Late Tuesday evening I was in a state of happiness. I had watched Chelsea battle to a hard fought draw in Paris. When you think about the result last time we played them away it was certainly a vast improvement.
But what I woke up to the next morning made me feel sick in the stomach.
For those who do not know I have been a Chelsea fan all my life, I attended my first game aged six and have had the opportunity over the last 35 years to witness the highs and lows of the club that is part of who I am. From the dark days in the old Division two right up to the magical moment of winning the Champions League I have, and forever will be, Chelsea Football Club.
Yet there is a stain on our club, a stain so bad I thought it had been removed from the game. But alas after watching the footage on YouTube I realised that this was not the case. For those who do not know a small minority of idiotic “fans” took the opportunity to stop a man boarding a train. What makes this even more horrific is that there was racial abuse hurled his way. This was a man in his own city, a man going about everyday life and I think the media coverage the past week has mentioned exactly what happened.
Yet what actually made me write this is the endless assumption that ALL fans of Chelsea are racist. It began with Stan Collymore’s rant on Twitter who appeared to label all Chelsea and Rangers fans as racist. His rants were more nationalist towards Rangers, but his tweets just annoyed me. Of course there was the backlash of labelling him a “woman beater” but that incident happened almost twenty years ago and as he has had the opportunity to rehabilitate himself personally I certainly felt his response on Twitter was that of a little child.
I have been to several Rangers games, including derbies with Celtic. Yes, of course, there is hostility towards each supporting set of fans but that is as far as it goes, never once have I seen violence at a Scottish game of football.
The atmosphere at the Chelsea game, yesterday was not the same. It was as though we felt the whole world was watching us, the manager, captain and board have all replied condemning those several idiots who created the incident tin Pars. Yet somehow it feels we are not going to escape this for a while.
I will bluntly honest we are not the most vocal of supporters these days since tickets have become more expensive many of the Chelsea fans over the years who have attended games watch elsewhere. But regardless of that the 45,000 that we are the game stood as one, we stood together and made it entirely clear.
Racism has no place at Chelsea FC
