It amazes me that Celtic have suspended Anthony Stokes for two weeks over, of all things, a triviality on Twitter.
For the record, let us be refreshed of Stokes’ outrageous “crime” which sent the Scottish champions into a fit of pique.
On Twitter last Sunday the Irish striker, having been made to travel to Inverness with Celtic only to sit in the stand, wrote: “Buzzing to be brought all the way up to Inverness with the team to sit in the stands today. Lovely weather for it, too.”
Dear me, it was a comment dripping with sarcasm, which even included a lame joke about the Highlands weather.
Is this really the stuff of swingeing suspensions? Really? Celtic’s ludicrous reaction has been that of a Victorian school ma’am, indignant at a child’s cheek.
A two-week suspension is quite some indignation from Celtic. Remind me, what was captain Scott Brown’s punishment again – a captain, no less – for being found pissed and slumped on an Edinburgh pavement?
We will come to Stokes’s “baggage” in a moment. But, his Highlands sense of grievance apart, his frozen-out status within Celtic looks strange.
Stokes has scored 59 goals in 107 starts for his club. That is pretty good going. You will find a whole list of football strikers – some of them prized by their clubs – who cannot match that goals-to-games ratio.
So we can take it Stokes is feeling pretty brassed off. At a time when Celtic’s striking options beyond Leigh Griffiths look threadbare, here is a decent goal scorer who cannot even threaten to enter Ronny Deila’s thinking.
But is it Deila? Or is it more a diktat from higher up within Celtic about Stokes? It would appear to be more the latter.
Stokes has proved an intermittent embarrassment to Celtic, mainly due to his Irish republican beliefs. Time and again the player has put himself in contexts which seemed to show either IRA or Real IRA sympathies, which riled his employers in Glasgow.
The classic case was in the death of Alan Ryan, by all accounts an unsavoury character, who headed up the Real IRA in Dublin and was murdered on the streets of that city in September 2012.
Stokes tweeted about Ryan on the day of his funeral – “Thinking of you, Alan” – and was later seen at a party in honour of the RIRA leader. It was the sort of stuff that left Celtic FC crestfallen.
Warning: this all quickly gravitates towards walking on eggshells terrain.
A footballer holding controversial political views is one thing. A Celtic footballer holding strong, partisan views linked to The Troubles in Northern Ireland is only asking for bother.
Stokes is perfectly entitled to political beliefs. Like most of us, he was born into a particular world view, and has passionately embraced it. Nor does he just “speak” of his sympathies but, in his social life and elsewhere, he acts on them as well.
But two things are pertinent here. First, in mainland Britain, this is all too hot to handle. Our society in the main believes we have suffered gravely at the hands of terrorists.
Definitions are everything here – I accept that – but here in Scotland Stokes’s friendships with paramilitaries are deemed beyond the bounds of tolerance.
Secondly, unlike Martin McGuinness, the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Stokes is not a politician. He is a footballer. He therefore has to comply with the rules of most football clubs, which means being bland and disassociated from any political – and certainly paramilitary – message.
Personally, I would make one exception to this rule. If Stokes or any other footballer is associated with any form of “extremism” then let’s have him come out and explain it fully and coherently. At least then, we could make our verifiable objections to it, or otherwise.
In my own experience I try to go the extra mile for people, such as Stokes, with whom I might vehemently disagree.
For instance, Remembrance Sunday and the minute’s silence are very emotional and meaningful to me. I cherish what they symbolise for my country.
I have reason for thinking Stokes disagrees with me on this. The poppy to him seems to convey something different, even a type of ugliness.
I’m fine with his right to differ. I’m comfortable with the fact that he has a culturally different worldview within him. So long as no horses are disturbed, I can surely live with his views.
But this is not the universal view of Scottish football. Stokes is absolutely detested by people who don’t even know him. There are Scottish football fans who obsess over him, because of his background, his tastes, his seeming political views.
Stokes is now absolutely in the wrong movie. A looming court case over an alleged assault – another episode with roots in Dublin – is the latest controversy surrounding him.
I think Celtic have simply had enough. A trivial tweet from the Highlands has been used to further impale this footballer. His career is in a cul-de-sac.
Few want to touch Anthony Stokes, for reasons good or ill.
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