My first game at Brunton Park, Carlisle United v Liverpool in the FA Cup third round, January 1989, was always the sweetest memory: that first experience of the terraces, the first glimpse of the pitch, Carlisle’s old ground packed, me and my dad and my uncle and cousin in the Scratching Pen, winter mist in the air…happy days.

Yet its purity in the mind is no longer there. Little is as innocent as it seems to an eight-year-old and, when I found the game in full on YouTube a few years ago, I heard things that my childhood ears had not – or, at least, had not wanted to.

And yes, this was the eighties, and yes, different times, but still, how can you hold an occasion in the same cherished way when you watch the footage back and hear what John Barnes heard at certain times he got the ball?

(You can probably imagine the sounds – if not, check out the video below)

The great Barnes was sadly accustomed to it and, while it’s hardly as if this sort of thing only happened in Carlisle’s ground, it’s still a day forever tarnished, a special time in the imagination stained by the horrendous, depressingly commonplace racism that was also, it turns out, part of it.

That’s the word: stained. If we have anything about us as people this is how we’ll see such things. We will not brush over them just because everything else alongside or around them were good or magical. We will let those stains linger, let them sink in.

As such, Carlisle United’s 2022/23 campaign – promotion, glory, Wembley, weekends in paradise and all that – now carries its own permanent stain. Not because of the team, not because of Paul Simpson, not because of 99.99 per cent of the folk who either staff or populate Brunton Park.

But because one of those victories that helped take them up was also a harbour for racist chanting. The Boxing Day victory over Bradford City saw words repeatedly fly out of the Warwick Road End which have now led the Blues to be sanctioned, fined and warned as to future happenings.

So the whole experience of 22/23, otherwise the most enjoyable Carlisle campaign for a generation, cannot pass cleanly into history. We cannot let it.

We have to – as Carlisle have responsibly done – face it and accept the reality of it; the consequences of it, its importance in our judgement of the last few months. We have to call it the disgrace it is and acknowledge it occurred on our watch.

(And yes – ‘our’ includes the media as much as anyone else. The FA’s independent commission noted that the chanting was not reported either by club or outside media on December 26. I will confess that I did not pick up on it in the hectic online writing experience of covering a game. That’s my failure, among the various others that day).

Carlisle will not be helped by having to take £7,500 from their account and transferring it to the FA’s fines pool. We can all think of how useful such a sum might have been in other areas as they step up to League One.

News and Star: The racist chants were heard in the Warwick Road End during Carlisle's 1-0 win over Bradford on Boxing DayThe racist chants were heard in the Warwick Road End during Carlisle's 1-0 win over Bradford on Boxing Day (Image: Barbara Abbott)

At the same time, they can think themselves lucky that football is still lukewarm on racism. Considering clubs are often fined more for players having bust-ups on the pitch, and managers can be relieved of greater sums for slagging off referees, seven-and-a-half grand (it would have been ten grand, had Carlisle contested the charge) seems a trifle for outright discrimination.

And yes, it was discrimination from some boneheads in the stand, not the Blues. United officials abhor the idea of it, as do the large majority of us. It often seems to be those big-crowd occasions when the pondlife slithers in (think of the Everton FA Cup game in 2016 too) and, let’s be frank, people with the inclination to say what was shouted at Bradford fans don’t deserve to be part of Carlisle United, don’t deserve to consider themselves any kind of supporter, any kind of participant in good or even normal times.

They barely deserve to be allowed out of the house. It is the most cowardly of conduct, racist chanting from the safety of a crowd. Such people are enemies of the club, of society, of humanity. This we know.

But saying there’s little a club can do to weed out such behaviour, when it appears to happen randomly, is not good enough. The independent panel were clear on this, pinpointing various failings in Carlisle’s preparedness for such incidents, and the club themselves have committed to an action plan aimed at improvement.

They accept, as we all should, that you cannot wave off this criticism as hindsight. Lasering in on problems like those December 26 brought might not be easy, but saying there’s nothing we can do is the most dangerous approach available. You either try to get better in your operations or you don’t, and if you don't, you give in.

The Blues have also called for supporters’ help in intercepting such occurrences in future. Again – this invitation can either be accepted or it cannot. It drops on fans, and supporter groups, to reinforce the message, now and always.

Responsibility particularly lies with those with the profile to take it (and, again, the media must be part of this too). CUOSC, the supporters’ trust, were quick to promote United’s line following news of the fine, and rightly so. This now needs to be powered home by others in the supporters’ groups (CUSG) network as part of a fresh campaign.

The young fans who have done so much to revitalise the Warwick Road End, meanwhile, expressed their fury at what happened in a tweet.

That in itself should shame the racists. You’re being called out by kids who gave up their school holidays to paint the stand. You’re being humiliated by these boys and girls. Well done, big guys. Way to sock it to Bradford. Be proud.

The independent commission, in their lengthy written reasons, effectively said Carlisle are on notice for what happened on Boxing Day. Again, that might strike you as unfair given the huge strides made in so many other areas at the club, and the way it all culminated in promotion.

But without jeopardy, none of this has a hope of being cleansed. If we were talking points deductions instead of fines, Carlisle would in all probability be preparing for another League Two season.

And that would not necessarily target the source of the problem. But while football cannot be held responsible for education, for society, for ingrained nastiness and for some people’s empty skulls, it can do as much as it can to handle problems that occur in its own houses.

And when it falls short, there must be consequence – even if that consequence takes away some of the joy we like to think of as wholesome, lifelong and untainted.