THE debate over whether England players should have walked off against Bulgaria has been rumbling on.

But I'm in no doubt that decision should have been taken out of the player's hands, and the match abandoned.

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How much more tolerance of this racist behaviour do we have to put up with?

Can we really accept 'time added on' for racism?

And how many more times do we have to put up with UEFA's pathetic response before we say enough is enough?

In the 20 plus years I have seen England teams play matches abroad, sadly there have been a number of occasions where black players have had to suffer monkey chants amongst other abuse. The teams got a small fine, some were forced to play matches at closed stadiums, but that was it - nothing was achieved in many cases.

UEFA's respect campaign may have good intentions, but it's just a marketing slogan.

Everyone saw what was coming this week so the usually timid officials had to be ready. Millions had wanted to watch an international football match but instead Nazi's in the stadium, with their sickening salutes, hijacked it within 20 minutes. They knew they had an audience to broadcast their far right racist bile, and took their chance.

The match officials using UEFA’s three-step protocol was praised as a step forward but in a way that achieved nothing too.

The crowd booed the tannoy warning announcement and continued anyway, and we got to step two. As racist abuse continued in the second half that should have been the moment of truth - we should have got to step three, match abandoned.

I've seen the arguments the best way is to play through and, as the England team did, win by a big margin. But that makes no difference and playing to the end allowed the Bulgaria manager to pretend he was completely unaware of it, and some Bulgarian journalists to complain it was an overreaction.

We are now at the stage matches have to be abandoned, and countries expelled from tournaments.

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Remember Bulgaria still have a chance to qualify for next year's European Championships. I'd feel sorry for non racist Bulgarian fans and players like Ivelin Popov, who pleaded for his fans to stop, who would miss out - but major action has to be taken.