Newcastle: Luther Burrell’s claims of racism upheld after a review

Claims of racism voiced by former England and Newcastle Falcons centre Luther Burrell have proven to be true after a thorough review.

Burrell opened up about experiences of racism in the Mail in June last year, resulting in Newcastle launching an internal investigation into the allegations.

Thorough process

Since October 2022, the investigation has interviewed 90 people who are or have worked for Newcastle to generate findings through an independent King’s Counsel.

In a statement released by the club, the finds showed that, “The report has concluded that on the balance of probabilities, the allegations made in the Daily Mail article are true, but there is insufficient evidence to say whether these allegations occurred at the club.”

The report did, however, note of incidents, including a WhatsApp message and two other situations where acts of racism were “more likely to have happened during his time with Newcastle Falcons than not.”

The club has committed to educating its employees about discrimination and how to deal with situations in more a positive and meaningful manner.

“We take our responsibility to help drive education and development in this area very seriously and are very much aligned with Luther’s aim of educating and eliminating any discrimination from across the sport.

“While we had already embarked on a full review of policies, procedures and training provisions following our return to work and the removal of red zone restrictions around playing and coaching staff after COVID in May 2022, we intend to take all possible learnings from the investigation report to ensure we continue to take every positive action we can for the better of our employees, our sponsors, our club, our loyal supporters and our game,” the statement wrote.

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“Luther raised numerous allegations and it remains gravely concerning that any individual would be subject to discriminatory behaviour within the game we all love, or within any walk of life. As such we welcome and support the wider action being taken by the RFU, alongside Premiership Rugby and the RPA, in terms of the wider listening exercise they’ve conducted across the sport and the resulting inclusion and diversity action plan – details of which are due to be released imminently.

“As a club we have an equality, diversity and inclusion policy in place, any breach of which would qualify as a serious disciplinary matter. We have delivered ED&I training to all our employees, have bystander training sessions scheduled for all employees and are committed to annual refresher training.

“We are also in discussion with the RFU about training that will be provided more widely across the sport and our owner has met with Luther to further discuss how we can all work together more closely to ensure rugby is a welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone.”

Education is key

Ultimately, even after the extensive investigation, individuals involved with the incidents could not be identified, but the club once again underlined their focus of achieving Burrell’s aims of educating people about these issues.

“Given that after an extensive investigation there remains no way to identify those involved in any of the allegations outlined above, that many staff and players have left since the time Luther was at the Club, that the report refers to generally positive feedback on the culture and behaviours of the Club and given that Luther’s stated aim was to educate and improve things for the future, going forward the Club will be focusing on education and reinforcement of the aims and processes within our policies, as recommended in the report,” the statement added.