A FORMER Scotland international who was punished for gambling on matches called on Scottish football to drop sponsorship by betting companies.
Four years ago, midfielder Ian Black, 32, was fined £7,500 and given a 10-match ban by the Scottish FA, with seven of those suspended, after admitting to placing bets on 160 matches over a seven-year period. He had played for Inverness Caley Thistle, Hearts and Rangers in the period concerned.
All Scottish senior leagues and cup competitions are sponsored by bookies, but the SFA has a blanket ban on footballers betting on any matches.
Black, who now plays for Tranent Juniors FC in the East Region Premier League says reform is needed adding: "They've got a cheek taking money from betting sites as sponsors and then doing players for betting."
He said that Scottish football people would say the game "will die a death" without bookmakers because no-one else will sponsor them.
"Drop them or look at the rules, but it's never going to stop, for the rest of my life anyway," says Black, whose charge included betting against his own team on three occasions.
"They are scrutinising players but sitting there with the billboards everywhere. Scrap them as sponsors; go and find somebody else."
Black, who was the first player in Scotland to be punished for breaking gambling regulations, admitted that he was lucky not be sacked by Rangers.
After the punishment was meted out, was adamant he was just “silly” and could be trusted by his Rangers team-mates.
He had confessed to staking £5 on an accumulator, which needed Rangers to draw against East Stirling in the 2011/12 season.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here