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Tell us about yourself and how you came to be the Ethnic Minorities Development Officer at Turf Moor.

Well I've been working at the club for a number of years now - about four years - at the centre of excellence, coaching age groups between ten and fifteen. I came here and helped the community office set up the soccer schools and gained more experience to get my coaching badge. So I knew Dean Ramsdale, the Community Officer, when I applied for the position, and I got the job.

I've been in the country for around six years now . When I first came to England, I came to Burnley first, when Jimmy Mullen and Clive Middlemass were here. I was playing in Tunisia, and I was married to an English girl who knew some Burnley supporters, so they came down to watch me and said, 'Why don't you go for a trial?' So eventually Brian Miller asked me to come to the Turf for a trial period. I got through the trial and played a game against Bradford - that's my only game for Burnley and I scored! The club's main striker was Kurt Nogan at that time.

Then I was injured, came back and went to Glentoran - Clive Middlemass told me to go there because Tommy Cassidy was manager, an ex-Burnley player. I played there and then came back to Doncaster Rovers and then Southport. I'm 29 now - so my chances of playing senior football are limited - but I enjoy playing and so I really enjoy my work here, that's why I do it.

How long have you been Ethnic Minorities Development Officer?

Since April this year.

And what is your precise role?

I've been employed to concentrate on visiting schools with a high ethnic minority populace, particularly Asian pupils, because we've got a massive Asian base in Burnley and really something was missing from the club. On a match day you would have 20,000 people here watching the game and you don't see any Asian kids or adults in the ground. So Dean Ramsdale asked me to do that and that's what I'm concentrating on, going round the schools and giving them free school sessions and organising a soccer school for them, organising ground tours for them, they come here and we show them round the ground.

We give out a few passes and they come and watch Burnley if they can. But since April, really we haven't had the chance to organise much, because the season finished in May, so hopefully we'll do more in the coming weeks. But what I've been doing is going to the schools when the schools were on, and during the summer I've organised soccer schools for them - well, it's not for Asians alone, its for everybody, but we've done areas that we didn't work on before.

What sort of response have you had from the Asian community?

It was hard at the beginning, because generally the Asian community aren't really interested in football - they like a lot of cricket. But the younger kids are interested. In the end I got about 45 children, which is a really good number. I took the job in April and the soccer school was in May, so there was a good response. And during the summer I've done another four soccer schools and we've had a good response to that, with around 20 children every session, all from different age groups.

But it was difficult at the beginning. The young kids are interested in football, but what you find is that if you organise something for them here, to get them to come to Turf Moor, the parents won't give them lifts to the ground. When we do soccer schools at Turf Moor, the parents bring their kids and come to pick them up at 3 o'clock. But if we organised something here for the Asian kids, I don't think the parents would go out of their way for football. So that's why we tend to go to their place, so the kids can just walk home.

But when I started, my first task was to set up the soccer school and my boss said to me that if I got 15 to 20 kids there I would have done well, and we got 45. We'd tried to do a soccer school in the Asian areas of town a few years ago, but it wasn't a success. Now we're trying to make it a continuous thing. I've done well all through the summer with the soccer schools, so hopefully when the season starts we might see some Asian kids at the football club week in and week out.

What is the club's policy towards the inclusion of ethnic minorities?

All they want to do is to get them to come to Burnley Football Club - that's what we want - and we're doing that through coaching. They're getting to know the football club, they know myself, they know the staff. When they come here we show them around the ground, and hopefully they'll think: 'Yes, we like that, we want to come again.' That's what I want them to do.

If Burnley's average gate is 16,000 now, in ten years time, you never know, if you get another two thousand from the ethnic minority community, then that's a bonus.

Are there a lot of talented Asian kids who don't get picked up?

I wouldn't say so, but I believe there is some talent there, but I don't think they give themselves a chance or their parents give them a chance. I see some really good players and I ask the kid, who'll be around nine or ten, 'Who do you play for?', and he'll say, 'I don't play for anybody'. And I don't think that's the kid's fault, he doesn't know, really. But if you're his parents and you think your kid is good enough, you take him to a local club, don't you? But they don't seem to do that. So you try to make the kid aware, you know, you tell him that he has talent and that he should give himself a chance. That's what I'm trying to do with the Asian community, I'm talking to Mas Hussain, he's a local community leader, and I go to assemblies and make the parents aware about the schemes and how their children could have free football tuition and so on. Just to give them a chance and support them. It is hard, but most times we get there.

