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Butt: On the face of it, rugby league is close to colour blind
Ikram Butt demolished the myth that Asians can't excel in rugby by becoming the first Muslim rugby international in either code when he played for England against Wales in Cardiff in February 1995.
He broke down barriers in a playing career which saw him represent several clubs, including Featherstone Rovers and Leeds RL, although he played just one first-team game for the latter, his hometown club.
Butt offers a unique perspective on his sporting experiences in his new autobiography Tries and Prejudice, particularly in his formative years playing the sport he loves in Leeds in the late 1970s, when the amateur leagues were a bastion of the white working-class.
"I must admit that, as a young player trying to get on in the world, I did suspect that there might be something racial in the way I was being treated," writes Butt.
"I no longer think that now and am always reluctant to play the race card at the first excuse. But the fact remains that, as an Asian in what was seen to be an essentially white working-class game, participation in rugby league wasn't always made easy.
"Not that I am suggesting that rugby league is any more racist than other sports, because it isn't.
"In fact, as the journalist Dave Hadfield wrote in a September 1990 edition of Rugby League Week magazine, while interviewing Tony (brother) and me after I signed for Featherstone, 'Compared with other major team sports, rugby league has a long and proud record of being close to colour-blind.' On the face of it, that's true.
"You only have to see the impact on the game of, say, the Lebanese community in Sydney, or the influence of black West Yorkshire-born players such as Sonny Nickle, Henderson Gill and Roy Powell to recognise how important non-white faces have been in the game.
And that's without mentioning all-time legends like Clive Sullivan, Billy Boston, Cec Thompson and Ellery Hanley. To pretend that there was no problem at all, though, would be kidding ourselves.
"Certainly, the toughest environment in which to operate from that point of view was the amateur game. As you might expect, amateur rugby league was tough enough without any racial nonsense.
"Once at Apperley Bridge, for example, we played Hunslet Parkside in some cup competition or other, and me and Sonny ended up fighting and eye-balling each other. I'm glad it didn't get serious. He was a hardnut, Sonny. He still is.
"As far as racial abuse goes, most of the stick I took came in the form of insults. I remember watching our Tony play in an amateur cup final once and he got sent off for retaliation after someone called him a Paki.
"It was so completely out of character for him to do that, I knew straight away that someone must have really annoyed him. And the daft thing is, the bloke who was giving him stick turned out to be one of his mates.
"But that's how it often is. Most folk say things without realising how obnoxious they are being. They don't see that they are doing anything wrong in acting so superior.
"You do get your out-and-out racists, obviously, the brainless white supremacists who want to keep Britain for the British, whatever that is supposed to mean. On the whole, though, I believe that most of our racial problems come down to ignorance; a lack of understanding. That's why education is so important, in every culture.
"Generally, while I copped a fair amount of racial abuse in the amateur game – and it did sometimes feel strange to be the only Pakistani around – the way you earn respect at any level of rugby league is to play it hard and within the rules.
"I always tried to do that and became quite popular as a result, especially with the fans at Featherstone. I can honestly say that only on one occasion did I ever hear any negative comments from the crowd – and that was from an away fan, and a black guy at that! The Featherstone supporters were fantastic. All I ever got was encouragement.
"And I am being quite open here. If I did hear something derogatory I would definitely say so.
"The story was similar away from home too. There was only one club that ever used to give me stick and that was Hull. One particular time, we had just got off the coach and this sweet little girl called me a 'bloody Paki'. She can only have been about eight or nine years old. Unbelievable.
"Generally, though, I used to enjoy playing away. It lifted me. Warrington was a tough place too, but I did used to enjoy going there. I had played at Wilderspool many times in the reserves so I didn't find it daunting. I enjoyed getting stuck in. Workington was horrible, and so was Salford. Walking out through those metal grills with the spectators hurling abuse. Again, the obvious question, I suppose, is was any of it racial?
"My honest answer is that if it was, I didn't hear it. In amateur matches you pick any comments up clearly, but that's not the case when there's a big noisy crowd and you are mentally 'in the zone'. All your concentration is on the game.
"Another thing to bear in mind when we are talking about racial abuse is that Martin Offiah used to get stick.
"Ellery Hanley used to get stick. But they were great players. I was never a great player. I was straight up and down, and an honest toiler. People only ever give stick to brilliant players.
"More of a problem for me was the fact that there weren't many Asian faces in the crowd, although that was something I had grown used to, right throughout my junior career.
"Asian rugby league fans seemed to be rarer than Asian players so, when you did see one, they stood out like a sore thumb. 'Oh, that's nice' I used to think. Until they started calling me useless or something, obviously.
"To be honest, there are complicated reasons why there aren't more Asians in British rugby league. I thought it might have something to do with the fact that many Asian kids aren't particularly well-built, although now I'm not so sure. Undoubtedly, another reason is that, for many kids of a South Asian background, their first sporting love is cricket. Often, they want to make a breakthrough in that, before they go on to other sports.
"In that Rugby League Week interview I referred to earlier, our Tony thought that rugby league might be suffering indirectly from the way in which local-born Asian cricketers were struggling to get any recognition from Yorkshire CCC.
"At the time, it seemed to many of us that there was a whites only policy on the other side of the football stand at Headingley.
"As Tony said: 'They tend to think that if they can't make it at cricket, which is part of our culture, what chance do they have at anything else?'. It was a fair point then, although that can't really be the case anymore."
Ends
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