Gary O’Neil speaks out as Wolves star alleges racial abuse in pre-season friendly

Gary O'Neil addresses the incident that overshadowed our first pre-season training game.

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Wolves boss Gary O’Neil revealed that Hwang Hee-chan turned down the offer for his team to walk off the pitch after the South Korean forward reported alleged racial abuse during a pre-season friendly with Como.

The second half of the training match was marred by an incident that led to Daniel Podence being sent off for punching one of his opponents, as Wolves confirmed that they would be submitting a formal complaint to UEFA.

O’Neil explained that he asked Hwang if he would like Wolves to abandon the match in protest of the racial abuse he claimed to have received, but the 28-year-old wanted to play on instead.

“Channy heard a racist remark which is really disappointing,” O’Neil said. “I spoke to Channy about it, checked whether he wanted to take the team off or come off himself, but he was keen the team carried on and got the work they needed.

“It’s a together group. Of course, there’s ways to handle that and we don’t want to leave ourselves short on the pitch, but it’s a together group. We’ve worked really hard this week, had a good week, had some great moments in the game, but it’s an unfortunate incident we have to deal with and have to discuss when, ideally, we’d be talking about the game. Of course, when an incident like that happens in a game, it’s the first thing we discuss.

The game, played in Marbella, was the first of Wolves’ pre-season friendlies as defender Matt Doherty scored the only goal of the contest. But Podence was among those irate at the alleged racial remark in yet another friendly controversy for Wolves.