Critics of the equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) movement feel it is an overplayed hand, that it highlights and reinforces difference, that it risks painting a mass of people as intolerant in its noble aim to integrate.

It’s always interesting what people will attack and what they won’t, as well as what they’ll defend and what they’ll leave.

Racism, obviously, isn’t a Carlisle United-specific problem. But Carlisle United, in the recent past, have had a specific racism problem.

On Boxing Day 2022, a group of fans in the Warwick Road End made offensive racial chants about Bradford. Last Saturday, alleged racist comments to an assistant referee were followed by an arrest.

On top of the recent, juvenile remarks to Port Vale goalkeeper Connor Ripley, who was right to call out being told to “go and hang yourself”, as well as other incidents of poor fan behaviour, Brunton Park is gaining the wrong kind of reputation, in spite of so much good work by so many more people.

One such person is Nigel Davidson, the former supporters’ trust director who has led the club’s EDI work. This has involved, for instance, welcoming and entertaining people on matchdays who might not normally come to Brunton Park, who are from varying ethnic backgrounds, who may be here, for instance, as refugees.

The idea, which sounds perfectly reasonable and humane to me, is to make United a hospitable place for all, and if that requires a certain reaching out, so much the better.

Again, critics feel this unnecessary but I wonder if they will revisit that opinion when they consider how some people, contemplating whether Carlisle United is for them, might view it when a black linesman is allegedly abused, or when the city of Bradford is described in “obviously discriminatory” terms.

There isn’t too much EDI in football. The way some things continue to be, there isn’t enough.