Griffiths’ gambling woe puts our game in a moral bind
WHEN UB40 sang about the One
in Ten, there was just one thing harder than a jobless dad. A jobless dad who liked a bet.
There was no gambling awareness in the 1980s. Nothing to warn people of the damage it could cause.
When a few quid was riding on the 3.45 at Kempton, a parent with a ripped-up betting slip wasn’t much fun to be around.
There was no Sat Nav in our old 1968 Singer Chamois. But there was clearly a homing device which diverted every journey to a bookmakers’ shop. When the credits rolled on
Saturday Swap Shop, the telly went straight on to the horse racing. The John Wayne western on BBC2 never stood a chance of outgunning the Scottish Grand National.
When commentator Peter O’Sullevan becomes the soundtrack to your young life, it’s self-evident that gambling to excess is a bad thing.
That’s why there was no temptation to take the pocket money earned for parading the greyhounds at Shawfield and hand it all over to on-course bookies. Why, even now, there is no chance of finding the Racing Channel on the family TV.
Lately, however, a lifelong suspicion of gambling has eased just enough to stick a fiver on an online fixed-odds coupon on a Saturday. Despite a losing streak that would shame Albion Rovers, the mortgage still gets paid. The children have food on the table.
Yet that doesn’t shift the pangs of embarrassment. Like drinking before midday, it’s a furtive pursuit which doesn’t feel quite right. Online betting brings feelings of mild shame and, on reflection, that’s no bad thing.
Because it’s all too easy to see how gambling by the click of a mouse can create serious and destructive problems for people with no addiction filter. People like Celtic striker Leigh Griffiths. Back in 1982, your old dad had to go to the trouble of actually leaving the house to bet on a horse or a football match.
Now? All it takes is a WIFI connection, a smartphone and an online account.
Ten seconds after logging on to a computer, he can bet on football, rugby, darts, tennis and American football. He can bet on handball and baseball.
He can gamble on a team to win, whether both teams will score and whether a game will have under 2.5 goals or over. He can’t bet on two flies scaling the living-room window just yet — but it’s only a matter of time.
Under pressure to stop luring impressionable teenagers to the online casino, bookmakers have agreed in principle to a voluntary ‘whistle-to-whistle’ ban on advertising during live sports.
Dropping a pebble from the QE2 into the Atlantic would have more impact than that.
When Sky Sports show Rangers hosting Celtic at Ibrox on December 29 there might be a bit less of Ray Winstone on show.
But the teams will have 32Red and Dafabet plastered all over their shirts, with billboards promoting the Ladbrokes Premiership all around the pitch. You couldn’t miss the advertising if you tried. Promoting gambling during sports events will inevitably go the same way as tobacco and alcohol ads. It’s socially unacceptable and people are sick of seeing it pushed more aggressively than reclaiming PPI.
A complete ban would be bad news for the SPFL and its member clubs. Half the teams in the Premiership have bookmakers as shirt sponsors.
But the serious off-field demons now plaguing Griffiths place the game in an awkward moral bind.
People can’t understand what problems a footballer earning £15k a week can possibly have.
But when any young, vulnerable man has too much time on his hands and starts gambling huge sums, he ends up robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The house goes. The car is repossessed. Relationships fracture. His blameless children have no idea what’s going on. His mental health suffers badly.
Worryingly, former Arsenal captain Tony Adams thinks gambling in professional football is now an epidemic. And that raises a question.
Clubs spend fortunes on the welfare and protection of their players. They eat the best food, enjoy the best medical treatment, stay in the best hotels.
How can they continue taking the money of betting firms wrecking all the good work?