Football v Homophobia

Talking of pride at Orient....


As football tries to restore its reputation in the aftermath of the Luis Suarez affair, The Justin Campaign has been attempting to highlight another prejudice in football. Its annual Football v Homophobia week has probably attracted more attention than ever before this year, in no small part thanks to the Suarez incident and the media's sudden appetite for snaring footballers guilty of any kind of prejudice. And it is an issue that is linked to Orient in conflicting ways.

The Justin Campaign is of course named after the one openly gay footballer in the English game, Justin Fashanu. When Fashanu signed for Leyton Orient and I met him in the Brisbane Road gym / press room, it was the first time I had knowingly met a gay man and I only knew that because it was made such a big deal of. Shortly afterwards I was also introduced to homophobia for the first time. I was 14 and knew what homosexuality was but I hadn't thought about it very much and didn't think that anyone did either. But when Fashanu was at the club it seemed to be all some people could think about. It started with little jokes, not even jokes really, just sniggers and knowing nods at the mention of his name. However, it went on to 'serious' conjecture about him unsettling the dressing room. I couldn't figure out why until it was explained just how risky it was letting a gay man anywhere near other men in a changing room, or even worse, in the showers. And it wasn't just that he wouldn't be able to control himself but that he'd also risk spreading AIDS. This was explained to me by fans in all seriousness, without malice, just incredible ignorance.

If anyone wants to believe that racism in football has waned since the 80s but homophobia hasn't changed at all should look at attitudes around our club now. Lee Steele is an Orient legend - you can count the number of strikers who have fired the Os to promotion on one hand. Yet when Steelo was sacked by Oxford City for a homophobic tweet about Gareth Thomas, the general feeling amongst Orient fans who expressed their opinions on the message board and on Twitter was one of disappointment in their hero. There was debate about whether the punishment was excessive and whether it would be the same if he played for a professional team. But few sought to defend his comments or his right to make them, which is quite a statement considering that people are often blinded when it comes to their heroes. Society has changed and the attitudes of a lot of football fans have changed with it, hero or not.

No one has followed Justin Fashanu out of the closet in this country and the experiences of one straight player widely assumed to be gay go a long way to explaining why. Graeme Le Saux faced vitriolic abuse for rumours started in the Chelsea dressing room about his sexuality, based on the fact he read the Guardian rather than The Sun and spent his holiday travelling Europe with Ken Monkou and Erland Johnson rather than Shaggaluf with 'the lads'. Was this just dressing room banter that he was expected to join in with to be accepted as some people think? Le Saux has named Paul Ince as someone who would taunt him and claim afterwards it meant nothing and was simply aimed at putting an opponent off his game, which was, in his view, fair enough. But when Le Saux did the same and insulted 'the Guvnor's' wife Ince confronted Le Saux after the game and had to be pulled away. Just two years ago gave an interview saying he still wanted to "knock [Le Saux] out". Apparently there is a line in the sand, which includes race and family (and I daresay someone questioning one’s own sexuality) but doesn't include homosexuality. Le Saux spent his whole career on the receiving end of torrents of often vitriolic abuse. If that is the experience of someone who wasn’t even gay it is frightening to think what it would be like for someone who was.

Surveys and censuses have suggested that anything between 5% and 15% of the UK population are gay. So the theory goes, that must mean that ratio is replicated amongst footballers. This ignores the fact that Asians make up 4% of the UK population and to my knowledge there have been one or two Asian footballers in the English leagues in recent years? It is entirely believable that no sane gay man would seek a football career when faced with having to hide who he was if he was to be at all successful. Are we happy at the thought that young kids feel they have to walk away from a sport they love because at the same time that they are beginning to show promise they are also beginning to understand their sexuality? Even if that doesn't bother you morally, has it failed to escape anyone’s notice that there isn't enough talent in our national game to be able to afford to simply write off circa 10% of the male population of the country?

Inside the dressing room players are always going to find something to take the mickey out of, be it their team mates' dress sense, taste in music or hairstyle. Twitter users this week discovered that Alex Revell remains endlessly amused about the size of Lee Butcher's nipples! Since Russell Slade became our manager we've seen what can be done with a squad that is engendered with team spirit and a desire to play for each other. Time is spent at all clubs on team building exercises that ensure that everyone buys into the team ethic, ensuring that the dressing room is lively AND inclusive. A player or group of players who create discord or cliques in a dressing room are a manager's worst nightmare. Anyone who is made to feel like a stranger or an outsider isn't going to have the desire to fight with his team 'mates' in the face of adversity.

