Bristol-born England rugby star Ellis Genge has spoken about the lack of opportunities availbale to BAME people in rugby and the problem the game has with racism.
Genge, who grew up in Knowle West in Bristol and now plays for Leicester Tigers, also addressed the recent toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in his home city and said he had 'so much heat' for asking questions about the renaming of Colston's school.
The former Bristol Bears prop appeared on the House of Rugby podcast, hosted by presenter Alex Payne and former Wasps and England player James Haskell to talk about racism in the sport.
And he first addressed the flack he received for getting involved in conversations following Black Lives Matter protesters throwing the Colston statue in the harbour.
Former Bristol player Genge said: "I had so much heat for it. All I asked was 'rename Colston School'. I put a question mark at the end of it which means it was a question, I wasn't actually implying anything.
"Everyone said 'you're adding smoke to the fire', 'you're being so unhelpful', 'with your platform you should (inaud). F**k off, I'll do with my platform as I please.
"What a day for black lives in general. They're making such good progress with all the protests, you see all the stuff that's going on and then people actually wanted the statue of this slave trader to stay up in the middle of Bristol.
"I just thought, why? Why would you want that? It's beyond me, and then they rolled it into the water. My cousin made some quite funny shirts saying 'finding Edward Colston' with a Finding Nemo background, so I've got one of those on the way.
"In terms of my political standpoint on it, I'm not for the violence and as you've seen, all the people going round to defend statues and everyone was getting battered.
"It was horrible, I don't like watching that sort of stuff but I'm all for people protesting and standing up for their rights. As you know I'm quite vocal about my own.
"That's not my area of expertise and opinions are like a*****es, everyone has got one and that's mine."
Presenter Payne then went on to highlight several statistics which may suggest that rugby does have a racism problem.
He pinpointed that Paul Hull is only the black director of rugby or head coach in the history of England's top flight, in charge of Bristol from 2009-11.
Joe Shaw, the Saracens coach, is the only home grown BAME senior coach in Premiership, while there are no BAME members on the 14-strong RFU board and World Cup winner Maggie Alphonsi is the only BAME member of 55 RFU council members.
When then asked by Payne if he thinks rugby does have a racism problem, Genge said: "You've answered your own question. I've had a lot of messages from some of my friends saying that they're quite conscious of how they've made me feel in the past and when they've dished out a bit of craic.
"I'm not 100 per cent sure where my heritage is from. I've took a lot of ancestry tests and we've had all different results so you can't really pinpoint it because my grandad was adopted.
"So we weren't 100 per cent sure, they've dished a few jokes about that, and obviously they felt very guilty after all this stuff came out. I said 'listen mate, for me on personal note, I'm fine with what you've said in the past, you've never tried to provoke me, you've been offensive but within reason'.
"It's just banter for boys, I'm not saying racism is banter by any means, what I'm saying is that boys dish out 'your breath stinks', 'you've got a terrible lid'. Some boys say things that they don't mean and at the time you think 'he's said this, he's said that, he's implied that'.
It's just the way civilisation... it does need to change and like you've just read out with those stats, it's not an issue if they're all going a brilliant job, fine. But I'm sure a lot of those people are jut picking up a pay cheque and there could be someone of ethnic minority knocking on the door that isn't getting the opportunity because they're BAME."
