Ian Maxwell has become the latest person to slam the Ibrox fans for the George Square riots, and he is correct in almost every word that he says. But talk is cheap and there’s a lot of it going around.
As welcome as it is that this issue is being confronted, at last, Ibrox doesn’t respect talk.
It only respects action. Talk will not shift them. Sanctions might.
Maxwell is not just another guy talking. He’s the guy who runs the organisation that can actually do something. It can take the action that would shake Ibrox up and force the people who run that club to start taking these issues seriously.
There are two cases which the SFA is in a position to open up right now; the first is in relation to the initial scenes at Ibrox when they won the league. The police have already released their feelings on the matter and they could not be clearer that the club did not live up to its promises to help prevent those scenes from taking place.
The second case is in relation to that sectarian karaoke video. Police Scotland said there’s not enough evidence to charge people, but they did a fine job of glossing over the more pressing questions which were about the validity of the recording in the first place.
I’ve heard a lot of theories about it; it’s up to the SFA to do the football investigation, and there needs to be a football investigation. Anything else is passing the buck and it will be absolutely shameful if the governing body does that.
There is a clear need to look into the matter, a clear need to identify culprits if any, and a clear need to sanction the club if guilty.
George Square is outside of football’s purview, as Maxwell pointed out, but he’s kidding himself if he thinks the club did all it could. The club can be investigated for that too in terms of whether they did enough or not.
Serious questions have been asked on that score, by politicians and the police, and my view is that there’s definitely another case to answer on it.
But the cases over the first “celebrations” and the karaoke video are so obvious that it doesn’t need to be pointed out. Maxwell gave the club fulsome praise for their Anyone Everyone campaign, but many of us have long maintained that it’s window dressing and that’s why the investigation into the sectarian sing-along is required … to find out how serious the club is.
If the SFA chooses to do nothing, then we know how serious they are. I don’t know why certain sections of the media aren’t clamouring for action here; they were vocal enough on the Kamara incident.
Shouldn’t Scottish football have a right to know whether there are people inside Ibrox who are sectarian bigots?
(We do know, but let’s get it on the record.)
Maxwell doesn’t think the clubs, or the game itself, wants politicians poking their noses in. Well, if football doesn’t sort its own problems out, and those problems are becoming an issue for the wider society, then the politicians will have no choice.
He can either grab hold of this, or wait for them to.
If he does the latter, then it’s a gross dereliction of duty at best and at worst rank cowardice.