I'm sure that there are kids around here good enough to be at the Burnley School of Excellence. That's why me and some of the other coaches are always looking at things like that. At the moment we have four Asian lads on trial at Burnley Football Club.

What could the town's Asian communities bring to the club that is missing at the moment?

Well, the main thing they could bring is the support. If an Asian lad turns out for Burnley, then he would bring in lots of Asian support. But we're not going to force anything. If a player's not good enough, he's not good enough. But if there is something there, then we'll try and work with them and help them. I mean, those four lads who are on trial at the moment, if they're good enough we're not going to bother about skin colour. But on the other hand, they're not going to get signed just because they're Asian.

If a really good Asian lad, say a young Pakistani lad, emerges as a real talent at Burnley, would he stand an equal chance of being signed?

Definitely, though I don't think he should be treated any differently. When they get to the club, everybody's got the same chance, and if he's good enough he'll get there. If I'm a coach or a manager, I want to pick my best sixteen, I want to play my best eleven, that's all that matters.

Do you think the situation Asian footballers face today is very much like the position of black footballers in the sixties and seventies?

It's a good question and there are two answers.

Firstly, they've got to be treated the same as anyone else. Skin colour and background shouldn't come into it, if he's good enough he's good enough. But secondly, because he's from an ethnic minority we try and create the best atmosphere for him to make it as a pro. With the white kids at the soccer schools, chances are they have a few mates there with them. If he's an Asian kid, then maybe he's there by himself. So we're always friendly, we try and get him to gel in with the rest of the kids, that's what we try to do. That's when he'll produce his best. If he's a good player but doesn't feel comfortable, he won't show his talent, will he?

Do you think the club could do anything in addition to what they're already doing, for example, setting up an Asian Burnley FC lads team or having Asian kids involved in the half-time 5-a-sides, inviting the parents along also?

An Asian lads team? Well, here at the Community Leisure Centre we organise midweek leagues and we've got Asian teams in that, but that's a senior league. But there are lots of Asian leagues around the area. I know what you're saying, and maybe in the future it's something we could do. Remember that we've just started, so we're just trying to get the Asian lads into local teams.

But then again, we don't want English lads here and Asian lads there. If we get a good Asian player who's not playing for anyone, we'll suggest to him that he goes to a lads club and sometimes we'll take him because we know who the coaches are anyway. If we tell a coach we've got a good player, the coach will take him on. And by working in that club atmosphere with the English kids, by the time he gets to the Centre of Excellence, we don't have to start all over again. If he had stayed playing with an Asian team, he'd be at a disadvantage when he comes to the Centre and has to fit in with the way things work and everyone else around him. It's a tricky situation. We could organise Asian leagues, but we organise for everyone in the community. We're just trying to get football played in the Asian areas and take it from there. Hopefully we could do the half-time thing, we're looking to do lots of things like that this year.

Do you go to games?

Well, if I'm not playing on Saturday, yes I do. I've seen a few games, yes.

Is there anything about the atmosphere at the Turf that you think prevents the local Asian community from participating?

Well, I've been at the Turf for around four or five years now and I've seen quite a few games, and I've never heard anything untoward or had a racist comment directed at me. I heard all about the Blackburn-Burnley derby where both sets of fans were chanting 'town full of….' whatever it was and things like that, but you're going to get that everywhere in the country.

You have to have some personality, you know, you have to go through that barrier. You got to go there and think, 'Hey, they'll get used to me', as long as there's no racist comments. It just happened in the derby game, that's the only time I've heard racist chants. But apart from that I don't see any problem really.

It’s Asian culture also, the parents are not interested in football to start with, they'd rather their children do something else rather than play football. That's the culture. As a parent, to pay eight pounds or so to watch Burnley play football on a Saturday afternoon, that's a lot of money in their eyes for a kid to go and watch a football game. So we've got to work with the new generation of Asian parents now, you know, young Asian dads, work with them and make them aware that eight pounds isn't a lot of money, and hopefully we can make them appreciate that. At the moment, I don't think they feel it's worth paying fifteen quid to watch Burnley. I think that's the main barrier.

I've seen a few Asian lads who love football and go to the Turf with their Burnley shirts on. I mean, if you're English and I'm Asian and we were both wearing the same shirt on Saturday and both share the same team, I don't think you'd turn around and call me a black so-and-so. That wouldn't happen, so I think things are changing now.

How big an obstacle do you think the nature of Asian culture is?

