Ex-Cardiff football recruiter breaks silence after anti-gay text allegations
A former football boss who resigned after allegations of homophobic texts surfaced has broken his silence, saying “sometimes people do bad things”.
Allegations were made in August 2014 that former Cardiff City manager Malky Mackay and his then head of recruitment Iain Moody were involved in a string of racist, homophobic and sexist text messages – one of which allegedly read: “He’s a snake, a gay snake. Not to be trusted.”
Cardiff City passed the texts over to the Football Association, which is said to be nearing the end of an investigation in to the pair’s conduct at the club.
Moody told Palace fan magazine ‘Five Year Plan’: “In life, most people you meet are good people. There are some who aren’t and never will be.
“I think good people sometimes do bad things. It doesn’t mean that they are no longer good people and I think everyone has got something you can refer to in your own past to say why did I do that?
“I think we can all look back on experiences of reacting to situations in a particular way and thinking ‘God, there’s no way I would do that again’, or even as has happened to me, reading back things and not even recognising that it was me who said them, thinking… and I’m not denying it was me, but that’s unrecognisable and it’s not a reflection of where I am and what I stand for, and the education that I have had; and I don’t mean necessarily formal education but upbringing.”
Ahead of the FA’s report on the issue, a source told theTelegraph that Mackay and Moody are both likely to escape punishment, as the messages were private correspondence.
An FA spokesperson said: “We cannot comment as the matter is ongoing.”
According to the newspaper, if the FA do drop the case against Mackay and Moody, it is possible that Cardiff City could pursue action against them in the civil courts instead.
