Gareth Southgate Says No to Nurses: Hero or Villain?

By: Daryl | October 13th, 2007

Gareth Southgate says no to nurses You may remember that the MayDay for Nurses Hardship Fund event last season, where many Premiership footballers donated a days wages to highlight the plight of Britain’s underpaid nurses. Some players contributed, but not all, and the campaign organizers published a list of who gave on their website. Their semi-aggressive stance hasn’t been met kindly by Middlesbrough boss Gareth Southgate, who feels that the campaign is now “bordering on blackmail” in demanding the days wages from all Premiership players, so he’s pulled the plug on the club’s planned donation. As with most controversies, there are definitely two sides to this:

All players should donate a days wages, we should all boo Gareth Southgate
Let’s be honest, they can afford it. The entire first team squads of Reading, West Ham, Watford and Fulham all donated a days wages and none of them appear to be going hungry, defaulting on their mortgage payments or struggling to fill their expensive sports cars with petrol. I’m not sure exactly what Jonathan Woodgate and George Boateng are earning, but can guarantee that a days wages would be a large sum, but also a sum they could live without. The very basis of this campaign is to highlight the massive gap between the megamoney wages of Premiership footballers and the underpaid, hardworking nurses. It is a shame that the campaign has had to apply pressure, but it’s the footballers fault for not coughing up when they were asked back in May. Let’s just hope Gareth Southgate doesn’t require any trips to the hospital in the near future.

Footballers are being emotionally blackmailed, Gareth Southgate is a hero
Gareth Southgate is just standing up for professional footballers who feel they’re being bullied by campaign organizer Noreen Hertz. No one is debating that footballers are paid too much and nurses not enough, especially when you compare the two professions. And ethically, footballers donating a days wages to a nurses hardship fund would be the right thing to do. But… it’s not footballers fault that they earn so much. And charity is when you give from the goodness of your heart, not when an organization puts you under public pressure to do so. Alyson Rudd agrees with Southgate in The Times that “It is outrageous. Imagine seeing your name on a website because you had declined to hand over cash to someone knocking on your door for Guide Dogs for the Blind.” Also, it seems Noreen Hertz has been inflexible about the whole thing. Apparently Everton’s Lee Carsley asked if he could just make a donation instead of a days wages, but she ducked his question. The reality is that no one has to donate to charity. The best any charity can do is to ask for money, and hope they receive it. When certain people decline, then the charity simply has to move on.

Some Related Stories:

Category: English Premier League, World Football

« Ronaldinho – Good at Basketball Too | Home | Daily Dose 10.14.07 »

The Offside RSS Feeds

tomsharp

The thing with naming and shaming Middlesbrough, effectively leading to the newspapers calling us the 'scum of the North', is that it was unnecessary. OK, so each player didn't say, heres 1 days wages, but the club did make a donation as a whole, probably equal to most of a days wages for each player.

Thats the fact most missed, we were giving money, just not glorifying it, which is as bad and the same as blackmail.
Diane

If the campaign needed to use the players names to give recognized faces (and highly publicized salaries) to the comparison, they could just have asked. Those could have been used along with the number of other players from each club.

BTW, when the list first came out, us non-Chelsea fans were happy enough to sneer about their players' lack of generosity--but this new list points out that the club made a donation as a whole. In grudging fairness ;-) , it would have been a bit more respectful to have that noted from the outset.

Whatever, best luck to the nurses, whether one of their organizers was a bit out of bounds or not.
aja

i work as a fundraiser at a not-for-profit in nyc, and here, at least, it's standard practice to publicize the names of donors unless they specifically ask not to be identified.
joejoejoe

It's an effective public campaign by the nurses. Nobody is forcing any player to donate. If player X said "I give only to poverty groups" or "I spend all my money on hookers and gin" both are acceptable responses. To say it's too much pressure by the nurses is weak. Too much pressure how? The entire point of the campaign is to raise awareness and funds and from that perspective it's a huge success.