Michael Sherlock: ‘He said ‘knacker’ and he put up his hands and he was shadow boxing me’

By Owen Ryan

Four travellers who had been playing soccer for North Clare club, Sporting Ennistymon, have quit the sport following numerous incidences of racist abuse.

Figures in the club have voiced annoyance at the abuse directed at the quartet, which became increasingly frequent since the start of the season.

Twenty-four-year-old Michael Sherlock had played for the club along with his brothers Edward and Patrick, as well as their cousin Martin Mongan.

He said that in recent months opponents had increasingly sought to insult their background.

“We go out and play and you have fellas saying into your ear ‘go away you knacker’. When we react, the referee doesn’t do anything to the other party.”

Earlier this year he was sent off in a match after reacting to an opponent who referred to him as a “knacker”.

The opposition player went unpunished.

“A fella goes ‘you knacker’.” I reacted, I went head to head with him, I didn’t hit him or anything like that. He said ‘knacker’ and he put up his hands and he was shadow boxing me. I didn’t do anything back.

“He said it again, the referee saw this and he just turned around and smiled. Then I reacted, I raised my foot, I didn’t touch him, I raised my foot, but there were lads between us. The referee came over and he gave me a straight red card. He told me to get off and I said ‘did you not see what the other person did, he raised his hands at me, he was giving me racist comments’. He said he didn’t see it.”

In another match played at the Fair Green in Ennis, he was again the target of anti- Traveller abuse.

“I was literally on the pitch about five minutes. I got the same type of comment again, ‘go away you fucking knacker’. I reacted, I didn’t hit anyone, but I started shouting and stuff. The referee came over and told me to calm down. I said ‘no, I won’t’. It’s hard to calm down when I’m getting racist comments thrown at me constantly. I said that he called me a knacker. He said ‘take a deep breath, take 10 seconds and pretend it never happened, pretend you never heard it.’”

Michael said he opted to leave the game that day. “I walked off the pitch myself, I didn’t even get carded or anything. I just walked off and that was the last game I went to.”

Sherlock accepts that things are said in the heat of battle but that these comments cross the line — “There’s always going to be a few words in a match, and what happens on the pitch stays on the pitch, but passing those comments is going a little bit too far.”

Michael believes he, his brothers and his cousin were less likely to be awarded frees than other players, while he says racist comments directed at people on the basis of their skin colour wouldn’t be tolerated, but that anti-Traveller statements are accepted.

“If a referee knew of a black person getting racist comments, there’d be a sending off. When its us they don’t want to believe it, they’re only telling us to forget about it, pretend you never heard about it. They’re not even saying about it in their reports. It makes you not want to play when you’re getting that abuse every week.”

He says the abuse was becoming more common, as the word got around among other clubs, leading to his decision to leave the game. “There’s no point in keeping going back and getting abused and getting sent off every week. You’re costing the club money. You go out to play soccer for fun, a bit of craic, not to get snide comments. They know what they’re doing, they know by passing that comment they’ll get you to react.”

One of the four received a long suspension earlier this season, for an unrelated offence, when he was sent off following a verbal altercation with a referee.

Keith Flynn was over the club’s B team which the four were playing on but has left the role quite recently. Having brought the four players through from underage to adult level, he is angry and disappointed that they have left the game in such circumstances. However, he says he understands their position.

“There’s only so much of it you can take.”

He criticised the Clare League saying that they haven’t tackled the issue, while he also feels Sporting Ennistymon should have brought it further.

On one day last year, both Sporting Ennistymon A and B sides were playing matches on the same day at the same venue, and during an altercation involving the A side, one opposing player made a comment, the like of which has become common this year. “People went in to break up a melee and one of the players from the other club said ‘ye’re only a shower of fucking Travellers’ to me. I wanted the referee to put that into his report. He didn’t put it into his report. We reported it to the Clare League and they made out to us that nothing could be done about it because it wasn’t in the official’s report.”

None of the four were on the pitch at that time, but they were nearby, preparing to play for the B team.

Club treasurer Eddie Crowe said: “If something like this is driving people away from sport, its incumbent on all involved to not let it happen, whether its the referees, the team management, or the organisers of the league.”

Secretary of the Clare District Soccer League Michael Lydon declined to comment when approached on Wednesday.