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@jaw
From the graun:
Port Vale pandered over Hasselbaink
Norman Smurthwaite is an old estate agent with a name that sounds like a villager from Last of the Summer Wine. He is actually Port Vale’s owner and, having put the club up for sale, it is doubtful the sport will miss him greatly judging by his explanation why he turned down the chance to appoint Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink as manager last year.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, Smurthwaite might genuinely have good intentions when he says it was because he did not want to put Hasselbaink in a position where he might be subjected to racist abuse after a run of bad results.
It doesn’t say a lot for his opinion of the club’s supporters but, yes, he is correct to point out there was an investigation into some racist chanting during a home game against Bradford City in February 2013, even if that was a good 18 months before Hasselbaink was recommended to him. Five men were arrested and charged but all were acquitted in court.
“I didn’t take him [Hasselbaink] because of the racial issue the club had got,” Smurthwaite said. “I didn’t think it was fair on him. Can you imagine the poor bloke getting abuse, along with the normal abuse if results were going against him? He would have been right for the club, without doubt, but I don’t think the club would have been right for him.”
What he does not seem to comprehend is how impotent it looks to pander to what he describes as “a very small minority”, or that he has in effect given a tiny clique of dunderheads what they want: a white manager and now a level of publicity that leaves the impression this is a club where skin colour matters. Smurthwaite has employed black players and not worried, apparently, about how the crowd might react. But a black manager? Too risky.
Smurthwaite has issued an apology of sorts “if any Port Vale fan feels I have labelled them as being either a racist or thug”. Yet there is a wider issue here. When the debate comes around about the low number of black managers in football, there are still people who think it cannot be true, in 2015, that a chairman would discriminate against someone for being black. Now we have an admission. Plus a flaky explanation that it was for Hasselbaink’s own good.
Smurthwaite, accepting that “99% of our fans are excellent”, had his chance to appoint one of the game’s bright young managers and, in the process, deliver a message to the small element that might or might not be among the crowd. He had the opportunity to make a difference and it doesn’t say much for him that he doesn’t seem to grasp this part.