Experience has shown that what starts as a bit of banter about someone’s sexuality, leads to singling out of players for continual abuse, from opponents and fans, every single week. When a joke that is meant to be harmless is exactly the same type of joke that someone uses to attack and persecute someone, it takes on far greater significance and meaning and it stops being funny at all. There isn't a club in the country that would dare not be a part of the Kick Racism Out Of Football campaign and as the Football v Homophobia campaign gathers momentum it will hopefully attract the same attention*. It needs to because nasty, tribal abuse (which the media like to mask as ‘passion’) lacking any wit or imagination is still too prevalent inside football grounds. Too often it includes homophobic language. It would be nice to think that eventually a gay footballer could be entirely open about his life without fear of attracting abuse but won't have to come out publically because it is so unremarkable that it has become a non-issue.

Link:



www.thejustincampaign.com/

*The media made much of the fact that The Justin Campaign wrote to all professional clubs asking them to do something to mark Football v Homophobia week and only a few clubs responded. I don’t think it is correct to make a sweeping generalisation without knowing more about who they wrote to, when and what they asked clubs to do. I e-mailed the Justin Campaign but unfortunately they were unable to respond before I wrote this. As more clubs became aware of the campaign this week they did respond positively by agreeing to wear t-shirts during their warm ups and so on.

The Orient Family

People often talk about fans being the lifeblood of football clubs. Usually this is in terms of numbers - big clubs fallen on hard times are still big clubs because thousands still support them. Big Premiership clubs who fail to make an impact in the Champions League are still considered global powers because of the amount of shirts they sell in the Far East and beyond. Premiership also rans are respected because their home grounds are still filled with fans who sing for 90 minutes and make them difficult places for the Top 4 to visit. The identity of clubs is based on such superficial things.

When people talk about football and the community at lower league clubs they are referring to outreach schemes, clubs running training sessions for kids and visiting hospitals and schools. A number of clubs make an impact in their wider communities, the majority of whom will probably never be regular attendees at games. But no one ever talks about the community that is the club itself on a Saturday afternoon. On the surface a few thousand strangers attend games each week, spending a couple of hours together in the cold before going back to their lives. But the shared experience of suffering disappointment together, of winning against the expectations of everyone else, of supporting a team that half of your friends haven't heard of and the other half think are a waste of time binds strangers together. For two hours you are among people who are a little bit like you, who understand why you are there, why it means so much and why being there isn't a decision, it is just who you are and what you do.

Leyton Orient pulls people together and those people define what the club stands for more than any player, official or reporter. The club's ethics are determined by the collective will of the majority of the club's fans, sometimes in association with the club and sometimes independent of it. We want to be proud of our club and so we demand that on and off the pitch the club reflects our values. In that way the club represents us.

Orient's history isn't just about the lack of trophies we've won, the play off finals we've lost and glorious failures that Manchester United fans could only dream of. It is about people who have grown up at Brisbane Road, attending their first games as kids, loving Orient being the one trait they are willing to be proud to admit to having inherited from their parents. We meet friends here, from people we are on no more than nodding terms with to those who end up being god parents to kids who are signed up to the Junior Os / Theo's Gang within days of their birth.

The fabric of the club is the stories we tell about our times spent at Orient and about the characters we have encountered, about people who were once young fans even though we've never seen them with a hair on their head and about people no longer with us. Players, officials and fans are immortalised here and are never forgotten because people remember and talk about them. In recent years we've seen Remembrance Day services for ex-players Richard McFadden, William Jonas and George Scott and steward Robert Foster. Pages in the programme have been filled with tributes to people who were as much a part of the match day experience as hearing someone say 'typical Orient' at the first misplaced pass. And fans have paid their own tributes to friends they have lost like Dale Jacobs with fund raising events to help keep their memory alive. Hopefully rarely these people are our close friends or even family but often we won't have known most of these people personally. Occasionally we'd know them a little, we'd say hello each time we saw them but couldn't say we truly knew them. But there is a common bond that makes us feel like we did know them because they are all a little bit like us - they loved Orient, they'd heard all the same jokes we had, the stories we hear about them are 'typically Orient' and they'd been part of a communal celebration on rare nights of success. We feel a loss because wish we'd met them and known them better because we are sure we'd have liked them. It makes us feel a little prouder to be an Orient fan and a little more determined to carry it on.

