This is the RIGHT time to be open about racism... and the WRONG time to close ranks
THEY have a little black lad slap-bang in the centre of their posters advertising a soccer school running during the Easter holidays, looking proud as punch with his ‘Player Of The Day’ award, his photo bigger than any of the others.
They are highly aware of the importance of supporting staff in matters of diversity, according to a statement issued in midweek.
Paraphernalia relating to community ownership expresses a commitment to ‘equality at all times’.
Very good. Very modern. The same paint-by-numbers approach to inclusion you see replicated across all manner of companies and public institutions. Staying in business depends upon it.
All this stuff is the easy part, though. When a member of staff is accused of calling someone a ‘P*** b ****** ’ in the workplace and later found guilty, it is where the matter of confronting these weighty issues all becomes uncomfortably real.
Where making a stand against such inexcusable behaviour involves more than just nodding along in awareness classes or ticking the appropriate boxes on an application form for public funding.
It is at this juncture where Clyde opted to plunge their heads into the sand. For, as regular readers of this column will know, that is exactly what they did.
They accepted winger Ally Love’s lenient five-game SFA ban for abusing Rabin Omar of Annan Athletic in the middle of last month when the deadline for appeal passed and just hoped it would all go away.
They failed to respond to enquiries about the matter. Showed an unwillingness to engage. Even when they did slip out a statement on their website on the night Love, somehow still in employment, returned quietly to the substitutes’ bench away to Edinburgh City, it ignored key questions and reeked of arrogance.
It didn’t mention racism once, failed to detail disciplinary action taken and, shamefully, ended with a warning that they would never, ever talk about it again.
Despite all that, the events of yesterday morning mean they still have an opportunity to make something good from this unholy mess. They cannot rewrite history, but they can help shape what comes next.
Labour MSP Anas Sarwar, hugely critical of the actions of Clyde and the SFA, has apparently accepted an invitation to a meeting with the Cumbernauld club’s chairman Norrie Innes.
Handled effectively, it appears an ideal platform upon which to begin a serious, open debate about the issue of racism around Scottish football — and the wider approach to dealing with it in society — hard on the heels of Esmael Goncalves leaving because of abuse received by his own supporters at Hearts, and Raith Rovers investigating the conduct of their followers.
It cannot be carried out in secret, though. It cannot be boiled down into three paragraphs on the Clyde website telling us it’s been dealt with and we should all go away and leave them to get on with things.
This should be a public event geared towards taking football’s handling of this issue beyond the usual, vacuous platitudes.
Sarwar must not use it as a vehicle for political point-scoring. We have just got shot of the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, for goodness sake. Likewise, Clyde’s management must drop their own, quite inexplicable siege mentality.
If they can’t understand why they are under attack over the handling of Love’s case, they need to wake up. If they think it is a good idea to meet Sarwar and try to keep the content of that meeting under wraps, their silence will damn them.
They insist they are an open, inclusive club. Well, show it. Explain it to us. Tell us why you opted not to sack Love when supporters guilty of the same misconduct would undoubtedly have faced a court appearance and a banning order from every football ground in the country.
If you really, truly believe that diversity training will help the player, detail what it will involve. We can only assume Love accepts his guilt, but the fact the SFA required two days of evidence suggests there may have been complexities around the issue.
Is Love remotely repentant? Has this been the jolt he needed to change his thinking? If so, why not encourage him to talk publicly about what has happened as well?
Football has a tendency to circle the wagons when criticism comes. On a subject like this, though, it won’t wash.
When Celtic loanee Aleksandr Tonev was banned for seven games in 2014 for calling Shay Logan of Aberdeen a ‘black c***’, the Parkhead club stated the belief the evidence wasn’t strong enough for a guilty verdict.
Clyde refusing to talk about what happened with Love is similarly inadequate.
People involved in tackling racism within Scottish football insist privately that the problem is more widespread than perceived and that they are supporting a number of players right now who are scared to go public for fear of creating problems at their clubs.
If this really is true, and it did seem to be the case with Goncalves at Tynecastle, we really need to have a proper conversation — discomfiting as it may be for many of us. Show Racism The Red Card Scotland, although enjoying better leadership than before, is still best known for running primary-school art contests. The SFA also has its own Diversity Manager in Hala Ousta. Where is she in all this? Sarwar and Scottish Government Minister for Transport Humza Yousaf have put issues of racism in politics front and centre in recent times. There has never been a better time for those committed to addressing the issue within football to speak up publicly and build on the existing head of steam.
Putting ethnic minorities on marketing posters is one thing. Putting them at the centre of a conversation in which we may all have to consider how we, individually and collectively, are dealing with Scotland’s ever-changing society is another.
If Clyde really mean what they say, though, they are in prime position to kickstart what is beginning to look like a wholly necessary debate.