Nil By Mouth calls out the SFA on anti-Irish racism. “See nothing, hear nothing, do nothing.”

For weeks now, Celtic supporters have been asking a simple question: when is someone going to act on the events at Hampden? Not issue a statement or mutter something vague about unacceptable behaviour. Not hide behind process or pretend this is all too complicated to confront. Actually act.

That has been the missing word in this whole scandal. It has been missing from the SFA, the SPFL, Police Scotland and, most obviously, from the club whose supporters once again treated a national semi-final final as if it were something they could drown out with another chorus of bile. And a dose of violence on the side, of course.

Now Nil By Mouth has stepped into the discussion, and that matters.

This is not The CelticBlog saying it. This is not Celtic supporters on social media saying it. It is one of Scotland’s most prominent anti-sectarian charities asking, in effect, when Scottish football intends to get serious about the poison it has tolerated for far too long.

Nil By Mouth was founded in 2000 by Cara Henderson after the sectarian murder of her school friend Mark Scott. The charity has spent 25 years working in schools and communities across Scotland, challenging inherited prejudice and trying to build understanding in places where division is often passed down before children can even understand it.

So when Nil By Mouth says football is failing, people should listen. Dave Scott, the charity’s director, has now said that football is the area which “consistently falls down” in the fight against sectarianism. He said football has “failed to respond or act,” and he pointed directly at clubs and governing bodies for not doing enough. That is not a mild criticism. It is a direct accusation against the institutions which run the game here.

It is also impossible to argue with.

Scott’s most important point is that clubs cannot keep calling sectarianism “society’s problem” while taking public money for community programmes and then hiding when the hardest part of the issue appears inside football grounds.

His line that football is happy to join the queue for funding but “hides under a rock” when it comes to sectarianism should shame every executive in the game. It should shame the SFA and the SPFL. It should shame anyone who has spent the last few weeks pretending this is all beyond human comprehension.

Because it is not complicated. When tens of thousands of people sing racist or sectarian songs inside a football stadium, there should be consequences. If that behaviour is broadcast around the country, there should be consequences. When the same thing happens again and again, and the authorities still behave as if they have been asked to solve cold fusion, there should be consequences for them as well.

Which is to say nothing for the pitch invasion, which is the point where even our football leadership should have stopped pretending this is something they can ignore.

This is where Scottish football’s cowardice becomes impossible to hand waive. As Dave Scott pointed out, UEFA already has a three-stage protocol for racist or sectarian chanting. First comes the stadium announcement. Then players can be taken off the pitch. Finally, the match can be abandoned. I actually made the same suggestion in a piece recently, in relation to the way English football deals with the racism issue.

Nil By Mouth has contrasted that with the Scottish approach, which Dave Scott summed up as “see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing.”

That line is devastating. It describes the whole culture of Scottish football governance. It describes the SFA’s response whenever the subject becomes uncomfortable, this endless, insulting, choreography of looking concerned while doing absolutely nothing of substance.

The Scottish Government says football should act. Nil By Mouth says football has failed to act. Celtic supporters have been saying the same thing for a long, long time. Our anger over this predates by quite some way the events at Ibrox in the cup.

UEFA’s approach shows meaningful action is possible. Yet the SFA and the SPFL remain buried somewhere in the fog. It is gutless.

The problem with Scottish football is not that it lacks mechanisms. It lacks will because it can act when it wants to. It can punish clubs for pyrotechnics or hammer supporters over smoke bombs. They can make statements about fan behaviour when it suits and move with speed when the offence fits the category of misconduct it actually cares about.

But anti-Irish racism? Anti-Catholic hatred? Mass sectarian chanting?

Suddenly everyone becomes a constitutional lawyer. Suddenly everything is difficult. Then the burden of proof becomes impossibly high. Suddenly we need working groups, conversations, stakeholder engagement, careful language and another few decades of waiting for courage to appear by magic.

That will not do. Nobody can pretend they do not know what is happening. Nobody can pretend they do not understand the songs. Not a single institution in and around the game, from the governing bodies to the media to the clubs, can pretend this is merely atmosphere or rivalry or tribal edge. Nil By Mouth has spent 25 years explaining exactly how this stuff is passed down, normalised and excused and why it is dangerous.

Mark Scott is the tragic consequence of this stuff. Murdered for wearing his Celtic colours.

Football here gives bigotry a stage. It gives it volume and ritual. It lets children hear adults singing hatred in numbers so large that it begins to sound like permission. Then, when challenged, football looks away. That is not neutrality. That is complicity.

This is where the SFA’s position becomes indefensible.

If an anti-sectarian charity with 25 years of experience is saying football has failed, what more does Hampden need to hear?

When Celtic supporters demand action, the SFA can pretend that is tribal complaint. If bloggers write about it, they can dismiss it as partisan noise. If politicians receive letters, they can send boilerplate replies and hope nobody reads them too closely. But when Nil By Mouth says football is hiding, the governing bodies have a choice. They can prove it wrong, or they can prove it right.

So far, they are doing the latter.

They prove it right every day they fail to act. They prove it right every day they refuse to explain what sanctions they are considering.

Our governing bodies prove it right every day they refuse to adopt measures with real teeth. They prove it right every day they hide behind their “process” while communities hear, once again, that hatred aimed at them is somehow too awkward to confront.

Celtic supporters understand this better than most.

We have lived for decades in a country that treats anti-Irish racism and anti-Catholic hatred as lesser forms of bigotry. People tell us these things are historic, complicated, cultural, mutual, tribal, sectarian, regrettable, unsavoury and difficult. The language changes, but the purpose stays the same. It exists to avoid moral clarity, because moral clarity would demand action.

Nil By Mouth’s intervention cuts through that nonsense.

It says football is failing. It says governing bodies and clubs are failing and that the domestic response is a joke. They are the one institution that finally says, with that perfect moral clarity, that football takes the money and hides from the responsibility. Good. Someone with institutional credibility needed to say it.

Now the question is whether anyone in power is listening. The SFA should not be able to ignore this. The SPFL should not be able to ignore this.

Additionally, the Scottish Government, which is happy to do the same dance as the football bodies, to pass the buck back to them, should not be able to outsource responsibility to football while football itself is accused, by one of Scotland’s leading anti-sectarian charities, of failing to respond or act.

That is the bind they are now in. Government says football must act. The charity says football will not act. Supporters say football has not acted. The evidence says football has not acted. So, what happens next? That is the question that perhaps government itself needs to answer, and in a robust fashion.

Not next month. Not after another summit or after we’ve endured another season of this or after the next televised scandal that makes us all look bad. Now.

Nil By Mouth has asked, in effect, when football intends to stop hiding. Celtic supporters have been asking the same question. The SFA should answer it, because “see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing” is not a policy.

And if they won’t respond, then government needs to step in.

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