Martin Smith Column: Racism rears its ugly head in our beautiful game yet again - we need to confront the issue

Where next?

It could be any ground, any time because racism and racists are pretty much everywhere.

Not in huge numbers, but enough to make a difference.

They won’t be wearing swastikas or BNP badges or showing any outward sign of their inner darkness, most of the time.

It’s more complicated than that.

It’s that bloke, perhaps normally sound, who you roll your eyes at and look away or even smile indulgently when he goes off on one.

He or she is mostly likeable but occasionally vile, especially in competitive situations.

The one who goes too far, who might sing about Hillsborough, Munich or the Bradford fire.

The one who bears their bitterness like a badge of pride.

In the manufactured heat of football’s trumped-up rivalries and commodified hate, this hardcore show is offered as a demonstration of a deeper loyalty to their own cause.

In different times following the Second World War some, mostly men, would watch United one week and Wednesday the next, likewise City and United, Forest and County etc.

That was a society scarred by war, rationing and the realisation that race and political hate led eventually to Treblinka and Auschwitz and the Gulags of the Soviet Union.

Football was fun, a release from the working week.

Of course there weren’t many black or foreign players in Britain then either.

But that was a time when landlords were able to greet potential tenants with signs like: ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ in this city.

Racism was arguably more ingrained then than it is now.

But it didn’t manifest itself at football matches, racial issues were not played out in a practically all-white football league.

Now in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic football landscape it does.

By the time the part-time racist has had a few pints in football’s almost-anything-goes bear-pit atmosphere he or she can lose control.

In 1984 The Specials song Racist Friend said we should confront mates with bigoted views: ‘now is the time for your friendship to end.’

It can be very difficult to challenge someone that you like most of the time.

In that Specials song there is the line: "If you don't confront it, you will regret it, I can assure you that much.”

It appears that we aren’t confronting it enough.