Neville southall on twitter

[summerisle]

Succinct.

 

[summerisle]

 

[arch stanton]

oh my, Big Nev is a Park End scruff. Who'd have thunk it.

 

[summerisle]

And on a more serious note :

http://outnewsglobal.com/breaking-n...nal-footballer-support-comeout2play-campaign/

BREAKING: Neville Southall the first professional footballer to support #ComeOut2Play campaign

“The way to make change is to see gay and bi people out on the pitch.”

The legendary former Everton goalkeeper and Wales international, Neville Southall has signed the #ComeOut2Play campaign.

It makes him the first major professional footballer (current or past) to support the drive to help gay and bi players who are worried about coming out. The campaign currently has an extraordinary reach of 33 million people and is trending worldwide on the Thunderclap website.

‘Big Nev’ exclusively told OutNews Global he hopes the #ComeOut2Play campaign will give a player the confidence and reassurance they need to be open about their sexuality. In his famous ‘tell it like it is’ style, he said: “Most people don’t give a monkey’s if you’re gay. People don’t care but in the game sometimes it goes back to stereotypes.

“The way to make change is to see gay and bi people out on the pitch. That first player will get a bit of grief but it’ll be amazing for them too.

“I think a gay footballer will make a fortune on it. The first one will have all sorts at their feet. Columns, shows all sorts. The second one won’t, the third one won’t so it’s there for the taking.”

‘Big Nev’ Neville is proud to be a vocal LGBT+ ally and campaigner

There are those who worry about the reaction a gay or bi male player would get from fellow players and fans but Southall doesn’t see that happening: “Your fans will protect you and love you and that’s 40,000 people on your side when you’re on the pitch.

“Once inside the dressing room, other players would be supportive, I think. Players don’t care. I think we make a bit too much of it sometimes, all this sexuality thing in football. Banter’s banter.

“Players aren’t going to bully them for being gay because they already have a playing relationship together. They’re mates. Yeah we all take the piss out of each other in the showers and that and there’s nothing sacred but as footballers we know we might be the one to make the mistake today in the match so we protect our own.”

Some are questioning why no current player has decided to lend their weight to the campaign.

‘Big Nev’ says he thinks he knows why: “I think current players haven’t signed the campaign yet because clubs are so tight on what people say and nobody says what they really mean anymore. It’s all so controlled. Everybody is so PC now that they don’t want to say something controversial.

“And you know what? If a player signs the campaign the tabloids might start investigating their life and they don’t want that. Footballers are [Poor language removed]-scared of the media.”

Southall was arguably the best goalkeeper in the world at the height of his career in the 80s, racking up a record-breaking 751 appearances for Everton and 92 Wales caps.

Neville Southall played in goal for Everton and for Wales in internationals

He is now an outspoken supporter for disadvantaged people living in poorer communities and counts himself as a proud LGBT+ ally, often tweeting in solidarity to his 100k followers.

The English Football League has already given the #ComeOut2Play campaign its support and last week Middlesbrough Football Club became the first team to sign up.

EFL Chief Executive, Shaun Harvey, said: “The EFL is pleased to support the upcoming Come Out 2 Play initiative, in order to help raise awareness, whilst also promoting the values of the game and ensuring football provides everyone with a safe and welcoming environment.”

Political figures including shadow minister Dawn Butler, David Lammy MP and Sarah Brown have signed up to the drive, as have celebrities John Bishop, Alan Carr, Russell Grant, Katie Price, Piers Morgan, Denise Welch and many more.

Just a few of the campaign’s high profile supporters who have signed up online

Neville Southall’s support comes after he posted on Twitter in support of the LGBT+ community. The tweet received some transphobic and homophobic replies from a number of his 100k followers. In his tweet he said: “Why are some people [Poor language removed] scared of the LGBT community…I have no idea myself apart from ignorance or intolerance…”

He received praise from many of his followers but others were less supportive. @SerbYid wrote: “Lol the problem is they say they want to be united with the rest of the world but they act completely differently. They want special treatment”

Meanwhile, @BlueGridiron took the opportunity to criticise the trans community…

…as did @limewirerules who said: “Because the LGBT crowd call you a bigot if you say you don’t want your 8 year old son to mutilate his own genitals. Think.”