A particular branch of the Orient community resides on Twitter. It is a network of people we've known for years, people we'd lost touch with and people we'd never come across before. Every opinion on Orient and every expression of joy or disappointment is shared with the rest of the community in a short message. A number of us have met each other as a result of twitter, watched games together or stopped and chatted outside the ground. Others haven't but chat regularly in 140 characters or less. Each weekend and on the occasional Tuesday evening we bombard each other with opinions about the team. The rest of the time we all get to know a little about each other, as football gives way to the rest of our day to day existence.

Last week a family's loss of a young daughter was also felt by a small community of people who also felt like they knew her well. One can only imagine what Martin and Ross Kerwood and their family are going through as they come to terms with losing their daughter/sister Jenny so suddenly and right now they are in the thoughts of every Orient fan who knows them. Everyone who came to know @jennyk5 through twitter was stunned when they read the awful news on Friday and through the evening and weekend a large number of fans chose Twitter to express their feelings about someone who was a big part of the Orient twitter community.

Everyone who had spoken to Jenny found her to be extremely bright, passionate about the Os and she always had something insightful to say about the team. Though she loved Orient just as much as her family she obviously loved football generally and when she wasn't talking about Orient (or Eastenders) she was talking about heading out to play football on a Sunday morning, regardless of the weather. I gather from the odd thing she said here and there that she also wanted to be a sports journalist. She came across as someone with boundless enthusiasm, determination and ambition and yet was still a kind and considerate person who left plenty of room in her life for other people, especially her family and friends. Her family have said how proud they were of Jenny and it is clear from all of the messages I have seen we were just as proud that she was a part of the Orient community and she always will be.

Don't Wanna Be Home

As Orient succumbed to their eighth home league defeat of the season a number of fans will have looked in the back of their programmes to count up the 9 away games we have left, compared to just 7 home fixtures. After a 3-1 home defeat eerily reminiscent of the surrender to Oldham in September everyone is left to wonder exactly why Orient seem unable to perform at home, grateful that we have enough away games to avoid slipping down the table. Considering some of the performances that have been dished up, fans have been remarkably loyal and haven't been on the players' backs. You don't sense edginess and doubt amongst fans either because quite often we are going into games off the back of decent away wins. Not enough for soaring expectations, just a positive feeling around the place. And yet on too many occasions the team has come out completely flat.

Today started no differently but Scunthorpe were almost a mirror image of the Os and slowly but surely the home team took control of the game. However, despite dominating possession Orient failed to create very much with it, largely because they couldn't get the ball to Dean Cox. Getting frustrated Cox resorted to coming infield searching for the ball but when he got it he was in no possession to use it. When he laid it off to someone else they would look for Cox on the left flank - and of course he wasn't there.

Scunthorpe were combative and were tasked to compete for every ball and whilst they won the physical battles they were unable to retain possession having done so. This lead to the breakthrough, a succession of challenges drawing Cox's markers towards the ball and leaving him one on one with the full back. Channelling his frustration and determined to make the most of having the ball at his feet on the wing Cox charged inside and put a cross straight onto the head of Jonathan Tehoue to open the scoring. The goal led to the Os enjoying even more possession but still the chances didn't come. Still there was every reason to be confident because as lacklustre as Orient were, Scunthorpe had failed to respond to going a goal down and showed no sign of doing so.

That all changed in the second half as Scunthorpe came out looking like they had Orient just where they wanted them, with the home side reduced to little more than observers. The pressure they were able to exert led to Josh Walker volleying an equaliser past a statuesque defence and Russell Slade tried to spark some life into the team by replacing Taiwo with George Porter. It had little effect on Orient's ability to attack with any purpose but the Os looked even more vulnerable defending without Taiwo harassing Scunthorpe's midfield. Sure enough 5 minutes from the end ex-O Andy Barcham poked home a winner. To rub salt in the wound Jon Parkin scored a third, Lee Butcher seriously injuring himself in the process. Having juggled a cross Butcher appeared to land awkwardly and sustained a knee injury, spilling the ball straight to Parkin. Time will tell how bad it is but it is unfortunate for Butcher who had been getting better all of the time. It was a fitting end to a miserable afternoon.

