Playing football in the late 1970s and through the 80s, you saw some pretty troubling things.
Among them was racist abuse during games.
I played when bananas were thrown on the pitch and black players like my Nottingham Forest teammate Viv Anderson were on the end of the most disgusting comments.
They dealt with it in their own ways when they shouldn't have had to, but we lived in a different world then.
It happened just as much in this country as it did abroad, in my experience.
Common consensus says society has moved on from then, but the mainstream re-emergence of such incidents is deeply troubling.
We saw what happened with England in Bulgaria and it was disgusting, but that is not to say our own house is in order.
On Saturday we saw Haringey Borough's players walk off the pitch when their goalkeeper, Valery Douglas Pajetat, was reportedly racially abused against Yeovil in the FA Cup fourth qualifying round.
You don't want the bigots to win and in one sense, it feels like they win when players go off and the game ends, but you have to draw a line in the sand when this happens.
Action has to be taken because racism, fascism or other societal ills cannot rear their ugly heads in the way we saw in years gone by.
I'm pleased to see Haringey were not punished for walking off and it is only right the game is replayed, hopefully without any mindless abuse.
Garry Birtles was in conversation with Matt Davies.
