JOE WILLOCK has thanked Newcastle United for the support he received after he was racially abused online, but urged social media companies to do more to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Willock suffered horrendous racial abuse on Instagram in the wake of Newcastle’s home defeat to Fulham, sharing screenshots of some of the comments he was subjected to in order to highlight the severity of the issue.

Newcastle United issued a strongly-worded statement condemning the abuse, with the Premier League also saying it was “appalled” by the incident, with Northumbria Police having launched an investigation into the abusive comments.

Eddie Howe made a point of spending time with Willock at the start of last week, to check on the midfielder’s mental wellbeing, and the 25-year-old was delighted to have been able to repay his manager on the pitch at the weekend as his two goals helped Newcastle to beat Birmingham City and secure a place in the fifth round of the FA Cup.

“It’s definitely been tough,” said Willock. “But when you have a good family around you, team-mates who are like your family, and a manager you can speak to about anything, it makes it all easier.

“The day after, the manager and I had a meeting in his office. He comforted me, and we spoke about it. That’s why I have so much respect for this manager and team, and I want to give everything for it and the badge because they have helped me through the most difficult of times.”

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Newcastle reported the abuse to Meta, the owners of Instagram, but Willock feels the leading social-media companies have to do much more to prevent racist abuse being aired on their platforms.

“It has to be clamped down upon from the social media side,” he said. “From the higher people in the social media companies. It’s not going to stop if we don’t do it. Luckily, I have a family and great team behind me who support me. I worry for the boys who don’t have that and who receive those messages, it could be detrimental.

“Newcastle have been excellent, they’ve reported it to the police and the right people. But I feel like there needs to be an extra step to eradicate it from the game. We seem to be going around in circles. Someone gets it, makes a big deal out of it, then it happens again, then it goes quiet. And it happens again. It’s come to a point where it’s got to be taken out of the game, and the sooner the better.”

Willock has received online abuse on plenty of occasions in the past, but it was the references to his family in the most recent incident that forced him to make the comments public.

“It’s happened to me many times,” he said. “But it was the severity of it. That’s why I had to put it out there. If you are not only coming for my race but threatening my family, wishing bad things on them, that’s when I have to put it out there and report it. You could actually endanger someone. If you have that hatred, I had to do it.”