One of the more disgusting tropes on Planet Fitba in recent years has been the weaponizing of child abuse.
In the minds of some dignified types, it has been gleefully seized upon as an issue that was centred on only one club.
Consequently, these most heinous crimes became a handy stick to beat Celtic with and also to smear the memory of the club’s greatest manager.
I wrote about the Celtic Boys’ Club case in June of this year.
You can read it here.
My view has not changed since the summer.
I believe that there should be an independent judge-led enquiry into the subject of child abuse in Scottish football.
Moreover, no club, living or dead, should be exempt from the remit of that investigation.
Last night Mark Daly of the BBC published a report into the late Gordon Neely who was a youth coach at the original Rangers.
This is a very serious allegation.
Covering up child abuse allows the abuser to continue with his crimes.
Mr Daly has previous with the Ibrox klanbase.
They didn’t take too kindly to him shining the light on the last owner of Rangers Craig Whyte.
When that programme was broadcast the Govan Herrenvolk focused on Daly’s religious background in order to prove “an agenda”.
For the avoidance of doubt, his probe into Craig Whyte’s shady business background was evidence-based.
Of course, rather later the same supporters were crying that no one had warned them about Craigie boy!
For the avoidance of doubt, this site had flagged up some likely issues just one month after the Suave Billionaire from Motherwell had taken the keys to Ibrox.
Now the Beeb’s man is once more suing his investigative skills to shine a light on matters Ibrox.
Should the victims of sex abuse at Ibrox feel that they deserve compensation from the basket of assets then Sevco will signpost them to the liquidators of the original club.
After all, they have form for that.
My earnest hope is that supporters of other clubs do not travel down into the moral sewer and point score on this awful subject.
Just because it is the natural habitat of the Ibrox klanbase does not mean that others should become accustomed to the stench of hypocrisy.
Discover more from Phil Mac Giolla Bháin
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Anyone notice how often “Sevco” are interested in their next opposition’s key player/players only to refute the rumours once they have unsettled them for the game. I remember they did it to great effect with Scott Allan and Jason Cummings, albeit the latter eventually signed for them. There have been others and this week it was the turn of Aaron Hickey who obliged them with a nightmare performance which assisted in the equalizer. Gerard had come out, rather late in the day, and denied their interest but it prompted Levein to joke about signing Morelos. Wonder who they will be interested “signing” from FC Porto this week.
The S#n carried the Harry Dunn story last month. Definitely more coming down the pipe.
The bottom line is he victims are all that ever mattered in this.
Statistics say that if you attend a game and are in a crowd of many thousands of people you are in close proximity of someone has or has been abused in some way or at some point in their life time.
Abuse can take many forms as we now know and for imbeciles to use it as some perverse point scoring exercise Because of tribal rivalry between Supporters s beyond comprehension.
I have noticed a few Celtic fans use the same patter as the BJK cretins since this story broke and if I am honest it comes as no great shock.
I would urge those doing so to think about the victims and how they feel as you and others reduce their life sentence of pain and suffering to a wee dig on Social Media (then swiftly followed up by a lame attempt at justifying it no doubt) in order to get one over some irrelevant muppet on the other end?
Phil you are correct in what you say there needs to be a proper enquiry into this whole affair so that the chances of this ever happening again within Football (Organised Sport as a whole) are reduced to a minimum.
Celtic as we now know have taken their own measures since this emerged.
That should be applauded but at the same time questions should be asked how it ever came to pass in the first place that our custodians ever let this continue in the first place.
Those individuals who made the decisions that allowed this to continue within the Clubs and the wider game must be questioned and held to account.
As for those who continually use it as a football in some sordid point scoring exercise?
You are a fcukin disgrace.
Yer maw must be proud.
As Phil has said, we should all remember there are no winners here. It’s long past time that a full and unbiased investigation took place into the activities of sexual predators who hide amongst the youth coaching staff within football clubs, and no club should be castigated if they choose to expose what’s happened under their roof, so long as they are accepting responsibility for making sure it cannot happen again.
My heart sinks every time I read a story about a child who’s childhood has been ripped from them by the behaviour of people who are charged with mentoring them. Think of them before you think of scoring points against the klan
This, like the Ibrox disaster and other genuine human tragedies, transcend football’s partisan nature and should be an area where everyone not involved wants the truth to come out and let the cards fall where they may. If one group of individuals, for whatever reason, enabled this heinous, criminal behaviour more than an other then sobeit, but let’s punish all those involved.
If, as the songsters hope, Celtic’s involvement with the Catholic church is problematic in their response to this scandal then let’s absolutely point that out and address it, but snarky comments, whataboutery and ignoring the larger problem, especially the closer to home it hits, helps no-one but the perpetrators, past and future.
The sevco fans are not happy chappies with Daly . Once again rather than tackle the issue of what Daly produced on Neely they have turned on Daly and the BBC once again telling us all that the BBC hates their club and constantly they go out their way to dig up dirt on the sevco club. As usual it’s always someone else to blame when ever the Klans name is mentioned in a negative article .
It doesn’t matter to the orcs what the content of the bad news is. Bad news in general means shoot the messenger. Don’t concern yourself with the facts, just slaughter the messenger.
They say that you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but, like Jimmy Saville OBE, a very bright light needs to be shone into very dark corners. As you rightly pointed out, Phil – this is the stick that “ra peepul” like to beat celtic with. It seems that they don’t like it so much when that very weapon is used upon them! I think the newcomers can learn a lot from their betters at CP, in learning to deal with this with dignity and decorum.
To paraphrase ra pee-pell: “Wallace / Totten / Smith and Souness must have known !”
I wouldn’t pay too much credence to Mark Daly’s ‘investigative journalism’- he is an attention seeker (see Dermot Desmond’s ambush), has been since he was at school- and part of the SMSM don’t forget. Unfortunately, a story comes a distant last to his own self indulgent self promotion (again, see Dermot Desmond’s ambush), and in this case, the victim’s of ANY injustice play a rather minor role in Mark’s attention whoring. As for his religious background, I can confirm he was a Bankie (and other names not so distantly related), so maybe his ‘journalism’ could have been seasoned with salt and more sympathetic to a fan base who’s club died…ultimately, it will take a journalist like yourself to focus on the injustice of the victims rather than the likes of Mark Daly who focuses on himself- just sayin’….
Usual dignified response Phil, however whilst perusing daily radar in my barber shop today & fully expecting banner headlines on child abuse at Ibrox scandal, as we all know how they revel in this type of thing, I wasn’t surprised to see “Gers” story making its way onto page 20, yes you’re reading this correctly, page 20. But here’s the kicker …. it was the only article which was not attributed to any journalist. Anonymous. Quelle surprise I hear you say ?? The stench of hypocrisy does indeed travel much further than the dignified corridors of ibrokes & it is truly staggering.
You might be staggered. Personally, I think it’s par for the course. I really wouldn’t expect anything else.
Unfortunately Phil, the Aberdeen fans already engage in this sordid behaviour. In fact I would make a case for them actually being worse than the klan in the CA stakes.