Jason Holyhead
The first contribution we have received for this website comes from Jason Holyhead from Sheffield. In this piece, Jason reviews the Rooney Rule after recent news that The Football Association confirmed that it will enforce the rule when selecting future coaching roles within the England set-up.
For some years, the football league has been considering employing the Rooney rule. Two years ago the BBC reported that each club would interview one black ethnic minority (BME) candidate for each vacant coach or managers role from 2016/17 season. At that time just 6 out of 72 positions were held by black managers.
Of those 6, Chris Powell (Southend), Chris Hughton (Brighton), Jimmy Floydd Hasselbaink (Northampton Town), Keith Curle (Carlisle) are the only four remaining in employment in this country, with only Curle at the same club.
The Rooney rule originated in the States, and was named after Dan Rooney, owner of Pittsburgh Steelers, and chairman of NFL’s diversity committee. It came about after a study showed that black coaches, despite winning a higher percentage of games, were less likely to be hired and more likely to sacked.
In 2016 the football league approved proposals to introduce the rule in our game, for academy jobs. 10 clubs voluntarily extended this to first team roles.
The ten teams were Accrington, Birmingham City, Carlisle, Chesterfield, Coventry, Fulham, Huddersfield, Millwall, Peterborough and Wolves. Only two of those teams currently employs a black manager.
Despite hundreds of black players gracing our Premier League, only one of the 20 teams currently playing in that division has a black manager. Chris Hughton has been Brighton manager since 2014. After a distinguished playing career he began his managerial career as caretaker manager of his former team Spurs. He was then assistant manager for the Republic of Ireland before joining Newcastle United, initially as first team under Kevin Keegan’s leadership. When Keegan and assistant Terry McDermott left the club, Hughton was placed in temporary charge. After a couple of defeats, he stood down but was put back in temporary charge once more when then manager Joe Kinear was taken ill shortly before a game. The team won that game but after drawing 2 games and losing three, Hughton was replaced by Alan Shearer (as temporary manager).
Shearer failed to keep Newcastle up and Hughton was put back in temporary charge for the start of the 2009/10 season. In August, September and November Hughton won the manager of the month award leading to him being named permanent boss and Newcastle enjoying their best start to a season in the clubs history. They won the league with a record of W 30 D 12 and L 4.
Despite winning promotion to the premier league and beating Arsenal for the first time in 5 years, Hughton was sacked in December 2010 leading to widespread condemnation by players, commentators and experts. The club stated it needed a more experienced manager. To date, Hughton has been in charge for 371 games, winning 161, drawing 104, losing 106.
Another of the few black managers, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink has enjoyed spells at 3 clubs in this country, taking charge of 134 games. He has won 56 and lost just 39. Keith Curle, the black manager with most games in charge under his belt has led 5 different teams in 401 games, winning 37.2% of them.
So, two years after signing up to the Rooney rule why are there so few coaches from BME backgrounds? Greg Clarke said at the time of the agreement in 2016, that it was absolutely essential that clubs continue to reflect the communities in which they are based, this absolutely is not happening.
63 managers have been in their roles for less than two years and less than a handful are black. In this age of diversity it is important that those leading clubs are representative of their communities. The football league clubs and their owners have a responsibility to do more to rebalance this.
Clearly, just having a voluntary agreement to have one person on a shortlist is not working.