Obviously i wouldn't put money on it not being racist because as we all know you can never be 100 percent sure but my first thoughts was it was just a harmless joke
It was half-time at Wembley and England’s players were walking down the tunnel, passing the giant mural of Sir Bobby Robson on the left before filing into the home dressing room.
It had been swept clean since they left it moments before kick-off, their clothes neatly folded and wash-bags placed in storage areas above their heads.
That was about to change as they helped themselves to sports drinks and opened supplies of water from the two fridges squeezed together in a corner of the main dressing room.
Some of the players visited the toilets in a separate area and others splashed sweat off their faces in the hand basins. Head physio Gary Lewin and ‘Doc Beasley’, head of medical services at the FA, checked for muscular injuries.
SO WHAT WAS THE JOKE?
The joke, which is believed to have been told in full at half-time, is as follows.
‘NASA decided they would finally send a man up in an capsule after sending only monkeys in the earlier missions.
‘They fire the man and the monkey into space.’
‘The intercom crackles “fire the retros”.
‘A little later, “Monkey, check the solid fuel supply’
‘Later still “Monkey, check the life support systems for the man”.
‘The astronaut takes umbrage and radios NASA. “When do I get something”.’
‘NASA replied – in 15 minutes, feed the monkey.’
There was the usual hum of activity, with various conversations taking place between players congratulating ‘Wazza’ on the 41st-minute header that had put England in front against Poland.
In a separate area, manager Roy Hodgson, assistant manager Ray Lewington and coach Gary Neville huddled together for a mini-conference.
Soon, bottle tops, strapping and white tape were scattered across the floor as the players settled down to listen to the most important half-time talk in Hodgson’s 40-year career as a coach. England’s World Cup hopes were resting on it.
They sat in numerical order, with Joe Hart, Chris Smalling, Leighton Baines, captain Steven Gerrard, Gary Cahill and Phil Jagielka on a bench running along one wall.
Andros Townsend, Michael Carrick, Daniel Sturridge, Wayne Rooney and Danny Welbeck were together on another. The substitutes were stationed on the two remaining sides of the changing area.
A video still of Townsend emerging from the tunnel for the second half against Poland
Townsend
As they listened, many fiddled with the spare boots, training tops, Nike flip-flops and spare shirts that had been meticulously laid out by England’s popular kit man Pat Frost at 10am on matchday. Some were changing into fresh England shirts for the second half.
The dressing room was hot and Hodgson took off his England bench jacket to address his players ahead of the 45 minutes that could seal their place at next summer’s World Cup in Brazil. It was an important speech.
He began by addressing tactical issues, reminding the players of their responsibilities in the ‘discovery system’, the 4-2-3-1 formation that England have hit upon in their last two games.
Against Montenegro last Friday, the Tottenham combination of Kyle Walker and Andros Townsend had been hugely successful down the right in the 4-1 victory at Wembley. With Walker suspended after he had picked up a yellow card, Chris Smalling was brought in to replace him at right back for the final, decisive game in Group H.
Firm stance: Jamaican-born former England star John Barnes backed Roy Hodgson
Townsend’s rampaging runs against Montenegro had caught the eye and his exhilarating performance had more than justified his selection against Poland. Hodgson wanted more of the same.
Hodgson instructed Smalling to retain team shape and stay in position — and to give the ball to Townsend at every opportunity.
‘Give the ball to Townsend,’ he said. ‘It’s like the NASA joke: keep feeding the monkey.’
It was then that England’s manager repeated the joke, in a shortened and somewhat muddled form, to the players, many of whom had never heard the witticism about a frustrated astronaut discovering that he was very much the junior member of the crew behind his simian colleague.
There was surprise among some who had never heard the joke, whose origins lie half a century ago in the early days of space flight, causing Hodgson to revert to more familiar dressing room parlance: ‘Give the ball to Townsend, get it wide to him’.
Hodgson’s use of the phrase ‘feed the monkey’ was not intended as an insult and certainly not meant to offend or cause alarm among England’s players.
Space joke: Hodgson told the monkey tale to try and get Chris Smalling to pass to Andros Townsend
They are used to his stories during England get-togethers and are well aware that conversations with him often digress into anecdotes about his colourful and interesting past as a coach in various countries. He is a natural storyteller.
In the dressing room Hodgson continued with his speech, speaking to individual players about the importance of the next 45 minutes. Then they were led back on to the pitch by Gerrard.
At that moment a member of Hodgson’s coaching staff pulled the manager to one side to ask if he felt sure that the phrase ‘feed the monkey’ would not be misinterpreted by young players.
Hodgson was alarmed. He had not appreciated the sensitive nature of his language and decided to speak with Townsend after the game to make sure the winger had not been offended.
According to sources in the England dressing room, Townsend accepted his explanation and was almost apologetic to Hodgson.
Success: The England team secured their passage to next year's World Cup in Brazil with the 2-0 victory
Emerging: The England players come out for the second half at Wembley on Tuesday night
Clash: The joke came in a half-time team talk during the crunch game at Wembley Stadium
The incident did, however, become the subject of discussion in the players’ lounge upstairs at Wembley. Hodgson retired there for a glass of wine with friends and family and he left only when he was ‘chucked out’ by Wembley staff.
By then, some of the family and friends of England’s players had been told about Hodgson’s unfortunate use of the phrase.
Some of England’s backroom team, particularly the senior members, were aware of the NASA anecdote. Why he chose to use it in the dressing room at half-time of an England game, however, is something they cannot answer.
At the final whistle Hodgson was embracing various members of his coaching team, delighted to have guaranteed England’s place at next summer’s World Cup.
When he walked down the Wembley tunnel he was met by FA chairman Greg Dyke.