It is hard, but we do get a good response from them. And, you know, we do talk to the Asian community leaders, I go to community assemblies and tell them about Burnley Football Club, tell them what we offer the kids, tell them what we do and what the kids could achieve. It's up to them. There's only so much we can do. If we organise something at the club, they can't be bothered to come down. We spoke to the community leaders about this, but we ended up organising things at their place. It was a success, but the next step is getting the good kids to come down to the club, and it's difficult to get the parents to go out of their way to drop their kids at the club for a coaching session and then come and pick them up.

Through the summer we did the soccer school course two days a week and they played cricket on Monday and Tuesday, and football on Wednesday and Thursday. And I'm not complaining, because we had between 20 and 30 kids for football, which was good, but on the Monday for the cricket, they had over 40 kids. Even when you see them in the streets or on the playing fields, the eight and nine year-olds, they're playing cricket, not football.

To go back to the derby game at Blackburn last season, do you think the club did enough to challenge the racist chanting?

Well the club did and is still doing that. If someone is reported to a steward for racism then they are thrown out of the ground and banned from the club.

That doesn't happen.

Well, if people would report racism when they heard it, it might do. At Blackburn, the Burnley fans were reacting to chants from the Blackburn end. And the stewards aren't going to empty the stands, are they?

But do you think the club's statement the day after, praising the fans for their behaviour, was a suitable thing to do?

Things like what happened at Blackburn are going to happen. For the club, the most important thing that day was that there was no trouble, you've got to get your priorities right. It was a massive game and there was likely to be trouble somewhere along the line, but everything went okay. All right, we had one problem, the racist chanting, but I don't think you could tell what they were saying anyway.

I think the club did its best, and the policy within the club, through me, through Dean Ramsdale and everyone here, is not to have racism anywhere in the football club. We have an anti-racist statement, and so on.

But do you think that the idea of having a couple of thousand of regular Asian fans at Turf Moor is viable if they had to listen to such chanting?

Well, if there were a couple of thousand Asians in the ground I don't think you would get that kind of chanting anyway. If there's an Asian lad sitting next to you and you're both wearing a claret and blue shirt, I don't think you would say that.

Well, the fact that we have Mitchell Thomas and Ian Cox doesn't stop some Burnley fans from abusing visiting black players.

I know football is changing now, its changed from the seventies and eighties when the black players were getting abused, but although there's been change for the better it's still not perfect. It's still not how we want it. But hopefully, with the work that we do alongside the Asian community we're going to see Burnley in the Premiership and in a stadium without any racist comments - not just in Burnley but everywhere in the country.

And we have a hard line policy on racism. If I hear anybody say any racist comment against blacks, Asians or anyone else, he can be banned from Turf Moor for life. So we have a strong policy. We have signs around the football ground to make people aware of the situation.

How many people have been banned from Turf Moor as a result of that policy?

I'm not sure. Just speaking for myself, working in my present position since April, nothing has happened yet, as we've only played a couple of games. But I'm sure the rule will be used. For example, there are some Asian stewards at the Turf. If I was one of those stewards and heard someone giving racist abuse, I'd get the police and everybody with me and get him thrown out. I think that will happen, they're not afraid of anyone.

Our experience at the Turf is that most stewards aren't bothered about it.

Well if that's the case we have to work with the stewards, do something to make sure that they take it seriously and don't let comments go by.

How much harm do you feel the recent riots have done to what you're trying to achieve at Burnley?

It was worrying at the time, but I think things have gone back to normal very quickly. I thought it was going to be hard, I really did. I'd been in the job three months or so and I thought that what we have achieved with the Asian community in the past few months had all been wiped out, and some people were saying that relations in general had been put back ten years.

But I think a lot of what happened in Burnley had nothing to do with racism. The start of the whole thing was about drug dealing between English lads and Asian lads - that's how it started and that's how it finished. I'm pleased that neither of the two communities are holding the events against each other. We had a bad weekend, but after that everything was fine. We certainly didn't have a problem with either of them. The soccer schools that we ran immediately after the riots were mixed with Asian and English lads and they were a big success, we had no problems at all.

Do you think the club could have done more in the aftermath of the riots. Say, some kind of statement to the media?

It's not really the job of Burnley Football Club to do anything like that because the club didn't know what was happening with the riots. The club didn't have the authority to say, 'Right, we know what's happened here and we're going to do that, that and that', because that's the job of the police. It was a real situation, and that's why the club didn't say anything.

But it was three days like that and then a week later everything was fine, nothing that we have done in the Community Office has been affected by it, all the soccer schools have been a great success.

Phil Whalley
August 2001

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