The former Crawley Town manager John Yems has been banned from all football-related activity for three years for 12 breaches of anti-discrimination rules. The increase to his original 17-month suspension amounts to “the longest ever ban issued to a participant in English football for discrimination”, the Football Association said.
Yems was initially banned by an independent regulatory commission until 1 June 2024 but the FA appealed that the sanction was too lenient. It also opposed the commission’s finding that the 63-year-old is “not a conscious racist”. An independent appeal board agreed with the FA, expressing incredulity at the commission’s assessment, and extended Yems’ ban until 5 January 2026.
Yems was charged with 16 breaches of anti-discrimination rules in July 2022. He admitted to one charge at the initial hearing and was found guilty of 11 others. Five players, described by the commission as “impressive witnesses”, the club chaplain and an FA investigator gave evidence.
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Instances of Yems’ behaviour, which occurred over his three years as Crawley manager from 2019 to 2022 and and were found proven by the commission, included calling a player of Asian heritage a “curry muncher” and repeatedly likening a Muslim player to a terrorist or suicide bomber. He refused to provide the player with a vest on the basis that “[his] people blow up stuff with vests”. When two black players were playing darts, Yems said they should be “more used to blowpipes than a game of darts” and asked why they were playing darts when “people like them normally blow sharp objects through their mouths”. He then appeared to compare the players to Zulu warriors and made gestures as if using a blowpipe. Yems also mispronounced Arnold Schwarzenegger’s name so as to sound like a racial slur.
Yems apologised to the player of Asian heritage for asking whether he was “unhappy about there being no curry pizza” at a team meeting. Yems contacted the on-loan player’s parent club to disclose the situation. On another occasion, having commented on the darkness of a player’s skin, he put his hand over his mouth and admitted he “should not say that”.
The commission ruled: “We have accepted that Mr Yems is not a conscious racist. If he were, an extremely lengthy, even permanent, suspension would be appropriate.”
The FA did not appeal against the outcome of any charges but argued the commission came to a decision that “no reasonable such body could have come and/or imposed a sanction that was so unduly lenient as to be unreasonable”. Yems attempted to have the appeal dismissed because the FA was one day late with its application.
The appeal board shared the FA’s incredulity at the commission finding that Yems was not a conscious racist. “One simply knows not how it can reasonably be said that any person who uses any of those deeply offensive expressions is not aware that his comments are, objectively, racist,” it states in its written reasons for extending the ban.
An FA spokesperson said: “This is the longest ever ban issued to a participant in English football for discrimination, and follows our decision to appeal and challenge the verdict of the independent regulatory commission after the first hearing in January. We strongly disagreed with their original sanction, as well as some of the elements of their judgement, which we fundamentally believed were not appropriate for the severity of the offences committed by John Yems.
“This is a deeply distressing case for the victims involved, and we hope that the outcome of this appeal will help to bring some closure. We also hope that this will encourage anyone who has experienced or witnessed discrimination in the game to report it.”
Yems told TalkSport in January: “I wasn’t found to be racist, I never used racist language with intent. If anyone is owed an apology I think I do.”
