How much longer are we going to dish out banning orders and fines for racism?

It hasn’t changed anything and if anything, we have seen an increase of racist chanting on the terraces — the latest being the home fans at the FA Cup game between Millwall and Everton at the New Den.

There are some who would like to see the club trawl through CCTV, pick out those who were chanting and then hand them lifetime bans.

But what would that achieve? A new set of fans are likely to come in and pick up where the others left off.

This isn’t to say that all Millwall fans are racist. Or that they are the only club with this issue, they aren’t.

And this isn’t just a football issue, society is struggling to deal with racism and it seems to be amplified up and down the country inside football stadiums.

Enough is enough. The Football Association needs to take a firm stance and I can only see one way, by starting to dock points and banning teams from competitions.

People will say it is harsh to punish the players for the actions of a “minority” in the stands.

But nothing else is working.

You can play games behind close doors, that hasn’t eradicated the problem in Italy or Spain, certainly not in England.

And games in empty stadiums then punish the other team’s fans who did nothing wrong.

Sticking with Millwall, this is a problem that has reared its ugly head time and time again.

You can educate the club, educate the fans, but nothing has gotten through to these fickle human beings.

Perhaps an actual deterrent will see a change.

If the FA came out tomorrow and said they were handing the club a suspended sentence, next time there are racist chants at a FA Cup game the team will be banned from the next round they play in, all of a sudden there’s an actual punishment.

Even if the people chanting didn’t care about it, everyone else will.

The club itself will hammer home that the chants will not be tolerated, there would likely be countless messages on the big screen throughout the game telling fans to behave.

There was a video doing the rounds Saturday night of manager Neil Harris telling the people showing the replay of the handball to turn it off.

What would be the chances of Harris telling fans to shut up if racist chanting started in a section of the ground?

If not him, the players surely would.

And if, by chance, no-one on the pitch heard it, the fans in the surrounding sections would police themselves and make them stop.

Deep down, fans want to see the team succeed on the pitch.

They will want the team to go on a long cup run. They wouldn’t want to jeopardise those chances by hurling racist abuse.

You can try to educate them but some fans are self-educating the next set of supporters to be racist.

There was the video of the little kid in a car chanting: “Fuck ‘em all, fuck ‘em all, Millwall, Millwall” with an older woman beside him saying the same thing.

Then, at the end of the video, he screams: “You fucking black cunt.”

That child has picked that up from somewhere, if he hasn’t been taught to say it, he’s heard it enough times to repeat it.

And to say it in that context is not a coincidence.

So now we have a situation where there’s at least one child being raised to behave like this.

It’s a deep-rooted issue.

What I am calling for is extreme. But there comes a point where you have to admit nothing else works.

And I’m not calling for this severe punishment if one fan misbehaves.

We’ve seen people call-up radio shows, pretending to be a fan of another team, to make an idiotic point in the attempt to portray that fan base as clueless.

So there’s every possibility that you would a Manchester City fan, for example, find a way to sit in the home section at Anfield and start hurling racist abuse at the opposition just to get the club docked points and lose the title.

Or people will set up fake fan accounts to do the same on social media.

But if there is a significant number, and we can work out the logistics down the line, being racist in a stadium, that should be enough to issue out a warning, and then take action.

The Millwall incident, in my opinion, involved a large enough contingent of fans for this type of punishment to take effect.

In the NFL play-off game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Indianapolis Colts, Chiefs supporters were throwing snowballs at the Colts kicker to try to put him off.

There was a warning inside the stadium and Chiefs head coach Andy Reid walked over and told the idiots to stop.

He did not want to see his team punished because of a few idiots.

That there is enough proof, for me, that you would see a similar thing happen if the FA started taking the situation seriously.

You can bring in the same punishment for large acts of violence as well.

Again, the fights between Millwall and Everton fans prior to Saturday’s game can no longer be tolerated.

Before West Ham were knocked out on Saturday, there were already people on social media talking about a repeat of the violent clashes if Millwall were to draw the Hammers or Chelsea in the next round.

If we, as fans of football, know that two teams being drawn together in a cup is going to cause violence, get in front of the issue.

Warn them that if it happens, both teams will be immediately kicked out of the competition, and perhaps people will think twice about arranging fights.

Once you tackle the large scale problems, you can then work on the individuals.

That’s when you can hand out lifetime bans and hefty fines.

My problem with stadium bans is that people will still find a way to smuggle themselves into stadiums.

And it’s also why I feel education isn’t an effective tool.

Because these people know violence and racism is wrong. Even if they are predominately raised in areas with low immigration, these people have the internet.

Those chanting “I’d rather be a paki than a Scouse” know full well that is not acceptable.

We can give the family and friends of the child, who is dressed up in a police officer’s uniform ironically, the benefit of the doubt and say that they told the child to never say that again.

But the chances are, it was followed by: “Never say that again on camera or in public.”

Racist football fans feel stronger in large groups. They feel invincible.

Strip away that sense of entitlement by having the people the community they are from turn against them.

If the group on Saturday were responsible for ending Millwall’s cup run, they would not be welcome at the club again.

I was asked a football Christmas party by someone what they could do to help kick racism out of football.

While I told him to report it if he saw it, I followed it up by saying that the next step is dock points from teams that have racist fans.

He looked at me like I’d said something stupid but once I explained the process, he agreed.

We’ve given racist football fans enough chances to change their ways.

And I’m sorry to the players and teams who would lose out on titles and cups if this was to become a reality, but nothing else has worked.