Not Guilty

So the legal ruling then is that John Terry is not guilty of uttering racist words. It seems the only word in his utterances that gave rise to his appearance in court was the only one that was remotely true and that related to colour. Any other result in his trial would probably mean that the large carving of the Ilson "Giant" in Ilkeston's Stanton Road Cemetery where the Friends on the Cemetery held an event this weekend would in future have to be referred to as the Ilson "Big Man" so as not to cause offence to similarly large human beings.

The John Terry case however does raise another issue. When I was a local football referee directives were often issued by the Derbyshire Football Association urging officials to apply the Laws of the Game and dismiss players from the field of play for using foul and abusive language. Whatever the outcome of the John Terry case, it must be admitted the he and probably many more players on the pitch that day were guilty of using such language. Going back to my refereeing days it was common knowledge back then that the higher up the football ladder you rose as an official, the less likely you were to be promoted even higher if you sent players off for bad language as many games would have to be abandoned due to there being insufficient players left to finish the game.

It seems then that the problem that eventually led to the legal case is of the Football Association's own making by not insisting the Laws were applied at the highest level of the game. They have done a lot of work to remove racism from football so maybe the time is now right for them to turn their attention to the Laws of the Game and remove the bad language too.