Southall responded to the criticism, urging people to talk to members of the LGBT+ community and look at things from other people’s points of view.

One of the #ComeOut2Play campaign leaders, the broadcaster and editor-at-large of OutNews Global Andy West said: “Neville Southall’s support means the campaign is now reaching more people than ever and it’s so important we have backing from people in the game.

“We are talking to players who are concerned about coming out and it’s great to hear that our campaign is achieving its goal: to show players that they will get huge support if they choose of their own free will to be open.

“Nobody should be pressured to come out but we are proving that millions of people in the UK today are ready to stand alongside any LGBT player who decides to come out.”

Join Neville Southall now by signing the campaign here!

 

[Jonte]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05fzzx1

 

[summerisle]

Christmas greetings from Nev.

















That's all folks.

 

[summerisle]

Well said Nev.

 

[summerisle]

Neville Southall: What’s the best way to change politics?

Electrify seats on Question Time.

The reason he thinks of Hunt as a cabbage is because “he is trying to privatise the NHS and the problem is they are playing games and people are dying. Why are they trying to privatise it? Because they can’t afford it and if they can’t afford it then find a way of paying for it.

“If people earn lots of money fine, but there has to be a way for those who earn lots to help those who don’t.”

The government has its priorities wrong, he says. The professions that we need most are the ones that are poorly paid.

“The people who run towards the [Poor language removed] we get in our lives get treated the shittest by the government. The Grenfell Tower. The firefighters did not back off and yet she could not even talk to them properly.”

It is so obvious that he should appear on BBC’s Question Time that I am not the first one to mention it. The BBC even phoned him for a preliminary chat that came to nothing but Southall, right, would still be keen if approached again, even though he calls it “Dodge the Question Time”.

He suggests electrifying the seats on David Dimbleby’s show with the audience pressing a button if it thinks that a panellist has not answered the question. “That would f***ing change politics, wouldn’t it?” he says. “MPs go on the same bollocks courses as football managers.”

And, yes, he does know that he would not be able to swear on the telly. More impressive than his Twitter life is his real life. Southall works in a small school tucked away in Ebbw Vale, off Steelworks Road. It is a school for children who struggle in the education system and have nowhere else to go.

When Southall rails against teaching methods, he does so from a position of knowledge. He knows that it takes one year for a pupil’s mental health condition to be assessed. In the meantime an underfunded system copes as best as it can.

Southall does all manner of tasks. He drives the children to where they need to be, he finds them work experience. He raises funds. He breaks up fights. He can spend eight weeks convincing a local employer to give a child a job placement “and then they don’t turn up. Having been a footballer, I’m used to defeat”.

It can be uplifting, though. He praises a local garage owner who has “never refused any kid, ever, no matter what their circumstances. This is one of the most deprived places anywhere.

“They had lots of jobs when the mines were here and lots of jobs when the steel was here. You take those two big things away, what’s left?”

It is tempting to suppose that Southall spent all those years as one of the most highly regarded goalkeepers of all time — winning two league titles, two FA Cups and the European Cup Winners’ Cup — quietly railing against injustice but he admits to having been selfishly insular. “Football was all-consuming, nothing else mattered,” he says.

“I didn’t give a [Poor language removed] about anything else. Looking back, it was the wrong approach in some ways but it got me to where I wanted to get to.”

He was probably rather irritating. He would avoid team talks, take match preparation at his own pace. Howard Kendall, his manager at Goodison Park, complained that Southall was trying to be too perfect.

These days he would like to save the world. If he can’t save the world, then he would like to raise money so that his school can afford a psychologist and a mental health nurse.

This is where Twitter comes in. Southall checks almost every follower, even though he has 119,000 of them, in case they are people who can help the school. He is also intrigued that so many of his followers have little or no interest in football.

