My parents moved to Edinburgh when I was seven, and before that my dad and I used to go to the second half of Chesterfield Town games – they opened the gates at half-time and anyone could go in for free. He’d been a part-time Hearts fan when he was younger, and once back in Edinburgh he took it upon himself to go with me to Tynecastle a few times, not because he was hugely into football, but it’s just what you do with a young son.
There was a great spell in the mid-80s, and I was a pretty serious fan of players like John Colquhoun, Gary Mackay, Craig Levein, the absurdly-coiffured Henry Smith, and of course the immortal John Robertson. Like many a fair-weather fan, 1986 rather knocked the stuffing out of me, but I’ve been back a few times since. Not many. Just when the weather’s nice. And it’s not on telly. You know.
Then Romanov arrived. He saved the ground, for how long who knows, but screwed up the best team Hearts had had since the mid-80s, and (I’m going to try to be careful to avoid libel here) his decisions became increasingly flawed and perverse – the classic dictatorial mix of egomaniacal and bombastic. So sue me.
Today saw a new low. Defender Craig Thomson found himself on the sex offenders register last week, for perverse offences involving young girls. I’m not clear why he avoided a custodial sentence, personally, yet astonishingly he remains on the team. Queue here for the youth programme, parents. A role model for local young people anyone? The taunts from the Hibs fans next season will be “interesting” to say the least.
Then came the statement from the Board. Actually, it’s from Romanov alone, clearly dictated to some mewling functionary. Utter insanity. Let the final two paragraphs speak for themselves (they follow a bizarre blaming of the aforementioned Mackay, now an agent):
“Mafia are dragging kids into the crime, in order to blackmail and profit on them. It is not possible to separate these people from pedophiles, and you don’t need to do that. Each year we are forced to fight against these maniacs harder and harder. We are standing in their way not letting them manipulate the game of football in the way they want. As such they undermine us in every possible way they can.
“The task of the club is to tear these kids out of hands of criminals.”
Er, no. Not even vaguely in my name. I can’t support this club again until both this player and that owner are gone. I’m going green, just for just now, which is consistent with some of my other interests, and I’d urge other Hearts fans who feel aggrieved at the barbarism the club has fallen into to do the same. Mebbe Eddie and Kate can take me to the wrong end at Easter Road sometime. I’ll not be chanting along when Hearts come, though.
#1 by Random Housekeeper on June 25, 2011 - 1:03 am
As long as you understand it’s not easy being green. On a more serious note, well said and I hope more Hearts fans follow suit. Something is seriously rotten in the state of Tynecastle.
#2 by Shave on June 25, 2011 - 9:18 am
They have hit new levels of insanity at Tynie. I’ll not be going green though.
Go Spartans!
#3 by James on June 25, 2011 - 9:19 am
Ach, that would have been a better idea perhaps.
#4 by The Burd on June 25, 2011 - 9:28 am
Your team is your team, no matter what they do. It’s Hearts fans that are suffering most from yesterday’s debacle and pronouncements. And toiling to know what to do for the best. At least they have taken a strong stance on the Craig Thomson thing and want him to go. Shame Vlad hasn’t got that sense.
#5 by Douglas McLellan on June 25, 2011 - 9:36 am
I am probably going to get shot down in flames here but I wonder if this reaction to the players sentence would apply to every job out there. Is it because he is a footballer that the reaction is that his employer must sack him? Footballers are described as role models but that is a role that is given to them by society, not one that they seek themselves.
Clearly he and him employer have to make changes to his contact with children but that is a manageable situation.
But I agree that the statement from the club is utterly utterly bonkers.
#6 by Jon on June 25, 2011 - 10:31 am
*looks very skeptical*
and it’s Chesterfield, not “Chesterfield Town”.
#7 by James on June 25, 2011 - 11:24 am
I was 6. But that’s how I remember them being called. The original name may linger on. Or I’m just wrong.
#8 by setindarkness on June 25, 2011 - 1:40 pm
There is a Chesterfield Town, but it is an amateur side
I can’t imagine changing to support another team (especially your main rivals) but a dedicated football fan could instead turn to the local junior team.
Manchester United fans fed of the owners and the huge cost and debt of the club formed their own team FC United of Manchester. Fan run, fan owned, community club.
Football will be worth it again once all the “big” clubs have gone bust, or have become fan owned and the sport will be run for the fans and by the fans. Not likely to happen I know.
