True cost to Terry will come after he quits game

Once more, Ron Atkinson must ruefully ponder his terminal exile from football since the day racist nonsense tumbled out of his mouth in the privacy of a largely deserted gantry position in Monaco.

A four-match stretch for John Terry? It would seem that the FA, in the business longer than Cadbury, have produced yet another fudge.

Luis Suarez must surely have thrown his head back and fallen over at the news. But then Emmanuel Frimpong and Rio Ferdinand, who respectively tweeted thoughtlessly about yids and choc ices recently, will be thankful to have received no ban at all. If consistency from the FA appears an elusive idyll — how many people have been charged for shouting at a camera since Wayne Rooney — it will be interesting to learn Chelsea’s final response to the FA verdict, not likely to come until after Terry has exhausted any appeal possibilities. Remember how the club expediently sacked Adrian Mutu, ostensibly to underline its zero tolerance policy towards drugs? A comparable line on racism will now be tested, since Terry remains rather more useful to them, though perhaps not as much as he once was. It might be that Terry doesn’t discover the true implications of this verdict until after he finishes playing. An opinionated former England captain might have been expected to enjoy a long, high-profile second career in the media. But, much like Big Ron discovered, a stain like this won’t be easily wiped away by a month on the sidelines.