New Act has to be effective

AND so the dreaded Act will fall. Leaving what, exactly? Not such an easy question, is it? Many fans will be overjoyed by the news, breaking over the weekend, that opposition politicians aim to use their collective majority to repeal the controversial Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act 2012. So long and good riddance, etc. Back when the original Bill was presented, your Sportsmail columnist asked a sheriff of some repute whether he thought it would work. An experienced and respected legal mind used to picking apart complex arguments, he simply laughed at the very idea. Yet it says something about shifting attitudes that, surely to goodness, there aren’t many who would want the scrapping of this unwieldy legislation to mark the end of all debate on common decency inside and outside stadia. Because, if we leave a vacuum in place of even a poorlyconstructed tangle of mixed intentions and wobbly legalese, it may not take long for the sectarian bile to start pouring in. More well-established laws clearly didn’t work, except to prevent the serious nutters who think nothing of breaching the peace, carrying on in such a manner that police really have no option but to arrest them. Nor are the clubs particularly interested in hammering offenders through strict liability or other severe measures; facial recognition software was a pitch they knew would miss, making them look like they care without getting anything done. There has to be something that doesn’t ‘criminalise’ ordinary fans but does promise serious punishment for those who remain so deliberately anti-social. All parties should force the SNP government to come up with something more nuanced and more effective than a law as bad as any passed in a tearing hurry. We need something that emphasises the need to treat fans like paying customers, not roaming hordes of ne’er-dowells, while promising swift action against the truly offensive.