Dario Gradi

[UCEbaggie]

It must be gutting to be a Crewe Alex fan. He was revered as a hero and then to find out he'd kept quiet about stuff like that. Unfortunately, what has emerged is probably only the tip of the iceberg. Lots of access to youngsters and none-existent safeguarding will have made youth football very attractive to very bad people.

Worked in Amsterdam as a holiday rep in the early 00s and shared a room with a lad from Crewe... he was a huge Crewe fan, and was absolutely adamant at the time Dario Gradi was a paedophile and everyone at Crewe knew but no one dared say anything... apparently there were a few chants about noncery going round.

At the time I remember brushing it off as nonsense or just someone with an axe to grind with their teams manager... whenever I read these stories and look back it’s frightening how many people must have known and covered this up.

That is horrendous. How could people cover up something like that?

Yep - I went to school with a Crewe fan and he told me about it. This would have been maybe 1995. Then in about 2003 I worked with a bloke whose lad was at Crewe (and later played a few first team games). He said something similar. All rumours of course and nothing proven as far as I'm aware.

[Fido]

A lad I know is pals with an ex-Man City player who told him some very ugly stuff about young lads going round to certain ex-Crewe employee's houses and there would be hard-core porn on the TV. Fuggin gruesome.