{"id":296582,"date":"2026-02-13T20:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T20:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/296582\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T20:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T20:35:09","slug":"maro-itoje-dismisses-jim-ratcliffes-colonisation-comments-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/296582\/","title":{"rendered":"Maro Itoje dismisses Jim Ratcliffe\u2019s \u2018colonisation\u2019 comments \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The England<\/a> captain Maro Itoje has piled into the ruck surrounding Jim Ratcliffe\u2019s comments about immigration<\/a>, dismissing the Manchester United co-owner\u2019s views as \u201cridiculous\u201d. Itoje, whose parents both came to Britain from Nigeria, has criticised the phrasing and accuracy of Ratcliffe\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n

Itoje, who recently missed the start of England\u2019s pre-Six Nations training camp to attend his mother\u2019s funeral in Nigeria, did not hold back when asked about Ratcliffe\u2019s opinion on the eve of his side\u2019s Calcutta Cup showdown at Murrayfield. \u201cObviously I don\u2019t condone the language he used,\u201d said Itoje.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born in this country of Nigerian descent and I think it\u2019s ridiculous to say Britain has been colonised by immigrants because that is so far from the truth. I think it\u2019s wrong.\u201d Itoje acknowledged that Ratcliffe has since sought to clarify his words \u2013 \u201cIf I\u2019ve read correctly he has apologised for his comments\u201d \u2013 but the 31-year-old clearly remains seriously unimpressed.<\/p>\n

\"\"Do Ireland’s rugby pathways need a serious overhaul?<\/p>\n

Ratcliffe, Britain\u2019s seventh-richest man, sparked the controversy in an interview with Sky News on Wednesday, in which he questioned the number of people receiving state support and relocating to the UK from abroad, saying: \u201cYou can\u2019t afford … you can\u2019t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in. The UK is being colonised by immigrants, really, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The British prime minister Keir Starmer has said Ratcliffe, who relocated to tax-free Monaco in 2020, should apologise and the Football Association are looking into whether the billionaire petrochemical executive has brought the game into disrepute. Ratcliffe subsequently said he was sorry his \u201cchoice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n

The furore has certainly irked Itoje, who has a degree in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and is also still dealing with the shock \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s been very up and down\u201d \u2013 of losing his mother, Florence, who moved to England from Nigeria with her husband in the early 1990s and initially ran a butcher\u2019s shop in north London.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing for the burial in Nigeria was deeply emotional but at the same time, there was a sense of peace that we found. It felt right. Grief looks different for different people but it\u2019s definitely been a journey and with time I\u2019m sure it will get easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

There remains intense family pride that Itoje leads an England side on a 12-Test winning streak. \u201cIt\u2019s been great to be back with England; it\u2019s one of the things my mum loved. I don\u2019t come from a traditional rugby family but my parents became rugby people through and through. She always loved the fact that I was a representative of this team.\u201d \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The England captain Maro Itoje has piled into the ruck surrounding Jim Ratcliffe\u2019s comments about immigration, dismissing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[59241,93,61,60,33468,15551,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-296582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-england-rugby","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jim-ratcliffe","13":"tag-six-nations","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}