ABUSED PLAYERS MUST NOT BITE BACK
FROM my experience in football, fans will hurl abuse at players no matter what the club or the level. End of the day, they pay to watch their team play – and win – and expect the players to perform at their best week in, week out.
The supporters work hard all week long and look forward to Saturdays, when it's a matchday and when they put on their shirt or scarf, make a day of it and head down to the stadium to support their team. What fans don't understand is that players are not always going to produce at 100 per cent every week.
After all, we are human beings and not robots, where we will not give the ball away or make a mistake. If a player isn't giving his full, then it's down to the manager to make sure that he addresses it or drops him. Simple as. But for fans to constantly be negative and verbally abuse their players from the stands will not improve this.
I have been on the receiving end of this at many clubs. You always get a group of unsupportive fans who have nothing good to say. This is a minority, mostly those who would appear to have half a footballing brain and fail to comprehend that players are prone to errors.
The law of averages is that, throughout a game, there will be a misplaced pass or a shot off target.
It's just going to happen. We all do it. But by encouraging your players and getting behind them, there is no better way in getting the team to respond. It can become a 12th man and players generally up their game when the faithful chant their name and sing songs.
Conversely, what Goole captain Karl Colley demonstrated a week last Saturday, after his sending off in the game against Coalville Town in the Evo-Stik South, is something that can only be described as disgusting, unprofessional and embarrassing. There's no other way of putting it.
This thuggish display occurred after Colley had received a red card. He then reacted to opposing fans by appearing to try to attack them – or one in particlar – in an aggressive manner. This has no place in football, regardless of what level it is at. Non-league, Sunday league, whatever. It should not be tolerated.
From what I witnessed from the video footage [http://ow.ly/t6d02], he made three attempts to confront the dissenting fan in the stand, seeming to try to throw a punch at him on the second occasion. The word in the dressing-room is that Colley isn't the sort of lad to mess about with.
He is supposedly a “handy” lad and doesn't take any mucking about away from football. Yet this is no excuse to bring this type of attitude and behaviour to the sport.
The FA has said that it would look into the incident and charged him with improper conduct. Quite right, too. Goole's response was immediate and they sacked Colley. I think that they reacted in the best possible way. He let the club down and humiliated them.
That Colley has since explained his actions in context [http://ow.ly/t6cXe] is by the by. Incidents like this tarnish the game and give Non-League football a bad name.
It really is shocking behaviour and something that needs addressing; in particular with this player, who was sacked by his previous club, Belper Town, last January after a series of breaches of discipline that reportedly include allegations of punching a team-mate in training.
It is evident that Colley needs help. Whether he opts to take it is completely up to him but, to judge by his interaction on Twitter, it would appear that he is unaware of his possible problems. What he did was just not acceptable, especially during a match when he is supposed to be leading by example and acting as a role model.
I've been pretty harsh on him but I do believe that clubs and organisations should offer assistance to players who suffer with aggression and behavioural issues. As I have expressed in previous articles about depression, I do feel that a player's problems off the pitch are taken on to the pitch and affects them mentally.
By offering help to players suffering from these symptoms and maybe sending them to anger-management classes or sports psychologists, it will help them to remain disciplined and, therefore, improve our game and give it a respectable name.
I have had all sorts of abuse from my own fans and opposing fans. It's so important that you never react to them by nibbling. If they dangle a carrot and you snatch at it straight away, you've completely lost the plot and the battle.
Your own fans are the most vital ones to stick with, regardless of the perhaps trying circumstances.
But it is very hard not to bite back. I recall one game at a former club where we were going through a bad run of form and our supporters started to boo, bellowing “What a load of rubbish” at us as we left the pitch.
One of our players heard a fan call him something, which must have been pretty personal, and he turned around and went for the fan by the advertising boards. He was dragged back by three stewards and two of our players to stop him attacking this guy.
He had totally lost it, saw the red mist and it was very Eric Cantona-esque – just like the Goole captain last weekend.
It's ironic that Colley's incident happened 19 years to the day of the infamous kung-fu kick that “The King”, Manchester United's Cantona, launched on Crystal Palace fan Matthew Simmons at Selhurst Park.
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