#9 by Martin on June 25, 2011 - 11:18 am
James, as a fellow ‘Jambo’ I agree with your comments regarding ‘The Mad One’. It’s getting beyond a joke, and I am not looking forward to the new season.
However, I do hope your comments about ‘going green’ are toungue-in-cheek. As ‘The Burd’ quite rightly says… “your team’ is your team” – through good and bad. It’s not just the players or board you are supporting, it’s the name, the colours the history. You may get disillusioned now and again (like now for example), but remember, it’s the bad times that make the good times taste sweeter.
HHGH
Martin
#10 by James on June 25, 2011 - 11:26 am
I know what you’re saying. But we need revolt. Like the green and gold at Man U.
#11 by Stuart on June 25, 2011 - 5:31 pm
The problem with Hearts is you can’t really revolt. Want rid of Vlad? Fine. But the club will owe his bank upwards of £35m. That would pretty much mean bye bye to Heart of Midlothian FC.
I guess you could then start a new club called “Hearts” rather than Heart of Midlothian, created by the fans a la United if Manchester. It could possibly be a happy ending, but of course you’d have to start in the 3rd Division (if you’re lucky).
Yours,
Slightly Smug Aberdeen Fan
#12 by Alec Macph on June 25, 2011 - 11:30 am
~#gets out ack-acks guns#~
Douglas, at the very least, this aint a minor employee or one out of the public gaze.
Bloody hell. I had to check the link to ensure you weren’t spoofing. This aint far off the excuses made during the Dreyfus Affair… okay the top brass conspired to frame Dreyfus, but they should remain for the intregrity and defence of France.
Also, on the matter of sectarianism, will any rival fans who chant “nonce” be arrested to using anti-Papist terms?
~alec
#13 by Douglas McLellan on June 25, 2011 - 12:10 pm
“Douglas, at the very least, this aint a minor employee or one out of the public gaze.”
So is that the definition of when to sack a person or not? I think that employment tribunals would love a lawyer trying to define that.
#14 by Ezio on June 25, 2011 - 11:39 am
I’m only surprised that the sectarian bigotry on display from a section of the Hearts support hasn’t driven you away long before now.
#15 by James on June 25, 2011 - 11:47 am
I know where you’re coming from, and a fair few teams have that problem. I generally don’t hold that against the management, especially with the Edinburgh clubs. The problems here, though, are clearly with the ownership.
#16 by Alec Macph on June 25, 2011 - 11:56 am
In one of the Rebus books, Siobhan elicited hilarity from her colleagues when she didn’t twig that Hibs ‘were’ Catholic. A quick lesson in the finer points of Scottish bigotry later, she knew that the greenery was a dead giveaway.
~alec
#17 by James on June 25, 2011 - 12:13 pm
Mystified me too, when I first arrived as a wee boy. But then I’m neither Protestant nor Catholic nor anything similar.
#18 by Alec Macph on June 25, 2011 - 12:26 pm
I was raised in a Catholic Church, albeit not the Roman Catholic one. I recall even at Primary One level, if boys were given a green pencil, they’d wait until another colour was available.
Subsequently, because of the badgering to identify my fitba’ team, I settled with Aberdeen. As such, my favourite colour was red, and remains preferred to green and blue which elicit a pang of unease.
True story, although I am fond of my pink shirts and socks.
~alec
#19 by Stuart on June 25, 2011 - 5:33 pm
Alec,
Stand Free!
#20 by Alec Macph on June 25, 2011 - 1:33 pm
(For some reason I aint able to respond directly to interjections.
First of all, I didn’t say that. Secondly, you may find that people convicted of such offences would have difficulty retaining any job at, oh I don’t know, a primary school.
Don’t be a blithering idiot.
~alec
#21 by Douglas McLellan on June 25, 2011 - 1:49 pm
There is a (well several laws) against them working in schools and other child focussed environments. I am just struggling to understand the feeling here and in other places that Hearts should have (could have) sacked him.
As James said there is a question as to why he wasnt jailed. If he had been then Hearts could have legitimately sacked him as that is part of many employment contracts. But he wasnt.
I am not a jambo and dont have football as part of my identity so I dont get why footballers, when they do wrong, have to face a punishment that is not the same as “ordinary” people.
