The social media abuse that Anton Ferdinand received was remorseless and relentless — dozens and dozens of messages, many of them racist, which made his heart sink every time he picked up his phone.
It was October 2011 and he had called out John Terry's racist abuse of him in QPR's match against Chelsea.
Some of the mindless abusers could not even spell Terry's name correctly. The 'n' word featured frequently. 'It isn't racist, it's just stating facts,' one anonymous bigot said, tweeting a two-word insult as vicious as they come.
