Iain Moody has admitted his regret over the text messages which cost him his post as Crystal Palace’s sporting director.
Moody, who resigned in August after details of series of alleged racist, sexist and homophobic text messages sent to manager Malky Mackay during their spell at Cardiff, has been out of work ever since despite Mackay returning to management with Wigan.
But with the Football Association understood to be close to concluding their five-month investigation into the affair within the next couple of weeks, Moody has finally broken his silence.
“In life, most people you meet are good people. There are some who aren’t and never will be,” he told the Palace fanzine Five Year Plan.
“I think good people sometimes do bad things. It doesn’t mean that they are no longer good people and I think everyone has got something you can refer to in your own past to say why did I do that?
“I think we can all look back on experiences of reacting to situations in a particular way and thinking: ‘God, there’s no way I would do that again.’ Or even as has happened to me, reading back things and not even recognising that it was me who said them, thinking … and I’m not denying it was me, but that’s unrecognisable and it’s not a reflection of where I am and what I stand for, and the education that I have had; and I don’t mean necessarily formal education but upbringing.”
Moody was sacked from his role as Cardiff’s head of recruitment in October 2013 and replaced by an unknown 23-year-old who was formerly on work experience. He joined Palace the following month and considered tendering his resignation to co-chairman Steve Parish after being accused of obtaining the Cardiff team ahead of the crucial 3-0 away win in April.
However, Moody admitted that it was the fallout from the text messages that had made his position untenable.
“They were looking for a manager at the time, the season had just started, transfer window open, there was a lot of stuff going on and I had become a story and I didn’t want to be a story that impacted on Palace,” he said.
“So, as soon as I knew what was going to happen in the press, I spoke to Steve and said: ‘I will just go. From this day I will just go and I won’t bother you again.’ And that’s kind of what happened.”
Moody added: “I was disappointed [to leave Palace]. I had a 10 fantastic months and I loved all the people. There’s brilliant people everywhere at the club, it’s quirky, it needs a bit of work, a bit of love but they’ve got absolutely the right people doing the right things for the right reasons, and it’s not often I can say that.”