Despite his long service with Everton, Southall does not get on well with the current directors
A friend set up his Twitter account. He found that he liked it because “people reply straight away and you can talk to anyone around the world” and he is immune to Twitter abuse.

“I stood in goal in front of people giving me abuse for years. If someone comes on Twitter who is a proper knob, then I’ll just retweet it and someone else gives them stick so I don’t have to. If I was bothered about what people said about me I’d be dead by now.”

He is a little baffled by how his tweets have given him a different kind of fame. “People think I have an agenda on Twitter, but there’s no campaign,” he says. “It’s nice for me to listen to other people. I can find stuff out. The way I tweet is the way I think. People think I’m writing poetry but it’s just the way I think. There’s no mystery, I read the news and if there’s somebody I want to take the piss out of, I do it.

“I started tweeting about the LGBT community because I know sod all about it. A lot of kids here have issues with who they are and, if they asked me questions, I did not have a clue so I got to understand a lot more.”

He did not grow up in a political household and wasted his final year at school because they suddenly raised the leaving age to 16. Although infamous for being a binman before joining Everton, it is his hod-carrying job that had most impact.

It built up his strength and kept him fit. If he was not training on a Sunday morning he would go on to the building site and set up the bricks so that Monday morning could be more efficient. It is where he found his work ethic.

His most treasured football memory is the second leg of the Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final against Bayern Munich in 1985, which Everton won 3-1 after the first leg had finished goalless. “Everyone I’d ever met in Liverpool was at the game,” he says. “Must have been 400,000 people in the stadium. We went 1-0 down and smashed them second half, physically and mentally. It’s the only game where I’ve known the crowd make a difference. For me, as a player, they made a difference that night. The club and the fans and the stadium just came together. The performance mirrored the city.”

The best he ever played, though, was, he insists, for Wales in a 7-1 defeat by Holland in 1996. The team were a mess, preparation had been a joke but he is proud that he kept on trying.

“It would have been easy to give up,” he says, which leads us nicely to his view of how the game has developed since he stopped playing 16 years ago. He watches all of Everton’s matches but finds a lot else boring and avoids the preamble for televised games because, “what’s the point?”

The former goalkeeper is no fan of less aggressive modern football
He is not much of a fan of the post-match offering either. “Managers are not proper football people any more because they’re frightened to death of losing their job,” he says. “They think they can cling on a bit longer by talking complete bollocks.

“The Premier League is so much up its own arse it’s ridiculous. They don’t seem to grasp it’s about the people who watch every week.”

Unsurprisingly, he is not a fan of VAR. A lack of computer analysis never cost anyone the title, he says, and he worries about the future, about the game becoming like American football and being dictated to by adverts. Soon, he says, teams will be able to bring on specialist corner-kick takers and then take them off again.

The rift between what fans like and what they are offered could be healed if the chairmen went on the pitch at the start of the season and told fans what they planned to do. “Why do they hide behind all that political bullshit?” he asks.

I do not dare mention prawn sandwiches. Southall sits with his mates in the stands at Goodison and rarely ventures into the posh seats. The last time that he was in the directors’ box they complained that he was wearing tracksuit bottoms.

“I don’t think we have a magnificent relationship, to be fair,” he says. “I don’t think Bill Kenwright [the Everton chairman] particularly likes me because I say what I think. But whatever I say is what the fans are thinking.

“I hope Everton take a real good look at their new ground and be the first community ground where they have a homeless shelter on the side.”

He has little time for players who cannot last 90 minutes given they have access to best the physios and dieticians. “They’ve taken everything away from a footballer that he has to worry about and they still can’t perform.

“Pitches have to be perfect, everything has to be perfect. Why? You’re fit. Run. The game has to reflect the people on the terraces. They work their bollocks off to go to the games.

“They don’t want to see players with their socks over their knees in pink boots. They want to see people run through a brick wall for the team. You might be [Poor language removed] or have a bad game, but the least you can do is run.”

This is why he has time for Pep Guardiola, who may have the most expensively assembled team but makes sure that Manchester City work hard and compete intensely. Southall has less time for Guardiola’s “stupid” complaint last week that his players needed protection from Cardiff City’s tackling in their FA Cup fourth-round tie.

