SPFL’s yellow card looks almost certain to turn red
SCOTTISH football is on a yellow card. A sentence which should provoke the same sort of unease as ‘Terry Hurlock is on a yellow card.’ You just know that sooner or later, the reprieve will be shown to have been a temporary one. Some players, like good ol’ Terry, just can’t help themselves.
The warning dished out to our footballers this week by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was a stark one, and for the majority of players, it will likely have been one they will have heeded. One more transgression, and you’re off. Not just the player involved in any breach of the coronavirus guidelines, but the whole kit and kaboodle.
You may think that the prospect of football being shut down once more, and the financial rack and ruin that would follow for our clubs, would be enough of a deterrent for any players considering a wee night out on the town. Or perhaps the not-at-all bizarre notion of a 24-hour trip to Spain. But this was known long before the reckless actions of the so-called ‘Aberdeen Eight’ and Celtic’s Boli Bolingoli, and yet both parties still pressed ahead with their imbecilic actions.
Now, there is an element of understanding here from the point of view of the Aberdeen players, as I’m sure they weren’t the only occupants of the Granite City to hit the bevvy after seeing their performance against Rangers on the opening day. And in the case of Bolingoli, if he was indeed in Spain to discuss a transfer to a new club, a great many Celtic fans would probably have chipped in for his air fare. Maybe even Neil Lennon, too.
As soon as he is out of his delayed spell of quarantine, Bolingoli may well be given a one-way ticket, with the full-back about as welcome in the Celtic dressing room now as a verruca outbreak in the showers.
Footballers are human beings, and are unfairly characterised as simpletons at times. That may be reinforced by Bolingoli being plastered all over the front page of the Daily Record dripping in designer gear when he was supposed to be travelling incognito, right enough, but the point stands.
They are also worth the money they take home for the most part due to the cash they generate for the businesses who employ them, despite frequent and nonsensical comparisons to public sector workers, whose level of pay is the responsibility of the government.
But when such heroic sacrifices have been made by the likes of nurses, doctors and others all across our emergency services during this pandemic, it is little wonder that sympathy for the Aberdeen players and Bolingoli is in seriously short supply.
It should be pointed out that many players have taken wage cuts in order to ease the financial impact of the pandemic on their club, but it is little wonder that the hundreds of thousands of fans