-lefies don’t like it they can sod off and write to the Guardian. On grounds connected with the briefness of life, we needn’t bother with this group.
Then there is what you might call the ‘indignant vindication’ category. In this category we find those who always believed Terry was clearly innocent, that his innocence is now legally established fact and that ought to be the end of it. Heck, sue Anton Ferdinand for slander while we’re at it. Of these people, particularly their gifts of omniscience and the judgement of Solomon, I am most envious.
The ‘He’s Got Away With It’ group is sizable, if the immediate response on social networks is any kind of decent measuring stick. The broad feeling within is that Terry was as guilty as hell and got off on a technicality. John Amaechi, the former NBA basketball player: “Thanks football – you set entire country back a decade. ‘Black c***’ now officially ok to say.” The same man Tweeted to me – if you’ll forgive a spot of name-dropping – “…but court did NOT ‘clear’ JT; it ‘had no choice’ but to declare not guilty”. In other words: Terry was guilty but just not quite guilty enough.
We know one member of this group. Rio Ferdinand’s ill-advised endorsement of another Twitterer’s half-witted racist slur against Ashley Cole may come back to haunt him. Aside from the unhelpful inference that Ashley Cole perjured himself at Terry’s hearing, the term ‘choc-ice’ is particularly pernicious because it implies that there is a ‘black’ thing to do and a ‘white’ thing to do. The ‘black’ thing to do, it seems, would be to say whatever you have to say to get somebody accused of racial abuse convicted.
A splinter group of the above, the ‘What About Luis Suárez?’ club, profess bewilderment as to how the Uruguayan could be banned for eight matches ‘despite no proof’, yet Terry can ‘get off’ even though there is ‘clear television evidence’ against him.
This view fails to take into account the plain fact that Suárez and Terry were involved in two different incidents. Just because one is guilty or innocent, it does not follow that the other must be the equally so. The differences between the two cases are numerous. One went to an FA hearing, the other a legal trial, so there was a higher burden of proof for those prosecuting Terry.
Suárez was banned ‘on the balance of probabilities’, meaning, in essence, that the 3-man FA panel believed Evra and not him. Terry was acquitted because it could not be proved that he was guilty. What if Suárez had had his day in a court of law?
The two players also entered different defences. Terry’s was a flat denial: he did not call Anton Ferdinand an ‘FBC’; he was merely rejecting an accusation by the QPR player, and that was what was caught on camera. Quoting something, his defence team successfully argued, is not the same as saying it yourself. Suárez, on the other hand, did not deny using the word negro or negrito, but denied intending to offend Patrice Evra. ‘Negro’, he argued, is not the Spanish equivalent of The N Word; it is a harmless term of affection, for which no English word is a direct translation.
This defence foundered for two reasons. Firstly, as the word was said in the course of a heated argument with a player from Liverpool’s bitterest rivals, the FA panel concluded that it was not said on amicable terms. Secondly – and here is the important bit – there is the principle that whether or not a word is racially offensive is up to the interpretation of the victim, not the meaning of the perpetrator. In other words, it was not for Suárez to say whether Evra ought to be offended or not by having his colour referred to.
On balance, and with many months’ reflection, perhaps the FA ought to have given Suárez a shorter ban initially, with a whacking great big suspended one over it in order to set a precedent. Though the cultural defence was quite properly rejected when considering the verdict, it could have been taken into account when calculating the length of the ban. As soon as Suárez conceded that he had said the offensive word, it was case closed with regard to the verdict. The punishment, though, ought to have had an educative element. That it didn’t leaves us with what some regard as a blatant inconsistency between the two cases.
After decades of being oblivious to racial issues, football has now become hyper-sensitive to them. It is not ideal but it is better than what we had in the seventies and eighties.
The FA now find themselves in an invidious position. No credible charge of racist abuse can be brought against Terry given his criminal acquittal; yet to do nothing would be a scandalous dereliction of duty. Both Terry and Anton Ferdinand ought to be charged for their pathetic, profanity-peppered tiff on the Loftus Road pitch all those months ago. Rio, too, ought to be very severely reprimanded for his apparent endorsement of the ‘choc-ice’ slur which has now attracted the attention of the Derbyshire constabulary.
Most importantly of all, though, they must not waste an opportunity to clean up English football’s image. For the idiotic fans, who will surely chant abuse at whichever of Terry, Cole and the Ferdinands don’t play for their club, there is no hope, short of a frontal lobotomy. Referees, meanwhile, need to be instructed in the strongest possible terms to clamp down an all foul language. Insulting or goading an opponent ought to be regarded as a punishable offence under the existing gentlemanly conduct rule.
There are those who believe such strict refereeing will result in a torrent of red cards but so be it. Footballers are generally pragmatists. Behaviour will adapt quickly. It cannot happen quickly enough.
Mike Martin is the club reporter at @PickeringTownFC and has written for Late Tackle magazine.
Mike Martin is the club reporter at @PickeringTownFC and has written for Late Tackle magazine.
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