Friday 4 March 2016

Shooting the messenger.

The Sunderland manager got hauled over the coals in a press conference for continuing to field a player who by all accounts was a kiddy fiddler, transcript in The Guardian.

Yes, I know that being a football manager is about PR as much as anything, but he'd have been well in his rights to tell the assembled journos to piss off.

I agree that an employer shouldn't employ somebody if that puts customers or the general public at risk. So if a teacher is under suspicion of kiddy fiddling, the head of the school would have little choice but to suspend him.

The manager or owner of a transport business would be advised to suspend a driver being investigated for reckless driving, even if the driver did it on his own time; a bank would be criticised for employing people who are under investigation for defrauding pensioners out of their life savings; a pub would be in the wrong if it employed people with criminal records for GBH as doormen etc.

But I see no link whatsoever between kiddy fiddling and playing football in full view of tens of thousands of people. No spectator was put at risk of anything.

12 comments:

Bayard said...

You don't seem to understand, Mark. Kiddy fiddlers are the new witches and are to be hunted out and burnt, sorry sent to prison.

James Higham said...

I had a modicum of sympathy until he came out with "my life has been ruined". Er, what about his gf, let alone the girl?

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, I do and I mentioned that. I was looking at it from the point view of his employer. Do they have to burn them at the stake as well?

JH, good point but slightly off topic.

paulc156 said...

The thing is top clubs present themselves as part of the community and very much a part of the youth community. Once he was charged with serious offences against a minor he could and should have been suspended. It's nothing to do with the manager though. It's the board that needs sacking.

Bayard said...

Mark, in a right-thinking world, of course. They should have known they were employing a witch, sorry, kiddy fiddler.

Tim Almond said...

paulc156,

Sorry, but that's bollocks. He plays with adult men. Almost none of his job involves spending time with girls and could easily be managed as him not having contact with them.

The main thing is that every man and his dog wants to control football. Not surprising as the people who "support" a team owned by a foreign billionaire and staffed by hired mercenaries are some of the most credulous morons around. Every politician goes for the lowest hanging fruit.

Plus, there's a general sense of football being feral to many outsiders. That it's mostly thuggish knuckledraggers going and so has to be controlled (really, the thugs stopped going decades ago).

Mark Wadsworth said...

PC, B, yes, I did say in the article that football is largely a PR exercise.

TS: "He plays with adult men." Agreed, but poor wording :-)

DBC Reed said...

Johnson told the Board that there was nothing to the charges and he was going to plead not guilty.Not having any legal reason to suspend him, Sunderland continued playing him as he is an England international-class player and the club is in big relegation trouble. Whereupon, he subsequently decided to plead guilty on one charge leaving the club looking as if they were originally in collusion with him to suppress the truth (Whatever that may be) .A sorry business all round.

paulc156 said...

TS. Not sure which bit of bollocks you're referring to but footballers are ambassadors of the club. They are expected to and generally do take part in all manner of community activities on behalf of the club, much of it with younger members of the community. So sorry, but your response seems like bollocks to me.

Bayard said...

DBCR, yes, it's nearly always a lot less cut and dried when you actually look into any news story.

Anonymous said...

DBC Reed. Johnson told the chief exec May 2015 that he kissed the teenage fan and sent her sexually explicit messages. That's according to Johnson's own legal counsel/QC in court. Not Allardyce's problem but definitely a club culpability issue imo.

paulc156 said...

Seems like the chief exec read my post.