Eric Bristow has been dropped by Sky Sports after he branded young footballers who were sexually abused by coaches as “wimps”.
The five-time world darts champion caused outrage on social media after he made the barrage of comments regarding the ongoing child abuse scandal in sport.
Bristow claimed that those abused were ‘wimps’ while also suggesting that darts players were “proper” men because they were not sexually abused.
After the news emerged about about paedophile football coach Barry Bennell, more than 20 other footballers – including former England international Paul Stewart – have bravely come forward to say that they have also suffered abuse from coaches.
We are not going to share the entire Twitter diatribe but this was just a sample of the five-tweet salvo [sic]:
‘Might be a looney but if some football coach was touching me when i was a kid as i got older i would have went back and sorted that poof out’.
Bristow also went on to remark that football players must be wimps as similar atrocities would not be tolerated by rugby or darts players.
After receiving a volley of outrage from fellow Twitter users, Bristow replied [sic]:
‘Everybody that works on tv is frightened to say the truth because they are frightened to lose their job, life shouldnt be like that’
This morning, Sky Sports revealed they would not not be using Bristow as a pundit for their coverage of the PDC World Championships in December and the New Year. A statement from a Sky Sports spokesman said:
“Bristow was a contributor to our darts coverage in the past but we will not be using him in the future.”
Meanwhile Survivors Manchester, a group set up to support male survivors of sexual abuse and rape said they had asked police to investigate Bristow’s comments.
They posted: “Appalled at @ ericbristow tweets, we have asked @ StaffsPolice to look into it as homophobic hate crime – clearly needs educating on humanity.”
