Port Vale have confirmed that veteran striker Tom Pope has been suspended for one match.
A brief club statement said:
Port Vale can confirm that Tom Pope has been suspended for one match with immediate effect for breach of FA Rule E3.
The club will be making no futher comment at this time.
However, according to reports on the Sentinel newspaper and the BBC the ban relates to abuse on social media platform Twitter.
No doubt many will say this is an attack on free speech, but I find it sad that a legend like Tom has been reduced (and provoked in some cases) into arguing and silly points-scoring on Twitter, Fans of other clubs take it as a badge of honour if they get him to engage.
Many of his posts are just banter, and harmless and if they just related to football this probably wouln’t have happened.
Unfortunately Tom has featured links to far-right extemist US web sites (see twitter post on October 22nd-LifeSite.com) that espouse hateful homophobic and anti-abortion views and has engaged in topics where he has clearly just seen a headline and been baited into supporting prejudiced views.
Tom is a lucky man to have such a great career with a club that is now on the rise, and maybe should reflect on that and avoid social media, giving priority to his family and his football club and not being diverted from the contibution he can still make for quite some time.