Heat is on clubs over sectarian behaviour
SCOTLAND’S senior football clubs are facing renewed pressure to sign up to new sanctions for dealing with sectarian, racist and offensive behaviour.
Campaigners have written to all 42 SPFL teams urging them to accept the Strict Liability ruling.
Strict Liability is the standard used by European football’s governing body Uefa for tackling offensive behaviour, with sanctions including fines, closure of sections of grounds, playing matches behind closed doors and docking league points.
At a meeting with the Scottish Football Association in 2013, clubs rejected the introduction of Strict Liability.
The call comes as SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster said Rangers could “have no case to answer” over sectarian singing heard in their game against Raith Rovers on Friday.
Nil By Mouth has now urged the 42 clubs to revisit the proposals at their annual meeting in May.
Campaign director Dave Scott said: “It is revealing to compare the proactive response of Scottish football to reintroducing alcohol at games with its inaction to implementing a set of principles which could effectively tackle bigotry at games.
“If the game is seen to put booze higher on its list of priorities than bigotry, that would be a quite depressing signal.”
Mr Doncaster said: “The SPFL continues to abhor sectarian behaviour of all kinds and will continue to work with all other bodies in Scottish football to tackle it.” PROFESSOR Tim O’Shea, Principal of Edinburgh University, left, with John Leighton, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland were at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh after signing an agreement of understanding to co-operate on joint policy.
Edinburgh University and the National Galleries of Scotland have agreed the pact which will allow students more access to the Galleries’ national collections of art, sculpture and drawings.
The organisations will work together on “academic endeavours and take advantage of their shared objectives and distinguished histories”.