If he was going to be deregistered by the RFL I agree HKR should sack him. If not some other club will have him signed up within a week and the only people who end up getting punished are HKR, and even worse some other team gets rewarded by being able to sign him.

The other thing is why is ot ok for a team to sign a racist player ie Raynor, yet people feel strongly a team should sack a player if he has been racist?

I don't believe all cricketers eat shredded wheat.

I don't really care what ben cockayne believes about anything, he represents himself, what he thinks is a matter for him and his friends and associates. He doesn't represent Hull k.r or the rugby league. Likewise i din't think Bailey needed to defend himself about his facebook comments. When either are appointed ambassadors of rugby league i will take more interest.

I, on the other hand, think that he does represent Hull KR as do all the players who play for them

The difference between this and Bailey's comments on Facebook is that Bailey's was humour (or some attempt at it) whereas this was just a straight forward horrible racially motivated insult - in my opinion, they are very different

We'll have to disagree on that one, he plays for Hull k.r he's not there as a standard bearer fo K.R's Moral, religous, philosophical views or politics.

As a player for Hull KR I think Dunbar is right to say Cockayne "represents" them.

So if K.R have a player with Muslim beliefs that that is a refection of K.R's beliefs?

His beliefs are his own and he has a right to hold any, as do we all – it is when these beliefs manifest themselves as racial hatred expressed in the public domain that it becomes an issue

I think you possibly misunderstand the context in which 'represent' is used in this case.

It's meant in the same way that a police constable represents the police service or in the way that a soldier represents the army.

Lucky not to be sent off for a late, high, malicious tackle on Obst during the build up to the last try.

Not for me it isn't. It's his opinion not rugby leagues not Hull k.r's. Presumably you wouldn't have a problem with expressing a racial harmony view, it's just the oposite view on a subject. Nasty spitefull i agree and i disagree with him but i'll defend his right to say what he likes.

Gareth Hock represents Wigan's view on recreational drugs? Joel Monaghan represents Warrington's view on beastiality?

Thats fine, as long as HKA, and the game make it clear their views are different to Cockaches and they find those views abhorrent.

I've no problem with that if they feel it necassary personally i never thought for a second that they agreed with his view. I suppose somebody out there might need telling, a participant on jeremy kyle for instance.

I agree that it is a grey area as I firmly believe that he has a right to hold these beliefs and actually to state them – if this is his own opinion and his own alone

The grey area is this

I help to manage an IT Services company and we use social media to reach out into the community – this uses business tools such as Linkedin but also Twitter and Facebook and we encourage our employees to Tweet, Blog and ‘like’ our company. I do not know for sure but I would assume that Hull KR reach out into the Hull public using such tools

Now, if one of my employees wrote such a comment while linked to my company, I would take a very dim view of it – add to this the fact that I believe Cockayne ‘represents’ Hull KR as a public figure and I think he has brought the club into disrepute

If he was Joe Moron posting this on Facebook then fair play to him – he’s a bigoted idiot but that’s his problem. But, I am convinced that he will have accepted friends requests on Facebook from Hull KR fans who he does not personally know (I’m sure that somebody like Cockayne cannot have 1,000 ‘real’ friends) and so, whether he can understand this or not, he represents his club and therefore has to accept the consequences when his bigotry and hatred is exposed for what it is