Bruce Buck: Chelsea Had No Choice But To Report Clattenburg

Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck has lashed out at the media reaction at the club's decision to report referee Mark Clattenburg for alleged racial abuse, saying that the club had no choice but to report the matter once it came to their notice.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, Buck said, "The reaction has been very unfair. We weren’t interested in any confrontation with the referee or anybody else, had no thoughts of revenge on the referee.

We were guided by obligations that are imposed by the Football Association and also as an employer. FA rule E14 basically says a participant shall immediately report to the association any incident or matter which may be considered to be a misconduct.

Misconduct is a defined term under the FA regulations and includes such racial behaviour. We also had to ­consider the Equality Act 2010, which imposes an obligation on an employer to take certain actions if an employee is subject to discrimination by third parties.

Suppose we had tried to sweep this under the rug and said to the various players, ‘Look, it’s not a big deal and the press are going to be all over us, maybe you want to reconsider.' If that had leaked out, we would’ve really been crucified."

Bruce Buck is right in saying that Chelsea had no choice in reporting Clattenburg. At a time when the club is already under fire for supposedly being lenient on John Terry (which has led to Chelsea's seriousness on tackling racism being questioned), imagine what would have happened if the club had not reported the incident and the issue somehow managed to find it's way to the media. The club would have been under fire for not standing up against racism and actually allowing someone to racially abuse one of their own players and get away with it. Handling the matter internally was out of the question, for nothing would have been resolved. As such, even if the allegation is proven to be false, nothing much will happen to Clattenburg. His career as a referee will not suffer if he is cleared of the charge. The fuss over this entire issue is entirely unjustified.

It seems as if Chelsea will never be able to please the media, even if they do the right thing.

Shayne Dias

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