“If I’m playing against Kevin De Bruyne and I’m not as good as him, then I’m going to smash him because that’s my job for the team,” he says. “I don’t give a [Poor language removed] how much he cost because my loyalty is to my team. It’s no good whingeing. What would he do in the same position? Say, ‘I ain’t going to tackle him because he’s better than me?’ I’m surprised there weren’t more tackles from Cardiff.”

Southall believes in a more equitable society — “I thought the idea of a state was to treat everyone as family”— and his views are an amalgam of his experiences. “What these kids have had all their lives is people shouting at them,” he says. “I’ve been in enough dressing rooms where the manager is shouting and seen people switching off.”

He looks at the world and sighs. We discuss why there are so many houses left without adequate flood defences. Why are the roads in a mess? Why have double glazing when we have global warming?

“Why can’t we get the old double-decker buses, put beds in them and drive around to the homeless people?” he asks.

He would go down a storm on Question Time.

-----

On Tory policies
Save money on burials
Make your nan’s skeleton into a coffee table and your uncle into a lamp
Saving the country money

I have lived a blue
I will die a blue
But on the 8th of June I want the country red
Get rid of poverty
Vote @jeremycorbyn @WelshLabour

Why are the Tories trying to reduce the fire service to 2 people with a glass of water
Killing me softly with your love
Don’t think so
Cuts kill people
Fund them properly
You donuts
We put a £100 million footballer on a perfect pitch
But a priceless human we leave sleeping on a street

Roberto Martínez
Donald trump
Napoleon
Roberto
Mad or genius
Discuss

Grassroots football
Saturday morning kids football pouring down
1 game off already
Why don’t they just raise all pitches in Wales 3 feet?

I am getting webfeet
The game that’s off is on old school pitch
New school has 3G pitch
Not allowed on that in case it gets ruined
Grassroots dying why?

Transgender rights
I find it funny that if I tweet something about LGBT stuff people ask me if I am gay but if I tweet about animals they never ask if I am a tiger.
Why?

Lesbian, gay, bi, trans skeletons sat on a cloud
No one gives a f***
Heaven
Pity not same on earth

-----

Advice to Premier League goalkeepers
“I’d like to mentor some goalies so they could phone up and talk to me. But somebody has got to want you to do it and I’m not with a club. I could change a goalkeeper on the phone as well as I could change them on the training ground. It’s 90 per cent mental and 10 per cent physical.”

So, who might be on the line?

Wayne Hennessey
I look at him and think he could be ten times better if he could just move quicker.

Jordan Pickford
He can learn a lot. He kicks the ball miles and really hard all the time. Why? You have to vary your service. Play it into feet sometimes.

Loris Karius
You look at the Liverpool pair and think . . . no. With Karius, his decision-making is not bad. He’s just too slow in picking things up, he’s too slow in the game. He came in and made a few mistakes so now he’s got that reputation of being [Poor language removed] but over time, when he gets the speed of the Premier League, he’ll be OK.

Joe Hart
At times he over-concentrates, at times he lets his emotions get the better of him, at times he goes for the ball with two hands when it’s better to go with one.

 

[Paulie]

I like Nev a lot.

 

[Toffe3m4n]

I have to admit here... I unfollowed him a few weeks back.

I like the dude, I really do, and some of his tweets are gold... but christ it's like he actually lives on it. 90% of my timeline was filled with his retweets, a lot of them containing photos of mutilated animals.

I get the point, he wants to draw awareness and I respect that, but not for me soz.

 

[degsy]

He looks like Jabba the Hut's fat brother. More bin wagon than bin man.


Still love him though

This
Plus anybody who gives tories stick has my vote

 

[GwladysBlue]

He’s a great, caring man.

 

[Minimeister]

Unfollowed. It went too surreal. Probably my hero as a kid constantly tweeting the weirdest weirdo I've ever worked with about transgender rights. I'd rather remember him as he was.

 

[Frang]

read his book people, it will explain a few things!

 

[summerisle]