Yorkshire race scandal takes another twist as coach Andrew Gale is caught in anti-Semitism storm

The Yorkshire race crisis took another twist on Friday when coach Andrew Gale was accused of sending an anti-Semitic tweet when he was captain of the club.

Gale sent a tweet to Leeds United’s then head of media Paul Dews in 2010 that included the words ‘button it yid!’, Jewish News reported yesterday.

The Yorkshire coach said he was ‘completely unaware’ of the offensive nature of the term when he sent the tweet, which was deleted soon after it was posted.

Yorkshire head coach Andrew Gale has been accused of sending an anti-Semitic tweet 

‘This post is part of a conversational thread between Paul Dews and myself,’ said Gale. ‘The reference is to a chant that was prevalent at the time towards Leeds fans.

‘Within a few minutes of the post Paul called me and explained the meaning of the word and that it was offensive to Jews. I was completely unaware of this meaning and deleted it immediately. I would never have used that word had I been aware of its offensive meaning and I haven’t used it since.’

Azeem Rafiq’s racism accusations have rocked the world of cricket over the last week 

Yorkshire chief executive Mark Arthur told Jewish News: ‘This kind of behaviour would be completely unacceptable to the club. Now we are aware of it, it goes without saying we will investigate the allegation thoroughly.’ 

Coincidentally, they are exactly the same words used by Yorkshire following Sportsmail’s revelation on Friday that an unnamed British Asian member of their academy was another player, along with Azeem Rafiq, to suffer racial abuse.

Clearly the investigations are piling up for Yorkshire and the ECB.