They embraced warmly and Hodgson beamed: ‘Hello Greg, how are you?’ They had no idea what was about to engulf them.
You are an England footballer. One day the manager tells a joke you find unsettling, or even offensive. What do you do? Easy. You, or a third party, run straight to the editor of The Scottish Sun and spill the beans, anonymously, then slide back into shadow.
Being a wealthy young man who is conversant with the way the modern media works (you may even have been stung by it yourself in the past), you have no professional obligation to express your concerns to the manager, Roy Hodgson, any of his assistants, any Football Association official or even your own club manager when you have ceased to be on England duty.
If this is a matter of public interest, the best way to ‘whistle-blow’ is either to appoint, or not stand in the way of, an intermediary who contacts a journalist whose daily bread is the lives of celebrities.
If that reporter asks you to go on the record, as this one apparently did, there is not the slightest moral obligation to attach your name to anything so grubby as an inference of racism.
All that matters is that it makes front-page news. So much the better if it happens to overshadow the “best day” of Hodgson’s career, not to mention England qualifying for the World Cup.
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You can also feel proud to have sown disunity in the dressing room, by an act of betrayal that is bound to cause other players to distrust you. Nice work.
Now: an individual who has taken offence on racial grounds should be free to object, complain, press an alarm button. But by running to a newspaper, under a cloak of anonymity?
The Football Association believe (and this is so far unsubstantiated) that a family member of the player offended by Hodgson’s half-time space monkey joke fed The Sun with their splash.
The FA issued a statement on Wednesday night clarifying Hodgson’s gag only to counterbalance whatever The Sun was intending to write about the England manager.
Football has been building up to a moment like this. While serious offences are dealt with too lightly – John Terry’s four-match ban in the Anton Ferdinand case springs to mind – hypersensitivity around language could hardly be more pronounced.
When Hodgson delivered his comic riff about a man and a monkey in space, there will have been no connection in his mind between a black man and an ape. Only a cretin looks in the face of a black person and tells a joke that he knows carries a racial insult.
Hodgson’s attempt to get Chris Smalling to move the ball to Andros Townsend quicker would have been better expressed as: “Chris, get the ball to Andros quicker.” Instead Hodgson used a comic analogy that bore no racist overtone, to him (i.e. Hodgson).
Since we can assume none of his coaching staff bears an inexplicable grudge against the boss, the source was undoubtedly a player, almost certainly via a third party, as the FA believe.
This player lacked the courage to challenge Hodgson directly. Instead he ran to the papers, concealed his name, and dropped a bomb on the England camp.
There is the slimmest chance that a family member, agent or friend acted alone in taking the Hodgson joke to The Sun, but that strains credibility.
The player must have known it was happening; must have complained about the gag in the first place.
After Townsend and Wayne Rooney tweeted their support for Hodgson, Greg Dyke, the FA Chairman, issued a statement with one telling clause: “The FA has not had a complaint from any squad member or player representative, and we have today talked extensively to the squad.”
In other words, nothing was said at the time, and when the players were invited to go on the record, none piped up with a complaint.
Meanwhile Kick it Out, an organisation so troubled that even black players such as Jason Roberts boycotted its T-shirt protest campaign, want an “investigation” to establish “the full facts.”
Of all the issues Kick it Out could concern itself, a clumsy analogy which no sensible person could interpret as racially motivated would not qualify for the top 100.
As a student of Philip Roth, Hodgson will recall the case of Coleman Silk, in The Human Stain, whose career in academia implodes when he employs the word “spooks”, not as a racial epithet but as an alternative to “ghosts.”
Whichever player ran to the press cannot be trusted, and not because he took offence, which is his human right.
You would not stake your house in a big World Cup match on someone who lacked the courage to say to the manager, or someone else in authority: “I didn’t like that joke. I don’t think it was appropriate.”
Most of the other players will not trust him either.
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The media destruction of the england world cup side begins
Love it
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Thizz
Truss Ollie Holt the tosser.
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darkman
Fucking ridiculous
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stacksbranning
Don't think what he said was racist .
Obviously i wouldn't put money on it not being racist because as we all know you can never be 100 percent sure but my first thoughts was it was just a harmless joke
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weneverwherever
it was racism at its very best he really tried being clever with it
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Drift
alie
weird guy. his own fault.
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Benicio del Toney
feed the monkey yana
wtf
These old white men so out of touch.
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Horatio Caine
fackk i mnt to pos toney, beg some1 even it up for me....
//
so who do u think spoke out.....my money is on sturri
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Kompressor
Not sure who it was but to be Frank whoever it was should get Lamped round the face next time the international team meet up.
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Seth Rollins
Lol, iBeg we find out who it was.
Lol @ them going to the World Cup.
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Marly Mar
It's one of the side dishes like Defoe,Gibbs
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stacksbranning
Can understand why initially you might be a bit baffed though . Imagine your hallf black and you hear man say feed the monkey lol.
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Thizz
Nah it was Frank.
Media darling now there's a reason why.
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Horatio Caine
true say frank aint done nuttin bad since that sextape,
sterling/sturri or welblack
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Thizz
Except get his manager sacked.
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Horatio Caine
oh yh that tooo
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Thizz
That was when he started giving info to the papers.
Guess he gave the story to The Mirror cause Hodgson didn't start him.
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Kompressor
Plus uncle Arry should be the manager.
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Young £
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Young £
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Young £
http://talksport.com/football/exclusive-smart-urges-england-players-go-public-over-space-monkey-comments-13101764432
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stacksbranning
Jamaican-born former England star John Barnes backed Roy Hodgson
I Hate this guy . Hate,hate,Hate him .
Is there a bigger uncle tom in football
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darkman
Ayeee everything ain't what it seem
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