There were some bright points - Ryan Dickson was the most willing to meet the physical challenge, Soloman Taiwo was energetic and wanted the ball all over the pitch and Scott Cuthbert showed that not all Scottish goalkeepers are suspect. But Russell Slade has to find a way to bring the team out of their shells at home because we are being contained too easily by visiting sides and it has cost us the opportunity to mount a play off challenge.

Loan Window

As the saying goes, when God closes a window he opens another window. The loan window is less sexy than January's transfer window. You don't get groups of scallies trying to get on Sky Sports News at the news that Plymouth are signing Ipswich's third choice right back on a months contract. But for clubs like Orient it is the loan market that can make or break their season because mid season 'free transfers' like Dean Leacock don't come along every day. Nor do statements from Barry Hearn like 'we're prepared to pay whatever it takes to get into the play offs', which I think is actually a goodthing. Watching the way Bournemouth are throwing money around for players they could get for free within months, with no guarantee of success in the short period that the benefactor is in love with his new plaything makes me fear for their future.

Russell Slade has already moved early to fill the two most obvious holes in the squad. Ryan Dickson comes in from Southampton to take the left back position, already successfully inhabited by Charlie Daniels, Tony Craig and Adam Chicksen this season. Soloman Taiwo is a supposed replacement for Stephen Dawson. If he was that good then Barnsley would have signed Taiwo on loan and picked up Dawson for free at the end of the season. I look forward to seeing what he offers us but we probably need to temper our expectations a little.

So what other signings does Russ need to make if we are to finish the season strongly? Lee Cook is the one player we have been linked with and it is an exciting thought. But it is hard to see where he would fit into the team. Cox has to be our first choice winger. Cook is the better player (which isn't a slight on Cox at all) but there is no point displacing the best player we have and upsetting him in the process. The Chesterfield game showed that Cox isn't effective when he plays off the wing and from watching Cook I'm not sure he'd be any better if they swapped the positions they took up in that game. Cook's game was all about beating a player, creating half a yard for a cross, I can't seem him playing up front and running into the channels.

The wage money could be better spent on a right back and a striker. The right back position has been even more of a revolving door than left back this season. Recently Terrell Forbes has been doing a decent job there but I've never been comfortable relying on a centre back out of position for too long - teams suss them out pretty quickly. With no right winger we need someone who can get up and down that flank to balance the midfield and support the strikers and although he did well against 10-man Charlton Forbes really isn't that player. Leon McSweeney has done nothing wrong in that position either and would be my first choice of the current options. But with the loss of Dawson I would rather use him in midfield, which is after all his natural position.

Spring has been outstanding in the last two months and Jimmy Smith's ability to score goals from midfield is hugely undervalued. That leaves someone to do the dirty work. Laird is still struggling to find some consistency and Taiwo is, as yet, an unknown quantity. I would prefer the option of playing McSweeney there because he has proved all season that he is willing to role up his sleeves and get stuck in.

First choice strikers Lisbie and Mooney have been satisfactory this season but both would probably agree there has also been room for improvement. They couldn't ask for more than having Dean Cox creating chances for them and both have been guilty of squandering opportunities. Like Smith, I think Mooney gets a bit of a raw deal from supporters but if he had reached double figures by now we might be higher up the table. There seems to be no downside in bringing in someone capable of hitting the target who is currently wasting his abilities in the reserve team of a Premiership or even Championship club. It'll give him first team experience and we might just pick up a gem for three months and if it doesn't work out Lisbie and Mooney are doing enough to prevent us getting into serious trouble, scoring goals here and there. Harry Kane made a useful contribution last year, we just struggled when forced to rely on him because of injuries and fatigue.

Beyond that there isn't a lot wrong with the squad and we can have one eye on the summer when we can make longer term improvements. Injuries may mean we need to bring in short term cover but such is our lot, we can't afford to be paying the wages of a player who ends up sitting on the bench for the whole season. We've lost a lot of players over the last 12 months for a variety of reasons. The fact that Slade has continued to field a team that can compete in a league that has a number of teams in it that have resources we can only dream of deserves some recognition.

