“One of the nicest and most gracious men in football” – how Adebayo Akinfenwa took on English football’s vilest chant

MK Dons fans did not invent the ‘sex offender’ chant.

I have heard it from three different sets of away fans in the last week. Even Harry the Hornet, a children’s mascot, was subject to it at Vicarage Road. I should add because I covered the Canaries’ visit there that Norwich City and Burnley fans were amongst the away fans who did not sing it in my recent games.

QPR’s Charlie Austin chose just to get on with the game. The supporters taunting him were mostly on an upper tier. The Watford mascot turned his back but later spoke to me and confessed it had caused him some distress, noting “there’s just no way to retaliate.”

For Wycombe Wanderers’ Adebayo Akinfenwa, however, there was.

The chant was not unexpected. He had heard it from Oxford United fans last week. Also, players talk to each other, so he will have been well aware that it was being aimed at his fellow professionals.

On Saturday, with Buckinghamshire rivals Milton Keynes Dons the visitors, he took a stand.

Substitutes at Adams Park warm-up at the touchline where the small stand that sits behind the dugouts meets the Lords End stand, which houses away supporters.

Rather than ending his warm-up at the corner flag and returning towards the dugout, Akinfenwa walked on right up to the Dons fans. No-one could have been in any doubt that his remonstrations were about the chant which had greeted his emergence.

Arms out wide, he appealed. One unwise fan rushed down to confront him. Hasty action from the stewards removed him. But the song got louder.

Wanderers coach Gareth Ainsworth had made his fury at the chant visible already. His look of disgust towards the away end was atypical for a man who by habit goes to the away end and applauds the visiting fans. He turned to the MK Dons bench for support.

By that point, the players had stopped and referee Robert Lewis took the brave but inevitable step of halting the game. At that point, I could not help but wonder how sectarianism might have been stamped out if Scottish referees had done the same at Old Firm games 50 years ago.

In England, monkey chants aimed at black players continued unabated and I shudder to recall some of the abuse aimed at Tottenham fans for their perceived status as a club with a large Jewish fanbase.

But that was 1981 in England and our game is different now.

Mr Lewis spoke to both managers. The Wanderers tannoy appealed for the chant to stop. Some, not all, MK Dons fans unwisely broke into ‘we’ll sing what we want.’ A message appeared on the scoreboard about abusive chanting. MK Don’s social media tweeted out a plea to stop the chant.

Dons captain Dean Lewington made a hand gesture to the Dons fans urging them to tamp it down.

In a short space of time, football had united against a mindless minority but with the unusual scenario being that the minority were actually present at the moment it happened.

The game restarted but the chant did not cease. However, each time it was quieter and there were some boos from among the MK Dons fans. Collective guilt just does not apply here. There were many bravely trying to stop it.

Many Wycombe supporters remained under the mistaken belief that either it was just MK Dons fans or that the chant was unique to Akinfenwa. That sense of indignation, however misguided, ramped up the tension.

But Akinfenwa had taken a principled stand not just for the parents and children in attendance at Adams Park, but for his fellow professionals across the land who have every right to do their job without their families and friends hearing this level of abuse.

“As long as no other player has to hear that whern there’s kids in there, it can be out to rest andit can be shut down.”‘

It was brave and it could have backfired with either less alert stewarding or a referee unaware of the cultural context in which he had acted.

Gareth Ainsworth was full of praise for Milton Keynes Dons’ performance on the pitch. Rightly so. They were fantastically organised and showed a masterclass in defending an away lead.

When asked about the chant, he was honest and quickly pointed out that the chant was appearing at many grounds. He could have used events as tit-for-tat in local derby banter, but he was characteristically honest in not wanting to make it all about Milton Keynes.

Ainsworth usually praises large contingents of away fans who come to Adams Park. On this occasion, he saved his words for the chairmen and manager who had made it abundantly clear that the chant did not reflect Milton Keynes Dons FC’s values.

At full time, he walked across the pitch to the other touchline where Akinfenwa was giving his time to fans, applauding the striker as he walked.

