THE first thing to say about Clyde midfielder Ally Love is that I have never met him and know next to nothing about the guy.
He might be a genuinely lovely bloke.
He could be horrible. Or someone prone to appalling behaviour, which some of us are capable of, but deep down is actually okay.
The second thing about Love is that for he rest of his football career he will be known as “that racist bloke” and, sadly, this is deservedly so.
Last week, after over 12 hours of a hearing which lasted in total two and a bit days at Hampden, Love was given a five-game ban for “excessive misconduct” after being accused, justifiably, of making racist remarks.
This happened on January 2 of this year when Clyde played Annan Athletic in a League Two match and the victim here was a man called Rabin Omar, born in Holland and from an Iraqi Kurdistan background.
Here is what happened.
Apropos nothing, right at the start of the match, Love asked Omar whether he was “black or white.” This, by all accounts, drew gasps from players on both sides.
Then during the game itself, and this was brought up at the hearing, Love called his fellow professional “a p*** b******” which again was heard by players on both teams who could not quite believe what was being said on a football pitch.
Omar was, understandably, angry and confused by this, and offered to sort this out after the game. By all accounts he would not have been short of hauners.
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Then Love asked: “Will it just be you or are you going to bring your p*** pals?”
To err is human and all that; however, such behaviour is utterly unacceptable – if you don’t think so, you’re a moron – and yet as far as I know, Clyde have not sacked their employee who only last week was found guilty of racism.
Mind you, they do employ David Goodwillie. I used to really like that football club. I don’t any more.
It’s not been a great time for Scottish football in their relationship with, erm, race relations.
We’ve had the now former Hearts man Isma Goncalves claiming a reason for him leaving the club was because his family stopped attending games due to abuse from the stands.
“There were some people making racist comments to me in the stadium and my family did not feel okay about this,” was his depressing quote.
These two incidents are a reminder that racism, the good old-fashioned hating people for their colour kind of racism, has not entirely gone away in Scotland.
I can’t remember the last time I heard a racist chant at the football.
So I was surprised to here about this coming from the stands. What happened in the case of Love stunned me.
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Football is the most multi-racial office in these islands. Look around you, white people. How many black or brown faces do you see in the workplace? Not many, I would bet.
And, yet, it is all but impossible to think of an all-white football team taking to the pitch.
Professional footballers in the UK work alongside people from all sorts of backgrounds and it is almost never a problem. This is why Love’s actions are almost more mystifying than evil.
I’m told the lad is not exactly someone you could rely on to win you points in a pub quiz, but there are plenty of folk in the world who didn’t make it to Harvard but would never dream of racially abusing anyone.
We need to hear more about this.
A five-game ban is, I suppose, fine, but Clyde, the SFA and Love himself cannot hope for this to blow over and then get on with things, which I fear may happen. Or, and this is what I expect to happen, it will be put on a shelf and forgotten about.
Love must be forced to explain himself in public, if he can, as should Clyde as a football club because if they say and do nothing then what non-white player would feel comfortable about walking in that dressing room.
Alas, I fear a whitewash. Pun intended.
AND ANOTHER THING
GOOD luck, Alex McLeish.
That should go without saying, but as the new (not so) Scotland manager’s appointment has been met with fretting rather than fanfare, it is worth noting for the record that we all want Big Eck to do well.
He is a great guy, who has a better cv than most, and the players he worked with speak well about his man-management.
It’s hard not to like the bloke – McLeish is one of the good guys – so it’s human nature, and the fact I’m a Scotland fan makes me hope he proves so many of his doubters wrong.
But I would have gone for Neil Lennon, allowed him to see out the season with Hibs, and then see what he could have brought to the party.
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