January Review

Orient's form in January was more up and down than Stevenage/Preston's 'passing' game. A real hotchpot of results saw the Os finish 9th in the form table for the month - a position no one should realistically be too upset about finishing in at the end of the season. To finish any higher we have to be capable of teams not manager by Graham Westley - although given his start as Preston manager and the unveiling of star signing Aaron Brown , one of our genuine rejects, he could be looking for his third job in 2012 before the season is out.

Perceptions are interesting because fans were most disappointed with the home draw against Chesterfield, who have actually had something of a revival this month. That draw was off the back of a celebrated win away at Preston - who have been terrible. With hindsight he most disappointing result has to be the home defeat to Colchester, who looked ordinary and their form in January has suggested as much. What we've really learned is that, not for the first time, the Os are stronger away from home. Sure, get too close to Scotland and we get stuffed but 2 away wins out of 3 isn't too shabby. 1 point at home is going to get the natives restless.

But since the blessed introduction of the transfer window, January is usually when fans look to their signings rather than their results as an indicator for how their team will fare in the run in. It stokes up unreasonable expectations, firstly that you MUST sign someone in January. Furthermore, you now must sign someone on deadline day, or at least the day before, if you are a club to be taken seriously. Timing meant the general consensus was that January was a disaster for Orient, as skipper Stephen Dawson left for Barnsley on deadline day and we weren't able to sign a player in a similar mould to replace him. Thank God Dean Cox has signed an extended contract. The signing of Dean Leacock is another positive sign that the Os are evolving rather than regressing. He looks assured and has been fit enough to play 90 minutes straight away. If he can avoid injury then he could be a better signing than Adam Chambers, a similar transfer that Orient were only able to complete due to a shocking injury record over the previous few seasons.

It's not just the loss of a tireless midfielder that will impact the Os for the rest of the season though, it is the loss of a genuine captain. This weekend the John Terry debate has moved onto "Is a captain important"? In my view a successful dressing room has a combination of personalities. Calm/reason, inspirational, friend and motivational. Taking into consideration the personality of the team you need the right balance between the manager, coaching staff and captain (or senior players more generally). Before the promotion season in 2005/6 the Os were slightly unbalanced. Martin Ling was calm and reasonable but slightly aloof and you certainly couldn't imagine him as passionate. His assistant Ian Culverhouse was by all accounts (including Ling's) a ranter but too much so for a coach and he alienated the players. We had a revolving door of skippers, most of the model pros, setting an example without actually being a leader of men.

Ling got rid of Culverhouse, brought ex-captain Dean Smith in and then signed John Mackie. Mackie was a similar character to Culverhouse but because he was one of them the players accepted him and followed him. Smith was there as someone the players could talk to, who would part an arm round the players if they needed it. He would instil self confidence by expressing his belief in players and backing them all the way, with Mackie kicking anyone up the backside if they tried to take advantage of Smith's good nature. The balance was absolutely crucial to the Os success. When Mackie left Ling was either unable or unwilling to sign someone with a personality as big as Mackie's and the team was rudderless as a result.

Similarly Dawson has been just as an important part of Orient's success over the last 18 months. He appears to be a similar character to Slade who is an unusually rounded manager, capable of being all things to all men. But Dawson is the one who takes that personality out onto the pitch, who sets the example and the standard for his team mates to follow. Orient were never beaten in a game until 90 minutes were up because Dawson didn't believe he was beaten and didn't give up . And if he didn't give up he wouldn't let any of the other players give up. Dawson imposed his personality on the team and it was needed because he was unique - he taught others how to be a model pro (aside from fairly frequent dissent!) and what they can achieve by doing so. There are some players in the current squad who didn't need to learn that lesson - particularly the two vice-captains, Chorley and Spring. But do either of them have the force of personality to impose that on the rest of the team? Do either of them have that sheer belief and self confidence that in times of adversity they won't be looking for a leader, they will BE that leader? I think Chorley is the stronger character of the two but not to the same extent as Dawson - and he isn't even first choice centre back at the moment.

Orient are going to have to finish the season with a key component missing and their success will depend on just how they they can paper over the cracks. But this summer, regardless of what positions we need to fill Russell Slade is going to have to find someone who can assume the captaincy. Dawson has left not only big boots to fill but a big armband too.