Ferdinand 'mum joke' charge, so what about Scudamore?

It's hard to know which is more pathetic. The fact that a 35-year-old Rio Ferdinand used the down-with-the-kids word 'sket' and made a juvenile 'mum joke' in a tweet six weeks ago or the news on Tuesday evening that he has been charged with misconduct by the Football Association as a result.

You would have thought football's governing body in England might have more important business than bringing to book the QPR defender for his reaction to a little playground trolling, and the use of a word that millions of people – prior to Tuesday – had never heard of.

For those not immersed in the slang of the street, a 'sket', according to the Collins English Dictionary is a promiscuous girl or woman.

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Ferdinand used the word in a tweet posted on transfer deadline day six weeks ago. According to The Guardian someone from Manchester had tweeted: "Maybe QPR will sign a good CB [centre-back] they need one". Ferdinand responded to the dig by including the original tweet in his message, and adding: "Get ya mum in, plays the field well son! #sket."

There was some immediate negative reaction to the undoubtedly vulgar tweet, presumably by the usual bunch of professional offence-takers, to which Ferdinand responded a few minutes later: "Don't play the role model card here....take ya slaps!"

If common sense had prevailed the matter would have ended there, but for reasons best known to the Football Association they have, six weeks on, decided to charge Ferdinand with misconduct. The Guardian says that the former England captain's original tweet was considered "abusive and/or indecent and/or insulting and/or improper" because it "included a reference to gender".

Ferdinand has until next Tuesday to respond to the charge but he, and others, might wonder why he finds himself in the dock for a relatively innocuous remark while the FA declined to take action in May following the leaking of sexist emails sent by the Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore.

FA chairman Greg Dyke defended that decision, explaining: "Scudamore was not an employee of the Football Association and, as such, we had no position in terms of employment policy or taking disciplinary action... in terms of wider FA disciplinary action, we were advised that the FA does not as a matter of policy consider private communications sent with a legitimate expectation of privacy to amount to professional misconduct. The FA has applied this policy on an ongoing basis and in relation to numerous other cases."

Of course, Ferdinand has been in trouble on Twitter before, notably during the fall out of the race row involving his brother, Anton; John Terry; Ashley Cole and a high profile court case.

But as the Daily Mail notes: "This is becoming a complex area for the FA when Ferdinand will be only too aware that in recent months the governing body took no action against either Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore or FA referees chief David Elleray over discrimination issues.

"No action has yet been taken against Malky Mackay and Iain Moody for their comments in the Textgate scandal last month when they were accused of sending or receiving sexist, homophobic and racist texts."

One rule for the suits, another for the players?