U is for Unspoken Truths
One of Scottish football’s least lovely traits is the way in which those in it would rather not discuss difficult, or complicated, issues. A whole slew of things are never explored properly as a result, and problems which lie unresolved have a tendency to get bigger.
For openers, there is Neil Lennon and the sectarian abuse he is frequently subjected to.
This is a subject Scottish football wishes it could ignore, and so it frequently ignores it. It’s something the game wishes it could forget, and so it conveniently does, until some ghastly incident or other pushes it back into the public consciousness all over again.
Then there is the sectarian singing that for years has poured forth from the Ibrox stands; everyone knows this is an issue, but nobody wants to bring it up. Increasingly, the general behaviour of those same supporters has been a real cause for concern.
The press and the governing bodies are very good at ignoring that too, and when they can’t they blame other clubs fans.
The greatest unspoken truths revolve around 2012 and its aftermath; the media’s failure to confront the Survival Lie is probably the worst of them, although everyone knows that Rangers died. But that few are willing to accept that Lord Nimmo Smith was a sham, that it has left stains on the game and that the roles which were played by people like Campbell Ogilvie need to be properly explored. Everyone in Scottish football knows it was rotten … a lot of people are still not prepared to say it.
Our game is full of unspoken truths.
Things will never get better until they are acknowledged and faced up to … and said out loud.