A show of solidarity our game should embrace
LOCKDOWN has certainly been a learning experience. A time to stop. To think. To observe and reflect from different angles on things both old and new. A time to take pleasure in the peculiar sunbathing routine of the blackbird, belly plonked on the garden grass, feathers splayed and head tilted to the side, beak wide open to ease the effects of the heat.
A time to admire the dedication of the coal tit in raising its young, mindful of the fact that fixing a metal plate with a 25mm hole on the entrance to a wooden box on your wall will give it somewhere safe and convenient to do the same thing all over again in 12 months’ time.
It has been a time to build planting troughs out of discarded wooden pallets found outside, to admire the beauty of the peacock butterfly and the orange-tip at close quarters, to remember why home-fired fruit scones are life’s unrivalled celebration of perfect simplicity and appreciate the truth of the age-old saying that a baked potato in the oven is worth two in the micro.
It has afforded the hours required to enjoy some of the excellent television drama being made in Italy. And the benefits of understanding how to use an Italian moka pot properly to make morning coffee. Off the stove before it starts making a racket. Cool the base before you pour.
Chin tucks have shown themselves a surefire way to ease a trapped nerve in the neck. Cotton wool swabs soaked in boiling water the simplest cure for an inflamed eye.
As for drinking bleach to scare off Covid-19? Let’s not, despite the agitations of certain world leaders, add it to the Bumper Book of Home Remedies quite yet.
We’ve been introduced to R-rates, viral load and tracing apps. Likewise, who knew that ‘going for a Zoom’ no longer involves a trip to the ice-cream van for a lolly in the shape of a space rocket?
It’s actually a bona-fide journey into the future, where meetings exist in virtual reality, offices are made redundant and friends and family worldwide are with you at the click of a mouse.
Indeed, who knew that, as lockdown eases and the prospect of actually dealing facemask-tofacemask with other human beings appears on the horizon, we would find ourselves discussing the prospect of Scottish Premiership footballers taking a knee Kaepernick-style before games and raising their fists in a ‘Black Power’ salute ahead of the new season?
Four months ago, before all this started, it would have been anathema. Now, it seems a perfectly normal conversation to have against the backdrop of wondering what the atmosphere will be like in a stadium where there is no one within touching distance.
For many of us who have spent lockdown largely cut off from wider society, the world we are slowly reintroducing ourselves to seems a different place. These recent weeks, however, have given us the breathing space to re-emerge as different people, too.
All this time spent at home hasn’t just been about taking new interest in the external stimuli of things we don’t often pay attention to. It has involved looking deep inside.
The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has been a focus and perhaps a catalyst for that.
For football fans, in particular, it has been impossible to avoid given the fact every English Premier League fixture begins with both teams kneeling around the centre-circle and features the motto on every team’s shirt.
In Scotland, we have looked on from distance until now. We have listened to compelling arguments from former Celtic manager John Barnes about confronting our own unconscious bias whether that relates to race or religion.
We have watched cricket resume down south with those pictures of West Indies legend Michael Holding breaking down on screen when remembering the racism his own parents faced. Some may also have watched his powerful programme with Ebony RainfordBrent, the first black woman to play for England, whose stories of the discrimination she faced more recently were equally affecting.
These testimonies have echoed throughout this summer devoid of crowd noise and the usual bread and circuses our sports provide.
On our own patch, Jermain Defoe, the Rangers striker, has spoken about how the dream of playing in Madrid’s Bernabeu Stadium as a young man was destroyed by the abuse he received because of his skin colour.
St Mirren’s Jon Obika, another victim, has joined Defoe in asking for his fellow professionals to make the symbolic gesture of taking a knee beside them when the action begins again in three weeks’ time.
The SPFL have, wisely, left it to each player’s conscience. Like the drivers who refrained from kneeling ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix and the footballers who have stood for the Stars and Stripes following soccer’s return in America, there may be a certain unease among some individuals.
It does not mean those who do not participate are somehow complicit in racism. It should not result in instant vilification.
However, it to be hoped that those who play beside Defoe and Obika and other black players here regard it as a simple show of solidarity above anything. A determination to let them see that they are supported. To let everyone see that their stories are being listened to and that this can be a new start. Not just in terms of racism either. With other related blights that exist inside our sporting arenas and communities such as sectarianism, too.
The solitude of late has invited many of us to see our world in new light. To learn about new things it has to offer. To consider that we are capable of re-engaging with it as new people with a fresh bank of knowledge and ideas too.
Football is returning at a time when we are seeking the security of something familiar, but it doesn’t mean it has to be exactly the same as it was before. Nothing does.
We have an entire society to rebuild for the better and sport, used properly, can be a big part of the foundations.