Lydia Johnson on: Racism - Kick it out of everything, not just football (From Hereford Times)

Lydia Johnson on: Racism - Kick it out of everything, not just football

12:10pm Friday 26th October 2012 in Lydia Johnson On...? By Lydia Johnson

Burghill Rangers' Adam Price (England), Nick Coldea (Romania), Lukaz Bodziarczyk (Poland), Neil McLaren (Fiji), Kiko Azzam (Egypt) and Morris Sibanda (Zimbabwe) line up for the camera.

I AM not a huge sport fan, as anyone who knows me will tell you.

But when I heard about footballers boycotting their team shirts to push the Professional Footballers Association to do more to fight racism in the game, I couldn’t think of anything better to write about.

This news goes hand-in-hand with the news that Burghill Rangers refer to themselves as the ‘ultimate community club’ – proud that a number of their players come from countries such as Poland, Romania, Zimbabwe and Egypt.

It’s amazing really that players even have to boycott their shirts, or that a campaign to ‘Kick Racism Out Of Football’ even has to exist, but it does.

With so many incidents of racism in football recently – the John Terry incident, and the abuse of England Under-21s defender Danny Rose by fans in Krusevac, Serbia – it’s obviously an issue.

It’s hard to understand how someone can think they’re better than someone else because their skin colour differs from their own, or they’re from a different country.

There will for many years to come be various creases to iron out in society, and not just in the UK, and of course not just in sport – racism is just one of them. But football is a good start.

So how about we all try talking to someone, or getting to know a person, before we judge them because of their nationality or the colour of their skin.