‘Progress has been made since Wright was booed at The Den’

Sport England board member Chris Grant believes the progress made since he saw Ian Wright heavily booed by home fans at an England B match 31 years ago shows that racial injustice within sport can be tackled and decreased further over the coming decades.

Grant, a member of the Sport England board since September 2016, is hoping the momentum built up in tackling racial injustice throughout 2020 will continue into next year and beyond.

He spoke to Sky Sports News on Thursday, as the five UK sports councils announced the latest steps in their Tackling Racism and Racial Inequality in Sport initiative.

“My hope is that this doesn’t fade away,” Grant said. “The big fear for a lot of us has been that this would fade away in the autumn and that people would turn their attention elsewhere.

“So, my first hope for next year is that people keep the attention on these areas.”

Grant recalls his experience of watching striker Ian Wright face severe racial abuse as England B took on Yugoslavia at Millwall’s stadium in December 1989.

The memory was particularly poignant for Grant having watched a section of Millwall fans boo at The Den last weekend as players took a knee in support of the fight against racial injustice before their Championship match against Derby.

Three days later, Millwall fans applauded as their players remained standing and QPR players took a knee ahead of their Championship fixture.

Both sets of players also linked arms and held aloft a banner which read ‘Inequality’ with the ‘In’ crossed out, as a show of solidarity against racism and other social injustices, while Millwall also wore Kick It Out’s logo on their matchday shirts in place of one of their main sponsors.

“In two days’ time, it will be the 31st anniversary of me going to the old Den… in December 1989 a certain Ian Wright made his debut for England B.

“He was a (Crystal) Palace player then, I’m a Palace fan and it just happened to be at the old Den and I went because he was a hero of mine.

“It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I went to the Den, as a Palace fan and as a black Palace fan, and it really did feel as if Wright and I were the only two black people.

“There were 8,500 people showed up that night and he got booed every time he kicked the ball.

“And I think if you look at what’s happened in terms of representation, certainly in the men’s England squad, things are a million miles away from there, and I think if people saw what had happened that night at the Den, they’d be really shocked.

“Some of the things we are talking about will take 10 or 20 or 30 years to change, but they will change, and I think from a UK success point of view we need them to change because we can’t afford to keep excluding people on the basis of their colour, we can’t afford to keep booing people because they’re standing up for their rights.”

The chief executives of UK Sport, Sport England, sportscotland, Sport Wales and Sport Northern Ireland have joined forces to tackle racism and racial inequalities across their nations by developing a collective plan to help build a sporting community that is properly reflective of the societies they represent

The latest step in that on Thursday was the launch of their #TellYourStory campaign, asking people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities to share their knowledge and understanding of accessing, being involved in, or being excluded from sport.

Meanwhile, the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University has been appointed to bring together existing data on race and ethnicity in sport to identify gaps within these records, gain greater insight into participation and progression barriers.

Both pieces of work will make clear recommendations for change that the Sports Councils can take forward.

“What I’m seeing behind the scenes, in the Olympic and Paralympic arena and in football and other areas is that people are – they’re pulling together their plans, they’re doing their research, they’re going to continue coming out with their plans and actions,” Grant said.

“So UK Sport and the home nations sports council have said that when they’ve conducted these reviews, early in 2021 around March time, they’ll be putting out the results and telling the nations what they’re going to be doing, so I want to see that action happening.

“What I also want is an acknowledgement that we’re in this for the long haul – we’re dealing with decades, actually if not centuries of discrimination.”

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