Eamon Zayed, now playing for Persepolis in Tehran, was subjected to racial abuse throughout his nine-year playing career in Ireland.
Jack Leahy
Sports Writer; @Jack_Leahy
In recent weeks, events in England involving Stan Collymore, Luis Suarez, John Terry and Oldham’s Tom Adeyemi have highlighted the perpetual issue of racism in sport and its stubborn refusal to heed the call of countless progressive campaigns.
The debate that has arisen from these headline examples of racism in English football has provided yet more affirmation of sport’s ability to shine a light on issues that go beyond the jurisdiction of ball and pitch. It has also given rise to the question with which Irish society has so far failed to engage on a national level: is racism a widespread issue in Irish sport?
The Irish branch of the Show Racism the Red Card charity posits in its mission statement that ‘while racism in sport has been a major problem in many countries it is not so manifest in Ireland’.
While the most active racism awareness group in the country must be regarded as an authority on the subject, affirming a generally progressive attitude by relativism is unrepresentative of number of minorities who find themselves subjected to racial abuse on the pitch throughout the country.
The most famous example in recent years is that of Eamon Zayed, a former Bray Wanderers, Derry City, Drogheda United, and Sporting Fingal striker born in Dublin to Libyan and Tunisian parents. In June of last year, the Evening Herald’s Aidan Fitzmaurice wrote of the abuse the former Ireland U-21 international had received during his time playing League of Ireland football:
A “shoe bomber”. A “black bastard”. Just some of the names that Eamon Zayed has been called in recent years. Not in a taxi queue late at night or in a pub, but on fields of play in the League of Ireland.
Zayed was famously subjected to the exhortation to ‘get up, you black b******’ at the start of his career in Ireland ten years ago, and Fitzmaurice was writing in reference to an FAI investigation, which had just begun, into alleged racial abuse directed at the prolific hit-man by Shamrock Rovers’ Chris Turner in June 2011.
The result of the near month-long investigation was to ban Turner for three games for ‘offensive behaviour’, with Turner cleared of racist abuse on the grounds that one man’s word against another is conducive to thorough enquiry and that the exact remarks could not be verified. Shamrock Rovers were fined a measly €200 for abuse directed at the player by a small section of their supporters. While both Football Associations can be accused of humming and hawwing over the issue, it was the English association alone that took decisive action in response.
Show Racism the Red Card praised Shamrock Rovers and Derry City for their reaction and continued anti-racist volunteer work in their respective communities, but while their efforts have always been admirable, racism in sport is the product of ignorance in the minds of fans and players; not in the make-up of clubs. The fact that Zayed’s long carer of subjection to such abuse in Ireland was bookended by almost identical incidents suggests that nothing has changed over the course of ten years.
The example is not an isolated one; while Irish anti-racism charities perpetually point to Steaua Bucharest fans’ abuse of Joseph Ndo in 2004 as an example of racism perpetuated by a separate group on an Irish-based player, the truth is that Ndo was the brunt of similar sentiment throughout his playing career in Ireland. Having attended the majority of Shelbourne’s home games in 2004, I can safely say that opposition fans never failed to verbalise racially-motivated sentiments in his direction.
Just as the Airtricity League has had its issues ever since foreign players began to ply their trade in Ireland, so too has the Gaelic Athletic Association had to deal with cases of racial abuse in games played under its remit. To its credit, the Association whose genesis is in Catholic nationalism has done it share in promoting non-sectarian enjoyment of and involvement in Gaelic games. That said, the less glamourous grass-roots of the game cannot be said to be the epitome of mutlicultural Ireland:
‘Racism is most certainly an issue in the game’ said Frank Murphy, a Corconian farmer who has coached under-age GAA teams for over 20 years. ‘The problem is that it exists mainly at local levels, where the likes of Sky and BBC aren’t bothered reporting.
‘You see it at as young as U-12 [level]: parents have often complained to me that their lad is on the bench while ”the black kid has taken his place”, and some of the stuff kids come out with is disgusting. One young lad took particular exception to being dispossessed by a fellow Cork guy whose father is Nigerian – he smacked him one and screamed abuse at him while he lay on the floor. The club had no choice but to ban him for life’.
Few famous examples exist of racist abuse in GAA sports, save a number of incidents involving the very Irish-sounding and Gaeilge-speaking Seán Óg Ó Hailpín, whose mother is Fijiian. This does not mean that the problem does not exist; it is simply the case that, as Frank says, the public interest intrinsic to sporting fame does not extend to the lower breaches of the game.
It is not an irrelevant consideration that the county-level game rarely sees non-white players involved and its most famous mixed-race player was racially abused on a number of occasions. A large number of GAA forums around the country have discussion threads on the subject of racism, where worrying numbers of members assert a range of observational evidence to support Frank’s claims.
To combat an issue increasingly prevalent in the game, the Association introduced a number of anti-racism motions to its national council in 2009 and has increased its drive to bring new communities into the game. Its effort has been admirable.
Whether Irish society is fundamentally racist is not a consideration here; what is in focus now is whether or not racist attitudes that exist in certain sectors of society are permeating a realm in which ability should be the only differentiating quality.
Show Racism the Red Card and Sport Against Racism Ireland have done a huge amount of work over a number of years to use sport as a vehicle for a progressive race relations in Ireland. Without the continued support of sporting and cultural institutions such as the GAA and the FAI, these groups would be weaker, but the association football authority needs to up its game and follow the English precedent in recognising and punishing racial abuse as the scourge of the modern game.
Racism is often not representative of a society’s values; when Luis Suarez spoke to Patrice Evra, he did not speak for the entire Liverpool team, rather for a draconian perception of racial difference that still exists for a not insignificant few in the game and in society. The work of SARI and SRRC has been to highlight this attitude of an assertive minority and the manner in which vulgar perceptions permeate sport. With this in mind, as you tell me that racism is not a problem in Irish sport, consider the following statement on an Irish white supremacist forum’s discussion of Eamon Zayed:
I think negroes should get kicked out of European sport teams, not racism.
