Paddy Power Link Scuppers Stonewall’s Anti-Homophobic Bootlace Event

Stonewall have plans for this weekend to show support for gay footballers by professional wearing rainbow coloured laces. These bootlaces have been sent to all 134 professional football clubs in the UK. In kicking this off Stonewall Deputy Chief Executive Laura Doughty said-

It’s time for football clubs and players to step up and make a visible stand against homophobia in our national game. That’s why we’re working with Paddy Power on this fun and simple campaign. By wearing rainbow laces players will send a message of support to gay players and can begin to drag football in to the 21st century.

The problem comes with the sponsorship of this event by Paddy Power. The Football League is now sponsored by Sky Bet, and any promotion of another betting company by Clubs and players will cause problems with the new Sky Bet sponsorship deal.

Discussing this with Exeter City, players are free to wear the laces, and they’re available to them to collect from the Cat & Fiddle training ground. It’s a real pity that further publicity can’t be given to this by the Club, as recent events has brought the issue of homophobic abuse in to general debate and this would have been a great opportunity for the Club to re-affirm it commitment to equality for gay players and supporters. The Club have said:-

We actively support and involve ourselves in anti-discriminatory activity through our One Game One Community group and our association with Kick It Out, and we continue to be proactive with specifically anti-homophobic messages through the Justin Campaign and Football v Homophobia. Our Football in the Community charity has ‘social inclusion’ as one of its four key components (along with sports participation, health and education) which tackles discriminatory behaviour through a number of programmes.

We are pleased that a number of our players have been proactive with anti-homophobic activity in recent years including John O’Flynn (who has run training sessions for the Devon Lions – who were our guests at our last OGOC day) and Guillem Bauza who spoke strongly in support of the Football v Homophobia campaign. Artur Krysiak has also recently been appointed as our new OGOC ambassador.

As to the Football V Homophobic campaign, they’re not happy with Paddy Power either. In particular the language used. This is their comments on their website:-

Football v Homophobia was invited by Paddy Power to be a part of the campaign in its early stages. Whilst supporting the overall aims of the initiative, we did not feel comfortable with some aspects of the language and tone, and so felt that we did not wish to take our involvement any further. However, we welcome the opportunity for further discussion and debate around some of the issues of language raised by the campaign.

Our discomfort is with the reliance on sexualised innuendo and stereotypes about gay men and anal sex, as exemplified by the tag line ‘Right Behind Gay Players’. As an initiative with a strong focus on education, we feel it is incongruous to run a campaign aiming to change football culture whilst using language which reinforces the very stereotypes and caricatures that, in the long term, ensure that homophobia persists. There is a long history, perhaps best captured by the infamous Robbie Fowler incident, whereby anal sex has been the focus of homophobic abuse in the sport.

It’ll be interesting to see what footballers will wear the laces. The event (stunt?) could be positive for the image of football in general if the laces are worn, and anything that helps open up the debate is to be welcome.