The 46-year-old was all smiles as he took part in an impromptu coaching session at the launch of ’Tackling it Together’ before getting deadly serious when discussing the race rows currently engulfing the English game.

“I was fighting racism 20 years ago,” the former Wimbledon midfielder said when asked about Blatter’s recent comments that racism on the pitch should be settled by a handshake.

“My room partner was John Fashanu. We’d go to grounds and they’d throw bananas on the pitch. I used to throw them back. We’ve come a long way and we don’t need our leaders like him (Blatter) tripping it up.

“We finally got a grip on it and then silly comments are made.”

Jones revealed how he and fellow ’Crazy Gang’ member Dennis Wise would handle racist abuse directed against their black team-mates.

“If there was any kind of racism at all, the white lads would say, ’We’re not having this’,” he said.

“You can’t have the black or Asian lads just trying to stick up for themselves. It’s got to be taken a step further, which me and Wisey did 20 years ago in sticking up for Fash, saying, ’You stay out of it, we’ll deal with these idiots’.”

Jones would also have had his own way of dealing with Manchester City striker Tevez had he been a team-mate of the Argentinian and witnessed him refuse to warm up.

“Me and Fash would’ve gone in, got him in the dressing room, locked the door and then we’d have seen what went on from there,” he said.

“We did that plenty of times in the old days. You can’t do it now.”

Plenty more has changed since Jones retired, as he discovered when watching Chelsea’s 2-1 Barclays Premier League defeat to Liverpool yesterday.

“I probably hadn’t been to a game for five, six years,” he said. “I was like, ’Where’s all the tackling gone?’. Are we not allowed to tackle – non-contact now?

“It was quite weird to watch it, centre-half John Terry looking like an old-fashioned centre-forward. The old centre-halves used to be cut eyes, bandages round their heads and blood and guts.”

One thing Jones did welcome with great enthusiasm was the prospect of Great Britain entering a team at next year’s Olympics.

The former Wales international insisted there should be no controversy about the four home nations teaming up, saying: “I guarantee the safest bet ever, if we have a British team in the Olympics, we’d win it no problem.”

Olympic gold would doubtless inspire the nation and Jones did his bit today to try to do the same in a bid to keep impressionable youngsters away from a life of crime.

“I’ve teamed up with npower, who are putting money into grassroots, into the boroughs, to get these kids going the right way – not the guns, knives, drugs way but the football way,” said Jones, who admitted he had taken a wrong turn at a similar age.

“I was 13 and the easy way to go was the wrong way. You get into bad company and instead of putting a football jersey on, you’re wearing a hoodie.

“I was lucky enough to get back into football and stay out of enough trouble at the time.

“Even as a player when I let myself down, it was always the football that got me back on the right path.”

Asked where he would be today without the game, he added: “I’d hate to think.”

:: Vinnie Jones is an ambassador for npower’s ’Tackling it Together’ campaign. The initiative aims to tackle anti-social behaviour in the nation’s youth through football.