Ireland defender details racial abuse from own fans

Republic of Ireland and Blackburn Rovers defender Derrick Williams has said that he was massively affected by racial abuse he received online from a Rovers fan.

Williams' story follows a string of racial abuse incidents in football over the last month and the 26-year-old said that he was disappointed that anti-racism group Kick It Out did not contact him after Rovers suspended an individual from attending matches at Ewood Park following the incident.

“It really annoyed me and got under my skin to be fair," Williams told The Lancashire Telegraph. “You see it so much, it’s sad to see. I don’t know what people are going to do to try and prevent it. It’s a tough one. “But it did affect me massively, particularly with it being our own fan. “The club has helped me a lot with that, with their ban, and it was good to see the club react the way it did. “Personally I would have liked to see more from the Kick It Out group, they didn’t contact me or anything like that.”

Williams' Ireland teammate Cyrus Christie was abused online following Ireland's World Cup play-off defeat to Denmark in 2017 but he insisted that it was sticks and stones at this stage for him.

“That’s just the way it is,” Christie said last year. “A lot of the time when stuff like this happens, nothing really gets done. A lot of these people are hiding behind different profiles. "I’ve had a lot worse growing up, when I was in school, so for me it was water off a duck’s back. I’ve moved on, I was more disappointed with the result than anything. "If that’s what they want to resort to, they can; it’s ‘sticks and stones’ at the end of the day. I’m not going to be too hurt by it.”