We’ve probably all said or done things at the football as youngsters that we look back on and regret.
For instance, I’ve had cause to apologise to the likes of Aiden McGeady, Barry Ferguson and any number of Hamilton players (with a special shoutout to Dougie Imrie, sorry pal) who I have interviewed many years down the line for the dog’s abuse I threw in their direction as a young upstart sitting in the Fir Park East Stand.
But there are red lines that no football fan – or simply any decent member of society – should ever cross.
In Scotland, the harm that sectarian abuse causes has been debated ad nauseum. For every person that finds anti-Catholic rhetoric or cries of ‘orange b*******s’ abhorrent, there will be plenty lining up to defend such actions as just ‘football banter’, and who will believe they have every right to be a 90-minute bigot before going back to being an upstanding member of the community in their daily lives.
I am not about to open that particular can of noxious gas here, but no matter where you stand on that issue, there are a few topics that have become so morally repugnant that they largely inspire disgust among the vast majority of football fans, even on Scotland’s bigotry-hardened terraces.
Racism, for one. Homophobia too. Such abuse still happens, of course, and I am not for a second belittling its victims. Remarkably, though, we are still, in this day and age, dealing with relatively regular instances of abuse related to football stadium disasters, and it still seems to be accepted in some dark corners as mere collateral in the endless back and forth between different fanbases.
Back in January, I wrote a column calling out this behaviour after an Aberdeen fan held up his phone with a large ‘71’ on display towards the Rangers support at Pittodrie, a reference to the Ibrox disaster of 1971 in which 66 people died. This had come hot on the heels of Celtic fan Darren Malloch being prosecuted for a similar offence during an Old Firm match at Ibrox.
As appalling as that conduct was, I didn’t truly understand the impact of such behaviour until a couple of weekends ago, when I travelled with a contingent from Rangers to the ‘Unity is Strength’ event at Liverpool’s training centre, a day that looks to bring clubs together to stand up to tragedy chanting and aims to provide at least a shred of solace to the families of victims by showing them they are not alone in their suffering.
Also on the bus travelling south from Ibrox was Annette McLeish, lifelong Celtic fan and the niece of the only female victim of the Ibrox disaster, Margaret Ferguson. Hearing directly from Annette about the impact that Margaret’s death had on her family was heart wrenching enough, but when she explained how the wound is opened afresh every time that an instance of tragedy abuse hits the headlines, even to this day, it really hit home that this issue requires much more serious attention from the authorities, both within football and without.
This isn’t something that belongs to a bygone age, simply because the disaster itself happened long ago. This is a live issue, and if anything, it seems to be getting worse.
After the game between Celtic and Rangers at Ibrox back in March, sick graffiti scrawled on the walls of the Broomloan Stand by away fans referencing ’66 mushy peas’ was rather overshadowed by the post-match pitch invasions that marred the fixture. But Annette noticed, alright. And she cried for days.
One wonders if such information would give the perpetrators of such nonsense cause to reflect on their actions, but it seems doubtful. Much tougher punishments such as those that are now being dispensed in England, and that have proven so effective in their own battle south of the border against tragedy chanting relating to atrocities like Hillsborough or the Munich air disaster, would surely be a deterrent even the most hard of thinking would more readily understand.
It was disappointing therefore when the news that Football Banning Orders were to be beefed up was trumpeted by the Scottish Government last week and swiftly given the seal of approval from the Scottish Professional Football League, that tragedy chanting was not included in the list of offences for which Scottish courts will now be given greater licence to administer FBOs.
The issues that were included – the use of pyrotechnics, pitch invasions and the throwing of missiles – are clearly important, but with Rangers having specifically provided lengthy testimony to the FBO consultation on the rising scourge of tragedy chanting and the impact it has on the families of victims, it is hard to imagine how the Scottish Government arrived at the decision not to include the offence in its crackdown on unacceptable behaviour at matches.
Stephen Kerr MSP, the Conservative Party Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Justice, led the calls for that to change in these pages at the weekend, and it has to be hoped that this particular blight on our game - and society - will start to be taken far more seriously by those in positions of power within the corridors of Holyrood and Hampden.
This should not be a partisan issue, one that divides opinion along the lines of what political party or indeed, football team you may support. The vast, vast majority of the public, football-going or not, would surely agree that the vile practice of revelling in the tragic death of somebody’s loved one in any disaster, simply on the basis of the scarf they may have been wearing that fateful day, is one that is deserving of being met with a far heftier punishment than is currently the case.
In Scotland, tragedy-related abuse is routinely prosecuted as a breach of the peace offence and does not come with the strong expectation of an FBO being issued. In England, where it is a public disorder offence, it does.
Personally, the prospect of being banned from attending football matches and receiving a fine of a few hundred quid doesn’t seem to go nearly far enough for me as a deterrent to such behaviour, but it should at the very least be a baseline guarantee that indulging in tragedy-related abuse means you will never set foot in a UK stadium again.
We may not agree on much here in Scotland, but surely, we can all agree on that?
