Everything is so precious

Subject: Everyone is so precious.

With the sacking of the successful England's women's football manager Mark Sampson the potential for continued improvement with the team becomes questionable. Sampson who seems to have welded a great resilient football side fell foul of a players criticism of him and comments he made which she attributed to him as a slur on her race. To add flavour, she was black and the comments were said to be racist.

Eniola Aluko the lady in question just happens to be a lawyer as well as a footballer, she has a long memory and was part of a claim made against Spencer by Dew Spence, a mixed race women who in 2015 claimed that Sampson had said to her "had she been arrested" during a tournament played in 2015.  Whether this was banter which I presume it was, the claim was made by Spencer's team mate Ms Aluko that it was inappropriate. In 2017 Ms Aluko made another claim against him when he made the joke "make sure your Nigerian relatives didn't bring Ebola into England".

This could be seen as racially crass or an offside comment as part of a discussion about the risk of Ebola which was current during the outbreak and we were being warned of its spread through travellers to this country from central Africa.
Anyway the upshot has been he has been fired from his job amid much sorrow from other members of the team who say he was a great manager and very supportive.
It reminds me of the cycling coach who was also fired for being too abrasive towards one of the women in his world cycling championship team. Again the rest of the team, men and women supported him but the craven management caved in rather than risk their reputation.
What is this reputation. That at the slightest sign of racial bias they would rather fire the successful manager coach irrespective of the national success both men brought to their respective teams.
It's worth noting Ms Aliko was paid £80.000 to drop her suite against Sampson, so much for her moral indignation.
It seems we are bound for an ever decreasing role in any area where we need competitive bluster and team building through what used to be called locker room talk.
The women are too precious, too easily appalled, too willing to use their gender to sway the authorities.
It's noticeable that we have declined substantially in cycling since Shane Sutton the cycling coach was fired and I would expect the same in women's football as we now seek a 'politically correct' coach manager who will weigh every syllable before he lectures his team.