#22 by The Burd on June 25, 2011 - 2:20 pm
He is a convicted sex offender, found guilty of sexual conduct that harmed children. His club engages with children and young people, through its youth initiatives, by having ballboys and girls, by having its players go into schools and other community settings to engage children as role models and teach them the good things about football.
Whether he was jailed or not is neither here nor there – but actually more indicative of a wider problem of the sentencing that goes on in such cases.
Would you want your child coming into contact with this man?
And the same punishment would apply to the rest of us. But taking your point, the reason footballers get treated differently from ordinary people is because they aren’t. They occupy privileged positions in society and positively revel in their non-ordinary status when it suits them. Football creates role models for children and young people. Their business model demands it. The least they can do is ensure that business model also protects children and puts their interests first.
#23 by Douglas McLellan on June 25, 2011 - 6:03 pm
Yes he is a convicted sex offender. Although his club do engage with other parts of society for him to do his job he does not need to take part in that activity. Contact with under-age teen girls can be minimised.
Why should sex offenders, in non-child related jobs, be made unemployed? The first consequence of that is being given lots of state aid to live. A house, housing benefits, council tax benefit, welfare payments – all for a sex offender whose continued employment offends some people? No thanks.
As for the role model thing, that is not a role footballers seek. It is a role society has given them. The less society idolises people for kicking a ball around, the better.
#24 by Alec Macph on June 25, 2011 - 2:33 pm
So you _do_ accept that some employment opportunities should be closed based on a criminal conviction which others would tolerate.
Being a premiership player, with the associated salary is not a right. One basic prerequsite for enjoying this status which is that of an Olympian god should be to avoid behavoiur which society has decided is so beyond the pale that it is legislated against.
I assume the discretion is there, and Hearts has made the choice to keep-on Thomson. Reading the statement, I am left with the indelible impression that they don’t consider it distasteful or unacceptable to proposition 12 and 14 year old girls, or even threaten to take an airgun to bouncers; and anyone who says they disagree is lying in an attempt to get at Romanov.
~alec
#25 by Indy on June 27, 2011 - 5:53 pm
Miracles will never cease. I think I agree with you!
#26 by Alec Macph on June 25, 2011 - 2:57 pm
I’ll add that I hope Mackay is preparing a defamation suit.
~alec
#27 by Alec Macph on June 25, 2011 - 6:01 pm
Pink is not a feminine colour!
“In the pink”, anyone?
~alec
#28 by ian glass on June 26, 2011 - 1:03 am
fair enough re the politics at Tynecastle, which these days truly stink, and in fact have been doing so for most of the R years.
but to an edinburger, I’m afraid this piece also comes across as being a long-term expat doing his best to show how much he’s tried to ‘get down’ with the locals, but in this case at least actually ending up showing his superficial understanding of and lack of real empathy with them.
er, now that i come to think of it, not unlike the way the green party comes across to a lot of us..
Ian
#29 by James on June 26, 2011 - 12:15 pm
Christ, the Nats are really taking this to the next level if having lived in Scotland since I was seven makes me a “long-term expat”.
#30 by Angus McLellan on June 26, 2011 - 1:46 pm
I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Your man here would have said the same had you confessed to a youthful dalliance with Cove Athletic rather than Chesterfield. Real Jambos are born that way. Or something like that anyway.
#31 by James on June 26, 2011 - 4:01 pm
Ah. Yes, I wasn’t born with a football club or a religion or a political ideology or (from my point of view) a nationality.
#32 by Jeff on June 26, 2011 - 6:07 pm
I’m a bit late to the table with this one but I have to say that I flat out disagree that this player should be sacked. If the guy was a train driver should be never drive trains again? If he was an electrician should he be hanging up his spanners?
The guy has trained to be a footballer and has clearly made a massive mistake but to say he can’t work again (which is basically what you’re saying) isn’t so far off arguing to just kill him off.
Hearts is a football club, it’s not a branch of the Justice system. If a football player isn’t in prison and available to play football then a club is within its right to pick and play him whatever else is going on.
You sound a little ‘Outraged from Gorgie’ here James if you don’t mind me saying so (not that I know much, if anything, about the history of HMFC and the Romanov era etc, but that’s a different ball game)
#33 by James on June 26, 2011 - 6:40 pm
I am outraged. Football grounds should be places kids feel safe to visit. Not just at match time. And Hearts isn’t. I wouldn’t let anyone with a conviction for sexual offences with underage children work in a place they can encounter them. That’s the test. Do train drivers meet children while at work? Do electricians? If the answer’s yes, they shouldn’t do that work, I think.