Ainsworth has great experience within the game having first signed for Blackburn Rovers as a trainee in 1989. He missed most of the worst years of racist chanting if only just. But this is not 1985. It is 2022 and the Lancastrian acknowledged that the chant should not be viewed as archetypal football-fan banter, while very generously acknowledging it was not unique to MK Dons:

“There’s a chant going around at the moment which is below the line of acceptibilty. There’s banter and there’s that little bit of stick that people give each other, but it just dropped below the line of being acceptable.

“The referee was aware of it and I went over to speak to him, I think protection of players is very important.”

Unfortunately, the incident in question is not an isolated one. The chant can be heard across stadiums in England and has grabbed a foothold.

Ainsworth. a  former QPR midfielder will be aware that current QPR man Charlie Austin has also been on the wrong end of it. He also reinforced his hope that reporting the situation will guarantee that similar incidents do not continue to ensue around the EFL:

“This seems to be happening over and over again, it’s really dissapointing. I’m hoping that us reporting it will force a reaction because there’s no place for this stuff in football.

“I’m so proud that as a club that we are willing to report these things, hopefully it is reacted upon.”

He also did, however, reveal that Dons head coach Liam Manning and chairman Pete Winkelman both apologised after the final whistle but called for supporters to do so themselves:

“Liam Manning has apologised but he doesn’t need to, so did Pete Winkelman and he doesn’t need to. It’s the people who were singing it that need to apologise.

“They need to go over to Akinfenwa and look him in the face and apologise. I’m not sure many of them will do that but it’s not something we want to see in football.”

It was notable too that Chairboys CFO Pete Couhig who is a pugnacious defender of both Akinfenwa and certain values remained inside after the game. Usually, he attends the post-game press conferences out by pitchside. While his thoughts would have been very interesting, they might well have been unbroadcastable.

Later he was very responsible and measured when he texted his thoughts to Prost International, choosing to both highlight the undeserving nature of the victim, while not trying to hide that it was also a briefly an issue for his club:

“It is terrible that three matches in a row, out of nowhere, crowds of people began slandering one of the nicest and most gracious men in football.

“Sad to say a few of our supporters reacted with the same chant after Oxford did it, but they were quickly stopped.

“Very happy to hear our fans respond with the Akinfenwa chant ever since. I love the crowds, I love the banter, but some of it goes way too far and the game will better when chants like that are gone from football.”

There was no such post-match luxury to keep his thoughts to himself for MK Dons manager Liam Manning.

He did the best he could in circumstances where he would much rather be talking about how easily his side had bested their county rivals in most departments:

“Yeah I think for myself, we heard it and it was really disappointing.

“It’s not our club, it’s not our values and we didn’t like it. I think it’s important to stress it wasn’t all of the travelling fans. We travelled really well and I think the away fans have been really good, but today it was a minority or me. There’s no place in the game for that.

“It’s so fresh after the game.I think we just have to go away and look at what happened and take it from there. But certainly from myself and from everyone at the club, we can only apologise to Adebayo and Wycombe that it happened.”

After Akinfenwa’s stance, two things are clear.

It would be wrong to let MK Dons or even their fans face the revulsion at this chant alone. Others have done it. Secondly, inaction is not an option.

Akinfenwa acted to protect all players and my hope is that the PFA makes some sort of statement about this chant and player abuse in general. In England, we have mostly eradicated racist and homophobic chants, at least at the higher levels of the game. This chant is an outlier.

It is not however sufficient to pat ourselves on the back and rest in our laurels. Football must strive to be child friendly. Family zones help but chants travel. This chant is a no brainer because of its content, but it would be naive not to acknowledge that some are closer to the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable.

One idea might be, if it’s libellous, don’t do it. Whether this would protect Mason Greenwood or not is for lawyers to decide, but many fans may feel that he does not deserve much protection.

For now, we can hope that the hopes of both Akinfenwa and his manager are fulfilled; that this chant does not reappear on Saturday around the land.

If it does not, football has one more thing to thank Adebayo Akinfenwa for.

 

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