Darts player fired from Sky for homophobic ‘poof’ Twitter rant
A former champion darts player has been fired from his job with Sky Sports for a series of slurs against gay people and sex abuse victims.
Eric Bristow, five time world darts champion, posted a series of abusive Tweets accusing footballers of being “wimps” and asking why alleged victims of sex abuse didn’t seek revenge.
In one Tweet, he appeared to compare being gay with being a paedophile.
He wrote: “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.”
Thousands of Twitter users reacted angrily, labelling the sportsman “disgusting”, “homophobic” and saying he should “get back to his cave” in response to the initial post.
Other users said they would be returning the player’s branded darts equipment in protest at his comments.
One Tweeter commented that his MBE might stand for “massive bellend Eric”.
The 59-year-old then ‘joked’ that rugby players would not have been victims of child sex abuse like footballers, because “footballers wimps”.
The player, who was recognised with an MBE by the Queen in 1989 for services to sport, back peddled on his angry comments as the reaction mounted.
He wrote, “sorry meant paedo not poof” appearing to confirm he had confused being gay with being a paedophile.
13 hours after posting the series of abusive Tweets they had been removed from his account.
The rant comes days after Stonewall’s rainbow laces campaign saw a barrage of homophobic posts on social media.
Users wrote “football fur real man” and “who supports f***ing gays?” following the effort to tackle homophobia in sport, while others denied it existed.