#34 by Jeff on June 26, 2011 - 7:01 pm
So that’s it then. A 20 year old with, I’m guessing, no formal qualifications has to hang up his boots because of one criminal error that wasn’t severe enough to land him in prison and there’s every chance he’s learned from and won’t repeat even though the Hearts first team and youth teams play on separate grounds at separate times?
In my book that’s very harsh indeed.
#35 by James on June 26, 2011 - 7:07 pm
Yes, it’s harsh, but then I’m pretty illiberal on sex crimes, especially with the under-age.
#36 by Douglas McLellan on June 27, 2011 - 3:49 am
I am struck by your position on this. It is interesting to see you adopt a position that is nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with emotion.
#37 by Douglas McLellan on June 26, 2011 - 8:26 pm
I am with the you on this one Jeff. No-one, not even Kate on the BBC, has shown why this man, in this job, is special enough to be sacked from his job given that it is not one that requires a police check under the Protection of Vulnerable Groups legislation.
And that is the point in many respects. Every job has a chance of meeting a child. And if a person is going to attack a child on that chance meeting then it really doesnt matter where they work, or if they work, they will attack the child (interestingly, Marques et al., 1994, found that being in employment was a protective factor in preventing sexual recidivism). Of far greater importance is the opportunity to groom a child and that is the behaviour that Hearts and others will have to mitigate.
Hearts, as the employer, have strict duties to protect the children that are in their “care” such as youth teams and ball boys/girls. Others, such as the police, have a role in terms of managing people on the sex offenders register. The player also has to adhere to strict rules governing their life.
Those who have cried out please somebody think of the children need to tell us why they want people to become unemployed, indeed unemployable, where the state has to provide them with benefits so they can live.
Why seek this almost extra-judicial punishment?
#38 by The Burd on June 27, 2011 - 12:30 am
A *massive mistake*? Hmmm. This man – for that is what a 20 year old – has inflicted sexual harm on children in full knowledge that they were children. He did not apologise to his victims in his statement. Hearts has said nothing about how it will seek to protect children while maintaining his employment. There is a wider societal issue about what we do in regard to sex offenders, attempt to rehabilitate them, how manage them etc but in the meantime, every time someone in the public eye is convicted of serious sex offences against children and is allowed to carry on in such a public role, it risks sending all the wrong messages, especially to other children who have been abused. The interests of children and their right to be protected from sexual harm and abuse must always come first.
#39 by Douglas McLellan on June 27, 2011 - 12:55 am
So where have the interests of children and their right to be protected from sexual harm and abuse not come first?
This man committed an offence. This man was caught. This man was prosecuted under Scots law. This man was found guilty. This man was punished. This man was placed on a register that means, for the next five years, his employers, police and the man himself have to consider a range of child protection issues affecting his every action.
None of this has been done in private, none of this has been hidden away. At no point has the message been anything other than “doing that was a bad thing”.
In what way have the interests of child safety not been adhered to?
#40 by Indy on June 27, 2011 - 5:55 pm
Come on! No-one is saying he can never work again. They are saying he should not be given work as a professional football player.
I am quite dumbfounded that he hasn’t been given the sack and even more dumbfounded that people are supporting that.
Just don’t understand that at all. It seems completely clear cut to me.
#41 by Fraser on June 27, 2011 - 12:08 pm
Douglas…. are you Romanov?
You are saying that “maybe” he has learn’t his lesson. “Maybe” isn’t good enough as far as children are concerned.
Children look up to football players. Football players offer many children hope for the future and fill them with the belief that they can one day grow up to fulfill their own goals in this world.
Craig Thompson is now a convicted pedophile. What message does that send out to children that have been abused by these type of people?
It’s sending out the message that its ok to be a pedophile, because you’ll just get a ticking off and nothing more.
Well thats not good enough. Craig Thompson should have recieved a sentence and he should have been stripped from his role at Heart of Midlothian Football Club.
#42 by Douglas McLellan on June 27, 2011 - 4:24 pm
I’ve not anything about any “maybe”
“Craig Thompson is now a convicted pedophile. What message does that send out to children that have been abused by these type of people?”
Er. That they get caught and punished?
Pingback: Is the hacking scandal Miliband’s Clause IV moment? « Better Nation