Enough of enough is enough

It’s never funny when a baby dies, but it is funny, sometimes, when football club social media accounts are compelled to respond to personal tragedy. 

When Bristol City announced that manager Liam Manning would be taking some time off work to mourn the loss of his young son, a barrage of well wishes attached to club crests from up and down the football league followed — many of them bizarrely intent on clarifying, for the avoidance of doubt, that the statement of condolence was being made “at this time”.

Whether “this time” is “tragic” or “devastating” depends on whether you ask West Brom or Exeter City. Portsmouth, meanwhile, say it's “sad”, but are shown up by “terribly sad” Plymouth Argyle, who are trumped again by “horrendously sad” Bristol Rovers.

“Incredibly devastating” might be over-the-top, you’d imagine, but equally, you don’t want to get caught, like Norwich City did, simply describing it as “this time”, because then how will anyone know that you’re actually sorry? 

Losing a child is tough in a way that is unimaginable to most people, and community is a crucial ingredient to getting through it. But, to me, the sheer volume of these public displays of support is kind of funny. Where are they coming from, really? 

Brands can’t feel. The moose which adorns the Watford badge might, at a push, might be capable of sympathy, but I’m not sure the Rotherham windmill could express anything of much use to a father in grief. When I scroll through the pages and pages of heartfelt responses, I don’t see the people of these clubs, united in support, security hand in hand with HR officers and board executives, heads bowed in respect. I only see the sports media grads in club-branded tracksuits panicking at their keyboards.

Baby bereavement isn’t on the average daily agenda of a football club media assistant, but the joy of working in social media is that if you’re unsure on the best practice, you can have a butchers at someone else’s work — switching it up subtly, of course, so as to avoid suggestions of copy and paste. It probably is true that what is publicly shared represents the general feeling at each club, but en masse the repetition of the formula, with all its cute variations, erodes the sincerity of the message. 

You know what else is silly? The concept of a mandatory gesture of warmth. If 23-year-old Leeds Beckett Sports Journalism MA graduate Matt doesn’t post a message of support on the Milton Keynes official account “at this time”, he will be hearing about it at his next performance review. Perhaps football clubs are also doing things privately to put their arm around Manning, but regard for the image of a brand jars in the context of a man grieving an infant. 

It was really refreshing, then, to read Luton Town’s impassioned, emotional response to the continued racial abuse of striker Elijah Adebayo. 

By contrast, statements on racism are sadly a regular part of a club media guy’s day-to-day, so rife does discrimination remain in football. Official responses tend to be tedious, banal, constrained by an inflammatory topic that could go WOOF with the use of the wrong words. This is a serious subject, so we’ll keep it brief and impersonal to remind you that we take it seriously. Usually, it goes like this: 

The club has been notified that someone has done a racism. The police has been notified and the strongest possible action will be taken against the person that did a racism. The club condemns racism and will not tolerate people doing racism at this club.

Perhaps the facts are all we need, since we already know racism is bad, right? 

Sure, it might go some way to assure minorities by making them vaguely aware of the ‘efforts’ the club is making to protect them, but if the mere notification that a club is ‘taking things seriously’ were enough to make racists stop and think, then the churn of these bland cookie-cutter anti-racism statements would have stopped long ago. 

It’s like the Liam Manning condolences. Or the odd sensation of repeating your own name over and over again. When you say the same thing enough times, it eventually loses its meaning. 

No one is expecting statements about racist fans to be jolly, all jazz hands and adjectives. But there is a way of treating a matter seriously without draining all of the life out of it — and doing things differently causes people to pay attention.

“Is it ever going to stop?” is the kind of headline pensioners give posts moaning about high street roadworks in community Facebook groups, but Luton Town have a right to use it, a cause to feel helpless with frustration. 

One year after abusive messages were sent to Elijah Adebayo on social media, causing Town to make a statement which said, “we have had enough of saying enough is enough”, it happened again — and this time, the media officer consulted even less of the PR guide to racism before responding publicly: 

To the individual who cowardly dropped into Elijah’s DMs: We know who you are and you know who you are. You’re not a faceless account, one which we have sadly become accustomed to reporting in recent years.

But as if you have the balls to come to Kenilworth Road and say it to his face. We dare you. If you do, you’ll be faced with everyone at Luton Town Football Club, standing side-by-side with Elijah.

It’s powerful stuff. Part Liam Neeson, part Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, the writer bucks the trend and lends some emotion to their condemnation, and for once, when they say they’ll stand with the player, I really believe them. 

Why shouldn’t we be direct and strong in our threats toward racists? Time and again, football clubs have promised they’ll do everything they possibly can to stop racism and, frankly, racists probably think that’s funny. Hopefully others will follow Luton Town’s example, because it’s difficult to laugh when you’re scared. 

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