Hartlepool United player Gus Mafuta has slammed The Sun for claiming he jumped into a stand and tackled a fan in yesterday’s highly tempered match with Dover Athletic.
The match was left marred and close to being abandoned yesterday afternoon after some Dover Athletic players suffered racist abuse.
There were awful scenes as some members of the Dover squad ended up confronting Pools supporters after Inih Effiong celebrated in front of the home fans.
The Sun got an article out, with the words ‘Non-league player tries to tackle his own fans in the stand after they racially abuse opponent.’
Gus Mustafa caught onto it and retweeted it with a caption ‘FALSE !!!! Didn’t attempt to jump in the crowd’.
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The writer of the tabloid newspaper’s article Duncan Wright wrote back: “The information was gleaned from the report from the Northern Echo, pic attached, which said attempted to clamber over hoardings. We’ve changed the copy to reflect climb rather than jump, though I think it’s clear Gus was remonstrating against idiots not doing anything wrong.”
Hartlepool fan Michael Allen asked him: “Not fancy fact checking before you published it then? Not that anyone takes your work seriously anyway but might be a good thing to do in future.”
DW responded: “Always happy to amend. But let me get this right, you’re more concerned that an error in terminology has taken place rather than racist abuse of players???”
MA said: “An error in terminology isn’t the same as outright lies duncan. Couldn’t be more devastated that this has happened, you however seem to be loving it as it gives you an excuse to write something negative about a successful black footballer, you’re fooling noone.”
Duncan replied: “Seriously, I’m happy to apologise to Gus for saying jump, instead of clamber. But in no way has what I have written been negative about him – it’s clear he was doing something good in tackling the racist idiots.”
Michael added: “He didn’t try to clamber either, I have video footage proving Gus goes nowhere near the advertising boards, he was involved in a verbal exchange and nothing more he stayed at least 2 feet away from the edge of the field of play throughout it, which is not at all…”
Duncan ended with: “Gus, the information we sourced from appears to be wrong. I can only apologise for going with it. The article has been amended to reflect the accurate information. To be clear, in no way was it intended to paint you in a bad light, I make anyone right for confronting racists.”
It would appear The Sun’s tweet which included the article has since been deleted, but as mentioned the article has been amended.
The player has read back and retweeted some of what fans had to say, before giving the writer a thumbs up.
— Gus (@APMafuta) September 21, 2019
After watching the conversation unfold on Twitter, fans took to express their frustrations at The Sun writer but also those who was racist in the stands – see those tweets on the next page.
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