Leeds United conversation no one wants to have as EFL looks at grim issue

When the Jimmy Savile song was aired early on at Plymouth Argyle in the recent Championship fixture, by home fans positioned nearest to the visiting support, an audible wave of laughter rippled around the rest of the stadium. Grown adults, barely settled in their seats, launching giddily into a song about a man who raped children. Making light of the abuse of countless, the ruin of young lives, in the name of 'banter' and point-scoring. A match is rarely very old before you hear it, others have got stuck in earlier than the Plymouth fans did, but hear it you almost certainly will. Everyone does it when they come to Elland Road. And it's grim. The response from Leeds fans is, inevitably, just as grim, and just as consistent. Two wrongs do not make a right. But you can say with certainty that if the man's name was not uttered by the opposition, then it would not be uttered at all.

Last week when, as part of their action plan in the wake of last season's depressing homophobic chanting episode, Leeds rightly put out a statement about the 'Chelsea rent boy' song, some of the responses asked for the whereabouts of the statement on the Savile chant. Whatabouttery? Yes. In that instance it was. Likewise when tragedy chanting warnings are dished out. But there has to come a time for Leeds fans' protests to be taken seriously on this matter. There has to be a conversation on how football rids itself of songs about a predator so prolific his crimes were investigated across 28 police forces, making it likely that his victims could well be sitting in any of the stadiums visited by Leeds United.

It's a conversation that very few seem to want to have any public part of, right now. Late last year the YEP contacted several charities who work with victims of sexual abuse and child abuse, at local and national level, and none would offer comment on the record. Perhaps football's tribal nature and the social media backlash from those desperate to preserve their right to sing vile nonsense makes this a fight not worth starting, for under-funded or under-staffed non profit organisations. The EFL gave no official comment either, besides to say it was a chant they were looking at alongside, but not as part of, their efforts to stamp out tragedy chanting.

What Savile wrought on his many victims was a widespread national tragedy. Speaking in 2015 after a Daily Mail columnist used Savile's name in a political piece, Gabrielle Shaw, CEO of the National Association for People Abuse in Childhood warned: “What may seem to one person to be a throwaway, joke comment, can act as a real trigger to survivors and not just people abused by Jimmy Savile. It could hit them with the force of a physical blow and it brings it all back again…it’s tasteless and insensitive at best but it could do real damage. I do feel for the survivors who could be affected by this.”

There are other chants worth throwing in the bin along with this one, and a small number of Leeds fans are not whiter than white in this regard. It would be rank hypocrisy express disgust for the Savile song out out one side of your mouth, and then sing similar about opposition figures out of the other. There is nothing remotely funny about what Savile did, about rape, or about sexual abuse. Heartfelt solidarity with any parent having to try and explain such to a son or daughter taking their first matchgoing steps. Making fun of the opposition will always be part of the game, in the stands and long may that continue. There is always so much to go at, without stooping this low. How there ever came to be a place for Savile is a matter of shame for the sport and the sooner its authorities take action, the better.