Stars can’t all live like monks
IT’S hard to decide which part of Paul Gascoigne’s latest public humiliation is worse. Inviting an alcoholic with a track record of domestic, racial and sectarian abuse to a night of booze-filled nostalgia in Glasgow.
Or telling a flawed figure with a history of mental health issues that his induction to the Scottish Football Hall of Fame has been cancelled.
The Rangers legend has become a slightly tragic character since the end of a playing career which wrought 57 England caps and two Player of the Year trophies in his first season at Ibrox. The spiral of decline looks irreversible and the events of recent days won’t do much for his state of mind.
Walter Smith always feared what lay in store for Gascoigne when the floodlights dimmed.
He was never blessed with the gift of the gab a pundit on Match
of the Day needs. Guilt caused by watching a close friend’s brother being killed by a car before his tenth birthday left him with nervous ticks, twitches and the first signs of compulsive behaviour.
His compulsions were once listed as vodka, beer, Red Bull, cocaine, morphine, paranoia and anxiety, an addictive bi-polar personality led to bouts of depression and suicidal tendencies.
Drawn to negative headlines the way a moth is attracted to light, innocent victims have been caught up in his world of anger and despair along the way.
Condemned by women’s groups after headbutting ex-wife Sheryl and throwing her to the floor at Gleneagles Hotel in October 1996, Gascoigne was sent off days later as Rangers lost 4-1 to Ajax in the Champions League.
He was fined in 2016 for using racially aggravated language towards a black security guard at an ‘Evening with Gazza’ event in Wolverhampton.
In August he was questioned by British Transport Police over allegations of inappropriately touching a woman on a train. As recently as last month, internet footage emerged of the former midfielder joining in with sectarian lyrics at a supporters’ event in Alloa.
Baseball would have seen all this as a red flag from the start. Sport’s ultimate Hall of Fame skips around the morality question by insisting nominees pass a ‘character clause’ taking their ‘playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions’ into account.
But there is no character clause for inductees to the Scottish Football Hall of Fame. Only the need to have made a ‘significant contribution’ to the national game.
Gazza’s brilliantly turbulent spell as a Rangers player explains why a judging panel of journalists were within their rights to regard him as a gifted performer on the pitch.
And why members of the SFA board were wary of endorsing his fairly awful behaviour off it.
Attending a Hampden dinner to honour a man accused of domestic, racial and sectarian abuse would have been an awkward stance for Ana Stewart, female chair of the SFA’s Equalities and Diversity Board, to take.
Even so, many find the outbreak of morality from the governing body laughably hypocritical.
Some of the board members who felt uneasy about honouring Gascoigne were also part of the decision to appoint Malky Mackay as SFA performance director after he was sacked by Cardiff City after a scandal over discriminatory, offensive texts.
No one is nominating Mackay for the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, of course. But if the SFA
are trying to send out a message that inductees should be figures of high moral virtue, then let’s hope they don’t start going through the 112 legends already in there with a red marker pen.
Hughie Gallacher was a hard-drinking bankrupt with a quick temper who threw himself in front of a train from Edinburgh to York rather than face trial for striking his son on the head with an ashtray.
George Graham was found guilty by an FA inquiry of accepting bungs worth £425,000 from Norwegian agent Rune Hauge while the Scot was manager of Arsenal.
Billy Bremner was handed a lifetime ban by the SFA after a boozy incident in a Copenhagen nightclub in 1975.
And don’t get Rangers or Celtic fans started on what they think of Jock Stein or Bill Struth. Or the foibles of Jim Baxter or Jinky Johnstone.
The walls of the Hampden museum bear images of men who drank to excess. Flawed, imperfect figures who mistreated their wives and cheated the taxman. Men who were outstanding at kicking around a football, but ill-equipped for the spotlight a football career shone on their character.
Until this week, Scottish Football’s Hall of Fame demanded only that they displayed excellence with a ball at their feet. Not that they live their life like monks.