Birmingham City’s Clayton Donaldson has revealed in comments made to the Birmingham Mail the racist abuse that keeps him off Twitter.
Many Birmingham players, including David Cotterill and Jacques Maghoma, have got popular social media accounts but Donaldson is not one of them and has revealed it is the racist abuse that he has received on the platform in the past which means he will never get an account.
When playing for Brentford back in 2012, Donaldson missed a penalty. Despite scoring plenty of goals for the Bees, this incident attracted the ire of some of their fans and they took to Twitter to racially abuse the former Crewe forward. While Donaldson wasn’t on Twitter to see the abuse, his family members did see it and had it reported to the police. One of the abusers was eventually banned from Griffin Park, but it is still an incident that Donaldson remembers to this day.
As part of the Kick It Out campaign, Donaldson said: “I don’t know if they are fans but you do get trolls floating about who will be negative and try to cause problems,” he explained.
“To be honest I’m not on social media for that very reason.
“I like to keep myself private and focus on my situation, my life, my career. I’m not on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or anything like that.
“You get idiots who try to be negative but you give one wrong response and you’re in big trouble.
“I’ve seen it in the past with other players when someone has said something to them on social media – they’ve replied and got themselves into problems. So my reaction was to keep off of it really.”
When asked about the incident back in 2012, he added: “Personally, I’m not on Twitter but it was one of my relatives who actually told me about it because they’d seen it.
“What people don’t realise is that when people write abusive stuff, it’s not just you who sees it, it’s your whole family and friends who are then affected.
“I’ve got a younger brother on Twitter who saw the abuse and that’s not a good thing. It can affect the situation, especially when you’ve got a wide range of followers that will see those comments. I don’t think it’s right.”
