Keevin’s Goram Piece Reeked Of Attitudes Scotland Should Have Left Behind.

This time last year, Hugh Keevins was forced to make a grovelling apology for idiotic remarks he uttered in the aftermath of Kyogo being racially abused by Ibrox fans.

His comment was that things are worse on that front than they were 60 years ago when the issue was “virtually non-existent.” He was slammed for it, and not just by the Celtic sites who were furious.

Keevins contradicts himself constantly, and it should not come as any great surprise that he has done so again in relation to all our yesterdays.

At the weekend he wrote a piece on Andy Goram that was so sickly sycophantic I wanted a vomit bucket.

His claim that the death of Goram “marks the passing of a moment in time for football” is, of course, bad enough. Goram hasn’t been involved in football for years, so his death doesn’t influence the sport in any way.

The point of the piece was even worse.

Describing the funeral today as the passing away of days gone by, he mourns those days and the life of the Ibrox keeper by talking about how they were “a time when the composite picture of a professional’s life still left room for what was innocently known as high jinks.”

The way people in our game constantly talk up how great some of the individuals from the dregs of it were always reminds me of a moment in Trainspotting, not the film but the book, in which Renton muses long and hard on why he and his friends tolerate the presence of Francis Begbie, and how in conversation with neutrals they find themselves extolling virtues in the guy which don’t exist.

I wonder if Keevins or others ever take time out for such introspection.

This in a paragraph in his piece about how McCoist, Brown and Donald Findlay were going to get up there today to share their stories of Goram’s “high jinx” with the congregation.

Amazing that he should pick those three in particular.

Brown is a stone bigot and a pure fool. McCoist has not been shy about stirring sectarian soup in the past. Findlay was once sanctioned by the Law Society of Scotland and resigned his position on the Ibrox board for indulging in sectarian karaoke.

No wonder Keevins didn’t recognise racism when he saw it 60 years ago. He has been walking around with the blinkers on for almost the whole time. And he’s not just been blind but deaf as well.

The man he is lionising in that piece was not a go-lucky chap simply having a good time and no harm done. Goram consorted with the gutter rats of sectarian violence, and in doing so legitimised them as folk heroes and role models.

Goram was a scumbag who treated many people in his life like absolute shit.

This was a guy who left a trail of destruction in his wake.

Keevins hand-waives it all away as “high jinks”, and uses to highlight the point the life and career of Chick Charnley, by talking about his red cards and an act of self defence against a burglar.

What does any of that have to do with Goram, who wore a black armband to commemorate the life of a sectarian murderer killed in prison where he deserved to rot?

For Keevins to even attempt to compare those as if they were alike is despicable.

“When former players like Andy and Chic are booked to speak at social functions it’s not so the audience can hear their opinions on inverted full-backs, false nines or VAR. They are there to deliver tales of the bevvy and the bust-ups that formed the recreational hours of careers otherwise devoted to displaying the rich talents bestowed on them … and the anecdotes have to be told in a way that “contains humour reflecting attitudes of the era,” as disclaimers say prior to the showing of old films or TV shows with naughty words.”

Those were Keevins words in the piece …. “humour reflecting attitudes of the era.” That would be the era in which sectarianism and racism never reared their heads eah?

There are plenty of comedians and after dinner speakers who still tell jokes reflecting the attitudes of those eras. The Scottish Football Writers Association booked one for their last annual dinner and then pretended not to know they had.

Keevins is representative of those attitudes. He comes from that era and he cannot understand, and doesn’t want to understand, why we’ve moved on.

Even the story he and Charnley had a laugh over isn’t one that I would have found particularly funny.

It’s about a charity do that Goram and Charnley attended where the hosts left a supply of wine under one of the tables. Goram found it and proceeded to get stuck into it not knowing that it was meant to be the first prize in the raffle.

Not knowing? How about telling the bald truth of it; he just didn’t give a shit.

What Keevins thinks was a funny “aww shucks” moment shows what a selfish arsehole Goram was when he was getting up to those “high jinx” of his. That Keevins thinks this story paints a flattering picture shows how wired to the moon he really is.

Honestly, this is a guy who should have retired years ago.

He’s an ignorant throwback to a bygone era with attitudes that have no place in modern Scotland.

Scottish Football And The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

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