Time for the ultimate sanction
Could you possibly blame the members of PFA Scotland if they balloted for a players’ strike in protest against the growing rise of violent behaviour towards them?
Why should they take it any more when they are being placed in positions of serious danger while at their place of work?
If someone wandered into your work environment and started chucking bottles, flares and coins in your direction the outcry would be loud and fast, with demands for police intervention and an appropriate level of sentencing for the aggressors.
So why should football be any different?
It might just be time to bring the entire game to a temporary halt in an attempt to see if that brings a seriously disturbing trend towards violence to an end.
We can either go down that route or wait for the now inevitable intervention of the politicians who will soon be introducing legislation that no-one associated with the game will like.
Football always demands that it be self-policing, but that system isn’t working any longer.
The bottles and coins thrown at Celtic’s Scott Sinclair during the Scottish Cup tie with Hibs at Easter Road were a chilling reminder of how far the game has sunk this season.
That sinister episode was then followed by a shameful series of incidents at Pittodrie resulting in six arrests being made after a dreary afternoon of questionable banners, flares and structural damage.
It’s a total mess and the claims from one deluded set of supporters or another that one side is worse than the other when it comes to moronic behaviour just adds to the sense of disgust.
The bottle aimed at Sinclair came from an area housing Hibs fans. The Hearts fans still harbour the idiot who threw a coin at Neil Lennon earlier in the season.
So why not take the game away from the widespread number of people who are threatening to one day inflict an injury on a player that we’ll all live to regret and see what they miss more, football or violence.
A player going to take a corner kick now is in danger of setting himself up as a human target and that has to be unacceptable.
The clubs themselves deserve a degree of sympathy when it comes to controlling the mindless in our midst. If they increase the number of police and stewards on duty they are accused of ruining the match-day experience and criminalising the fans.
But when bottles are thrown and players go public with requests for supporters to turn in the culprits their pleas fall on deaf ears.
If the clubs do nothing in the hope that common sense will one day prevail they are told by government ministers that they are not being sufficiently robust in their response to the rise of mindless behaviour.
So here we are.
The bottles are flying. The seats are being ripped out. The sectarian songs are being sung. And the hard core are actively rejecting any club calls for having a higher regard for the reputation of the institution they follow.
Rangers issued a club statement the day before the game at Pittodrie asking for fans to remember they were representing the club in Aberdeen.
That was ignored just like the statement they had previously issued asking fans not to sing the sectarian song which had so angered the Kilmarnock manager, Steve Clarke, when it was directed at him inside Ibrox.
Rangers have tried to be pro-active. Steven Gerrard has tried to get involved in a high profile attempt at encouraging better behaviour.
Nothing works.
Celtic give the impression they would prefer their fans didn’t cause structural damage at Kilmarnock, throw coins at Kris Boyd or sing songs about wishing unspeakable harm on their former manager, Brendan Rodgers.
It’s just that they wouldn’t like to issue any statements in case fans take offence.
Neil Lennon, though, had his say after the game at Easter Road on Saturday night, and that was the correct thing to do.
If anyone knows how violence and threatening behaviour can escalate unless you do something to nip it in the bud at an early stage then it’s Celtic’s interim manager.
Lennon’s near twenty year stay in Scotland has been pock marked by “Viable devices” sent to him through the mail, personal attacks resulting in jail sentences for his attackers and various other indignities which should shame his adopted country.
He is living proof that the problem of violence inside our football grounds continues without containment.
Instead of confining ourselves to the dramatic nature of the story attached to Lennon suddenly being asked to take the place of Brendan Rodgers at Celtic Park, part of the questioning contained a query over whether Neil had thought twice about accepting the job in case it gave ideas to the viable device makers.
What have we become?
Strict liability is the favoured way of sorting out the game’s anti-social element. The clubs want nothing to do with it because they know there exists the possibility of rival supporters entering another club’s ground and doing something which gets them into trouble.
And don’t say that wouldn’t happen. You know what we’re like.
A players’ strike might be considered a Draconian measure, but aiming a glass bottle at a man’s head with no regard for his safety is a fairly radical form of public disorder as well.
If you don’t want children to play with matches you take them away from their grasp. If you want to avoid an unspeakable tragedy the taking away football matches on a temporary basis might provide the shock therapy that inspires people to take the road back from the brink