Ex-Chelsea youth players 'endured racism from age 12' - BBC Sport
Two former Chelsea youth players have told BBC News they were regularly subjected to racist abuse as teenagers at the club.
Last updated on .From the section Football

Two former Chelsea youth players have told BBC News they were regularly subjected to racist abuse by a former assistant manager.

One said that at the age of 12 - on his first encounter with Gwyn Williams - the coach made racial remarks about his facial features.

Williams had called him racist names, asked him if he had been "robbing old grannies", and said it was a "rarity" that he went to school.

The two former youth-team players were speaking out for the first time since Chelsea published a report into the scandal in August.

Neither of them gave evidence to the inquiry, which found that young black players had been subjected to "a daily tirade of racial abuse" in the 1980s and 1990s.

Williams, the former academy director, was described as the "instigator" of racial abuse at the club.

Anthony - not his real name - told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme he had been subjected to racist abuse during training sessions.

"I remember the first time I met [Gwyn Williams] he said how big my lips were, how big my nose was."

He said Williams had also made a racially charged comment about the size of his penis.

"And that was my first encounter. I was 12 years old."

A second player, Kieran - also not his real name - said Williams regularly referred to him using racist language.

"I was coming in [to training] scared to make a mistake," he said.

"Even on the pitch it affected me because I couldn't relax. I was thinking if I have a bad game everyone is going to say 'you black this' or 'you black that'."

Williams joined Chelsea in 1979 as a youth development officer and rose to assistant manager, leaving the club in 2006.

His lawyer wrote to Chelsea denying "any and all" allegations of racism.

He claimed the extracts of the report shown to him were "biased, untrue, unfair and artificial".

The report, commissioned by Chelsea and written by the charity Barnardo's, heard evidence of a toxic, racist environment.

The report also looked into allegations against another Chelsea coach - former England international Graham Rix.

It found while he "could be aggressive and bullying", on the evidence presented to them he was not racially abusive.

Anthony and Kieran said they did not give evidence to the inquiry because it had been paid for by Chelsea and they had worries about its independence.

But they both told BBC News they had heard Rix use racist language.

Anthony said Rix asked him if he had gone out and had sex with "any of our white girls" at the weekend.

"I thought, 'I've had enough of this', and I said, 'Yeah, I did'," Anthony told the BBC.

"And he said, 'If that was my daughter I would lynch you'."

Rix was jailed in 1999 for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, serving six months and being reinstated as a coach by Chelsea on his release.

He went on to manage clubs including Portsmouth and Heart of Midlothian.

Rix's lawyer gave a statement to the Barnardo's review, denying he was a bully, aggressive or racist.

He added both the FA and the Disclosure and Barring Service [DBS] had investigated and not placed any restrictions on Rix.

Chelsea have apologised for the "deeply shocking behaviour" described in the Barnardo's report.

It said: "Barnardo's reviewers concluded that the numerous accounts given of severe racially abusive behaviour towards young players historically were credible.

"As a club we want to apologise to all players who experienced this deeply shocking behaviour.

"We are doing, and will continue to do, everything we can to ensure that those boys, girls, men and women who play for this club - and indeed anyone who works for or with the club - will never have to endure the terrible experiences which these young players suffered."

Both ex-players said it had felt impossible to report their allegations at the time.

They said Chelsea had no safeguarding policy in place at the time, and there had been no other official to turn to with a complaint.

"I didn't want to make trouble for my parents in any way, shape or form," Anthony added.

Anthony and Kieran accuse the club of trying to minimise publicity around the scandal by publishing the findings on the same day as a separate 250-page investigation into sexual abuse by a different coach decades earlier.

They said they now wanted a full face-to-face apology from the club but had not been contacted directly by Chelsea since the publication of the report.

"I haven't heard anything from anybody [at Chelsea]," said Anthony.

"So, is this just a PR exercise? Are they sincerely sorry and really going to acknowledge what happened?

"They need to talk to people, not just put out a generic statement."

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