Black is wrong to pin the blame on bookies

IN an ideal world, Scottish football would be sponsored by Save the Children and Unicef. But ethical sponsors aren’t exactly forming an orderly queue down the steps of Hampden. The Old Firm game took place in a league sponsored by Ladbrokes. Rangers had 32Red plastered on their shirts. Celtic had Dafabet. Young fans used to pay their way into football grounds and buy a programme. Everywhere they look these days they’re being urged to skip the programme and spend the fiver on a fixed-odds accumulator instead. No one thinks this is a desirable state of affairs. But without the bookies, Scottish football wouldn’t have a pot to plant in. And ex-Scotland midfielder Ian Black might not be the best man to lecture the authorities on the perils of getting too close to the men in camel coats. Lest we forget, Black was fined £7,500 and given a 10-match ban, seven of them suspended, for placing bets on 160 matches over a seven-year period. Speaking on Radio Scotland this week, he called on the SFA and SPFL to drop bookies as their sponsors. ‘They’ve got a cheek taking money from betting sites as sponsors and then doing players for betting,’ said Black. Ian, son, you knew the rules. Extend that logic and football should also drop alcohol sponsorship in case players can’t resist the urge to go out and get bladdered before a game. It’s a nonsense that a striker playing for Port Glasgow Juniors can’t place a bet on Arsenal v Liverpool. If people think the regulations should be watered down to make them less strict, fine. Until then, spare us the bellyache of footballers blaming William Hill for the bets they stupidly placed against their own team-mates.