Everybody who reads this site knows how I feel about some of Jonny McFarlane’s work in The Daily Record. He is the Sevco blogger who writes a column in the paper. I have slagged him stupid on here, for some of his pieces, but I respect anyone who does it under his own name and doesn’t hide from the barbs and the criticism.
Yesterday he invited a tremendous amount of it when he penned a piece on the way child abuse banners have made their way into Scottish football stadiums over the last couple of years, a subject The Clumpany and myself had already covered in blogs over the last week. Jonny’s piece levelled criticism at the Aberdeen fans for their offensive display, but he also took aim at those in his own stands, at Ibrox. That was very courageous.
And it’s a sign, I think, that things are shifting here and that public anger is being brought to bear on the gutter rats who would do such a thing. It feels like we’ve reached a tipping point, over which ordinary supporters will no longer tolerate this kind of thing.
I applaud him for that, unreservedly.
I applaud The Record for publishing the piece.
I wish some of their journalists would weigh in with condemnation of this, because it’s overdue for stamping this stuff out and erasing it from our football completely.
This stuff has gone on too long. It started with the scandalous, cowardly, campaign against Jock Stein and it has spiralled into something I think is even more sinister, something that smears not only one man but an entire club and an entire support. That the contagion has spread to Aberdeen – when it initially started at Ibrox – is simply proof that small, diseased minds will embrace hate everywhere if it’s given enough public exposure.
I’ve read similar sentiments from Motherwell fans, Hearts fans and others. There haven’t been banners but you get the impression that it’s a matter of time. This particular brand of ugliness is truly loathsome, the kind of thing that reduces these people to the level of those who mock the dead of Ibrox, or the Munich air crash or those who died at Hillsborough. Mocking those things isn’t about football. It is about naked hate, nothing else.
And that kind of hate, the game doesn’t need.
It should be swept from the stands everywhere, and there are examples close to home which come a little too close to the knuckle for Celtic fans to be complacent. All of it ought to be driven from the sport never to return.
I have never objected to political songs in the stands, but this stuff doesn’t belong there. It doesn’t belong anywhere.
This isn’t football banter, of the sort our fans did so spectacularly with the death of Rangers and when we mock Aberdeen with the words “We know you said no,” in relation to the independence referendum. This is a sickness.
Thanks to Jonny McFarlane for his piece yesterday; it was timely and it was right on the nose. More supporters, at other clubs, need to make their own displeasure equally clear. The media should do a series of pieces exposing the people who think this is a suitable subject to bring to a ground. The clubs themselves need to start hammering this stuff hard.
We’ve taken a step in the right direction, but it’s just one.
A lot more has to be done, to get this out of the game.