Its up

Nope, I just know him far better than any of you, and know what he's not.

We have our own reasons for disliking Mr. Bailey, and believe you me, the colour of his skin has nothing to do with it.

But since you've brought it up, we both think Terry Newton has been far worse in the past, and last I checked, he was still white.

They are not racially prejudiced..just against anyone called Ryan....

What then? It cant be his RL discipline because it's pretty much clean.



You have a reason there for disliking Newton.

Why do you dislike Ryan Bailey?

What are they then?

Perhaps I can assist. I was the main poster accusing visiting fans of subconscious racism. To be fair it wasn't my original idea but I picked it up and ran with it.

I think you're confusing a couple of issues here.

Opposition fans go hyperbolic with monotonous regularity about Bailey's conduct on the field. The rants are completely off the scale. The facts, however, show he is NOT a dirty player. He has never received a red card and only ever received 1 yellow card. He's never been banned for violent play. All he ever does he play the game hard and aggressively for us.

Nobody gets so worked up about players like Morley, McDermott or others of their ilk who do a similar job but with much, much worse disciplinary records. In fact, in the aftermath of the Saints game a Bulls fan actually posted that Barrie Mac was OK compared to Bailey. Now I love Barrie Mac, he was a hero of mine, but he was an out and out thug at times compared to Bailey. Check the disciplinary records.

So, in light of comments people were making about Bailey's play it seemed to me that they were wholly unjustified and without merit. It also seemed to me there might be an underlying subconscious racism behind it all as Bailey is, really, the only non white prop in the league who might fall into the "enforcer" category.

I repeated my theory a few times. I even compared Bailey's calm and controlled manner to the wild out of control James graham in the same game and asked why no condemnation of him?

In relation to Pryce any claims about on-field thuggery are wholly justified and supportable by evidence. He's a player with red cards in his past and bans from red Hall for acts on violence.

I have made no comment about off field issues, either in relation to Pryce or indeed Bailey.

So, feel free to discuss and rebut my theory but I have yet to read anything to dissuade me from my conclusions.

You may have a point about Leeds fans reaction to Pryce. I suspect it's personal dislike of him from his Bradford days or from his cowardly assault on our captain a few years ago. Maybe you;'re right and those Leeds fans who are revelling in Pryce's potential incarceration but not reardon's are racist. How does that make opposition fans jaundiced views on Bailey's conduct on the field any less racist?

If, I stress IF, your husband was guilty of subconscious racism with his OTT comments about bailey's play its' hardly a defence because there may be some racist idiots on here that support Leeds is it?

I hear where you are coming from. I have no interest in trolling on the Saints board and posting hateful remarks about Leon Pryce, or trolling on the Warrington board regarding Reardon.

For me it's an off-field incident and barely relevent, but I can see why some might not feel that way.

But you probably haven't seen the season long barrage of abuse hurled at Bailey on this board. Every week (and I do mean every week) we have had unsavoury comments from a small number of our nearest ape-like relatives from the rest of Yorkshire, Humberside and over the border. Even a handful of our own "fans" hate the guy and can't wait to have a pop. There is no logical rugby reason for this. As a player you can criticise his capabilities and there are many debates on that, but we haven't had that recently. What we have had is a bunch of people calling him a thug with no justification. It's a view that's not possible to back up with any actual facts.
Now Pryce on the other hand has a disciplinary record Hannibal Lecter would be proud of. True, he's cut down on the cards while at Saints, but that's because he has just got sneakier (hence he tends to get cited now when he's caught on video fiddleing with peoples undercarriage). As he plays at 6 and seldom roughs it with the big boys (not while they are facing him anyway), there is only one conclusion. So, unlike Bailey, we are perfectly capable of providing ample real reasons for not liking him (the one incident where he crept up behind Kevin Sinfield and thumped him then ran away would be enough).
So for the reams of abuse hurled at Ryan Bailey one conclusion you could come to was that we had a bunch of racists crawling out of the woodwork to take advantage of the situation. That's basically how most racism works, it's not all white hoods and burning crosses.
I think as a set of supporters we got pushed all the way last week and some of us reacted to defend a valued Leeds player with an exemplary disciplinary record.

Reardon is just a fairly anonymous (injured) RL player at a struggling club who's never crept up behind the current Leeds captain, puched him in the face and then ran away.

I suggested it and I stick by it. Some people might not like it, but predjudice of any kind can be easy to slip into in a mob environment. You have to ask yourself questions as to why you feel like you do, an how you would justify that to another individual. There were a few posters (and I mean only a few), who would have serious difficulty doing this.

Bravo.

For all the tears and tantrums about accusations of racism and squabbling not A SINGLE oppostion fan has been able to justify or quantify their comments about Bailey's on field behaviour.

Not one.

It would have been very easy for ermentrude, or any other fan, to justify their comments about Bailey rather than cry about what I posted but none did. Why do you think that is?

Perhaps the fact that Saints fans gave Chev and Ryan the same treatment has played some part in this.