Anderson is helping our game repair its rotten image
IT’S been a bad week for philanthropists with an iffy back story. The statue of Edward Colston was fished from the depths of Bristol Harbour.
The bronze Henry Dundas, meanwhile, could be hanging from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle by Monday morning.
And if that leaves a plinth in need of a new statue to fill the void, then Scottish football knows the very man. James Anderson’s £3million donation to help teams survive the financial effects of coronavirus is perfectly timed.
With no gate income for the foreseeable future, the national game needs every penny it can get. Ladbrokes have ended their sponsorship agreement with the SPFL. And, given the game’s image problems, Unicef, Netflix and Amazon are hardly forming an orderly queue down the steps of Hampden.
Hearts are set to take legal action against the league when reconstruction is binned yet again on Monday.
Throw in sectarian singing and anti-social behaviour and the Scottish Government would rather wrap an electronic tag round football’s ankles than help out with a penny of public money.
When even the bookmakers think the game is bad for their image, it really is time to take stock.
Yet, in the past fortnight, James Anderson has scratched beneath the anger and the irrational behaviour of Scottish football and found a cunningly disguised heart.
The coronavirus crisis might have brought out the absolute worst in some in recent weeks. Yet, in other ways, it has also managed to draw out the very best. Take Stenhousemuir’s Ochilview. Since Covid-19 ended the season prematurely, the away dressing room has swapped the clack of metal studs for the peace and quiet of a library.
Books are separated into different genres along one wall. On the other side are audiobooks and biographies. In a side room sit the children’s books and non-fiction.
By the door are four or five Tesco plastic carrier bags bulging with paperbacks due to be delivered to isolated or housebound householders during lockdown.
The community arm of the League Two side have now notched up more than 14,000 volunteer hours helping the needy, delivering 10,000 hot meals, providing support to families and helping with shopping for those who can’t do it themselves.
It’s not just Stenhousemuir. Big Hearts, the Tynecastle club’s charitable arm, have made more than 800 calls to season-ticket holders aged over 65 and helped 6,000 vulnerable people across the community.
More than 30,000 packed lunches have been put together and 35 families equipped with digital tools to help with home schooling.
Aberdeen’s Community Trust have made 12,500 calls to isolated people, made 5,400 food-parcel drops and supported more than 3,000 disadvantaged kids.
The Partick Thistle Trust deliver 300 meals a day to the elderly and vulnerable. Montrose Trust have spent recent weeks making calls to support mental health, helping to educate kids, making foodbank donations and helping transport the elderly to GP appointments.
Up and down the country, clubs from Inverness Caley Thistle to Celtic and Rangers do their charitable bit for those who need it most.
This is the unseen work football clubs do during a pandemic. The silent service to the community Anderson wants to encourage and reward with fixed grants to clubs of £50,000 — with the promise of more to come. You don’t hear much about this stuff in the papers or the phone-ins.
Worthy and serious, journalists and fans alike find more sex appeal in warring chairmen, Odsonne Edouard’s new contract or the future of Alfredo Morelos.
But, in football as in life, Covid-19 will claim casualties. And, if some of Scotland’s 42 clubs don’t make it to the other side, all that good work they do for the community will go with them.
In contrast with the politicians, James Anderson wasn’t prepared to stand back and let that happen. People think the Hearts benefactor wants something in return for his money. Benefactors usually do.
Yet the Anderson cash offers no guarantee whatsoever that the Gorgie club will still be a
Premiership club by Monday afternoon. The only strings tied to his £50k grants are that clubs use the money to help themselves
and groups in the community. Football is usually too busy looking out for number one to think of anybody else.
But Ladbrokes and William Hill are now taking their cash elsewhere. And if the alternative is free money from well-intentioned philanthropists with a social conscience, then bring it on.
The national game hasn’t covered itself in glory lately. But incentives to help the suffering and the needy at the heart of clubs’ own towns are an opportunity to repair a battered image and remind people that, underneath all the squabbling and self-interest, Scottish football can be a powerful force for good.