Crack down hard on the social-media offenders
JACK ROSS was right to vent his anger as he defended Ryan Porteous in the wake of some horrific online abuse. Social media has never been my thing and never will be, but I can see its positives when used in the right manner.
Young fans going through troubled times can reach out to their idols and we’ve seen footballers respond in positive ways whether it’s with a happy birthday message or help for a charitable cause.
But there is another side to it that is simply vile.
It exposes players and, indeed, managers to so many people who you don’t need in your life.
We are in an industry where we are constantly scrutinised and judged. That’s the way it is.
But while everybody has a democratic right to voice their opinion, it often goes well beyond the critique of a matchday performance.
What happened with Porteous did not stop at making a judgment on a tackle made in the league match against Rangers earlier this month.
It’s perfectly valid to say that the Hibs defender made a rash challenge and should learn from his subsequent red card (pictured below) — I made that point in last week’s column.
But the screenshots highlighted by Jack containing sectarian and homophobic abuse and even a reference to cancer were just abhorrent.
This is a 22-year-old footballer. I’ve felt the same as Jack on so many occasions, that I wanted to defend my players when they were taking an unnecessary amount of abuse.
You feel like a parent. Sometimes you want to put your arm round a shoulder and show you care. Equally, you have to hold them to account when the situation demands.
But the majority of players in Scottish football are good lads who live their lives right within pretty strict boundaries.
At Aberdeen, we had a system where our social-media team would let me know if any of the players had been abused online.
I wanted to know what they had to deal with. I didn’t want to walk by them in the corridor ignorant to what they were experiencing.
We had team meetings every season when I encouraged the players not to be on social media full stop.
I’d tell them I didn’t see the benefit of it, that they didn’t need someone to tell them when they had played well — and they certainly didn’t need the abuse that would follow a bad performance. You know yourself if you’ve played badly, so why open yourself up to something that will make you feel worse?
I couldn’t sanction an outright ban. That would have gone against their freedom and liberties, but we had a rule that they should not be on it on the day of a game and also for 24 hours after.
I also banned phones from the dressing room in the last couple of seasons, because I saw players trying to sneak a look at their phones in their toilet bags.
It was the same players who seemed to need either that validation of a good display or who were drawn to the abuse they knew was coming their way. For young players that can be really damaging.
It’s no coincidence that for this younger generation who are so active on social media, there has been an increase in mental-health issues.
These players have come to a level which requires a degree of resilience and motivation.
It’s not just talent that has got them there. But we are living in a world where they have to deal with a level of criticism and abuse that is heavily disproportionate. It was our job as a staff to make the players feel good about themselves. Physically, technically and tactically we could work on that on the training ground or in the gym.
But mentally? I think that now weighs heavily on a lot of young players. At Aberdeen, we introduced a daily wellness check for our players. It started as a sheet of paper and was latterly done via an app on their
phones. They had to fill it in by 9.30am each day. That was to gauge their quality of sleep, muscle soreness and so on, on a scale of one to five.
A pattern might emerge where a player was clearly worrying and it was affecting his sleep.
Often there would be a rational explanation — the player might have a new baby for example — but there were more than a couple of occasions when a player came into my office and expressed a concern about his general well-being. We are managing a generation of players who are engrossed by social media and I can think of three or four boys who were affected negatively by that attachment. It can bring an apprehension, nervousness and doubt.
It’s something we had to understand and also work hard to make them feel good about themselves.
If somebody is constantly telling you that you’re worthless, then that can weigh heavily. Some young men can’t deal with that. And why should they have to? Jack also spoke of people on the outside contributing to the online pile-on and I had some experience of that last season when columnists, pundits and politicians were all putting the boot into my players after their Covid breach.
I was angry with the boys because I thought it was inappropriate and naïve of them to go out after losing that game to Rangers on the Saturday. But they genuinely did not believe they were flouting the rules.
The abuse those boys took over a sustained period on social media ripped the back off them. I had to deal with a situation that was escalating by the minute.
Aberdeen had gone into lockdown because of case numbers, yet our players took the brunt of that.
A lot of people should look back and reflect on that. It was outrageous what they went through — from their own fans, people associated with the club, columnists and politicians. It whipped up the frenzy on social media.
It saddens me when somebody tries to bring misery on another person. To take pleasure in making somebody feel worse about themselves — I couldn’t think of a worse trait in a person.
Often it’s not even articulate. Any idiot can write two or three lines and fire it off, looking for ‘likes’.
To think there are grown adults, people who have children of their own, saying some of this stuff makes me despair.
It used to be that people
Ross was right to defend Porteous in the wake of horrific online abuse
Any idiot can write two or three lines and send off this absolute bile
would need to invest the time and effort to put down their thoughts in a letter and send it off.
Now they can sit on a Saturday night, phone in hand. They might be half drunk or on drugs and they send out this absolute bile.
Listen, we are in professional sport. It can’t be all fluffy and sugar-coated. It’s hard. You have to be tough. It tests you. But when the abuse goes to a certain level, that is not on the player. People need to make that distinction.
A precedent has been set in the wake of the racial abuse suffered by West Brom’s Romaine Sawyers.
The perpetrator, Simon Silwood, was made to take ownership and responsibility for his comment and was taken to task. He was jailed and we need more of that.
People can go on to social media and spread lies. They can insinuate things, say stuff that is nasty and vile but too often there is no culpability, no recourse. Often it’s done with anonymity.
People should be accountable for anything said on a public forum. Yet so many of these accounts are registered under false names.
That’s why I was so pleased there was that accountability for the Sawyers case.