Take a look at this picture. This picture sums up 2016 for Sevconites. This is the picture that rips the scab off and forces them to look deep into the festering wounds that ail their club. On the surface of it, that picture doesn’t seem to say much at all. Every newspaper features it and it’s been tweeted and shared everywhere, with precious little analysis of what it means.
That’s a professional footballer player sitting in a regular old A&E whilst the game is still going on. Sitting there along with members of the public, and waiting to be seen by staff. Some Sevco fans have said it’s a comforting picture; football players are treated just like the rest of us. But even they must feel disquiet looking at that photo although they might not know why.
Let me put it this way; do you think a Celtic player would be sitting there? Do you think an Aberdeen player would be? Don’t the clubs provide private treatment for these folk, so they don’t have to sit there with people who’ve banged their heads after too much to drink or who were a little too rushed whilst carving the leftover turkey?
To me it looks as if Sevco are so skint they can’t afford to give their players the best any longer. That guy should have been rushed to Ross Hall or somewhere like that, all the more important as he’s a club asset and that injury needed immediate treatment. Since he wasn’t can we conclude the club hasn’t got the funds for private coverage?
I don’t see how we have a choice.
2017 is going to be a hard old year over there. It starts in disastrous fashion, with them 19 points behind our club and we still have a game in hand. Whilst our players and officials will be over in Dubai relaxing, catching the sunshine and doubtless tying up some business their own will be sweating over what happens when business is resumed.
If you look into the Ibrox dugout you see a lot of brown brogues; my brother in law wondered whether there was a stock clear-out at Clark’s, and if everyone who walks through the doors over there is handed a pair on their way in. Maybe that’s the pay-off for getting no private medical insurance; “Hey, at least you get a lovely pair of shoes.”
I’d suggest that perhaps they aren’t brown brogues at all, that they simply look that way because people over there spend so much of their time wading through shit.
2016 was bad. 2017 will be worse.
So take a look at this picture; it’s symbolic of so many things. A £1.8 million player who hasn’t scored a goal in ten games, but who nevertheless is a hero to fans who have precious little else to look forward to. He’s sitting in an A&E as his team loses a must-win game against the side it aspires to rival – for the third time this season.
That picture is about the bursting of a bubble. The moment where even the most die-hard Sevco fan must realise that things are very out of whack at Ibrox.
For the rest of us it presages more hilarity in the year ahead.
The gift that keeps on giving will be entertaining us for a good while yet.