hackwatching

Fraser Wishart and the rest on Radio Clyde

Fraser Wishart is an ex-Rangers player and Chief Executive of the Scottish Professional Footballers Association (SPFA). As such he is responsible for representing the interests of ALL professional players in Scotland.

However, Wishart has demonstrated a curious selectiveness with regard to the cases which he chooses to highlight in the media.

Allow me to illustrate:

February 2008 - Celtic awarded a disputed free-kick against St Mirren. The Celtic player involved, Shunsuke Nakamura, is pilloried on radio phone-ins and TV, and newspapers carry headlines referring to Nakamura as “CON MAN” and “CHEAT”

Wishart makes no statement in the media.

March 2008 - Kevin Thomson of Rangers is bizarrely carried off during a match against Celtic after a pathetic attempt to win a penalty by throwing himself to the ground in the penalty area and deliberately making contact with the trailing leg of Giorgios Samaras.
Although the press coverage is almost universally sympathetic to the player, Wishart launches a vigorous defence of Thomson through comments which are enthusiastically published in the media.

One specific statement is of particular interest: “What I would say is that in many instances players lift themselves off the ground when they think the tackle is coming, then the tackle doesn’t come”.

You may have already worked out where I am going with that one...

May 2008 - Fraser Wishart, a man paid as a trade union official under the umbrella of the GMB, actively supports a season extension, without consulting his members, even though it was against the interests of players from 11 of the 12 SPL club who pay his wages.

August 2008 - Rangers goal wrongly disallowed against Aberdeen (swoon!), prompting NoSurname into a mental (but dignified) rant against the officials, including naming the suspiciously Irish-sounding Tom Murphy and helpfully pointing out that Murphy was the linesman who failed to flag Scott McDonald for being a nanometre offside for the first goal in the 3-2 win over Rangers a mere four months prior to this incident.

Amid total outrage among the Scottish media, on Clyde 1 an Aberdeen fan phones in to point out that Rangers’ goal in the same game came from a free-kick which should never have been awarded. Wishart dismissed this, helpfully pointing out that “Aberdeen still had a chance to defend the free-kick”.

You know, the kind of comment that he, or any of his poodle Establishment colleagues, failed to make when Celtic were awarded a disputed corner against Motherwell towards the end of the previous season which brought Darrell King to the point of an anuerism.

August 2008 - Scott Brown, Aiden McGeady and Darren O’Dea are involved in a fracas in nightclub. Newspapers carry witness reports that, “A few guys were winding them [the Celtic players] up but as the night went on it started getting nasty... The players started to leave but as McGeady got outside he was jumped by a gang who set about him”.

Curiously, the newspapers seemed very reluctant to name the aggressors as Rangers fans, instead referring to them as “A few guys” and “a gang”.

November 2008 - Aiden McGeady is attacked outside a nightclub. Despite reporting “It’s believed [my emphasis] the 22-year-old Celtic winger was subjected to a volley of vile sectarian abuse by three cowardly yobs” and “There was about three of them and they started dishing out some abuse, it was pretty heavy stuff” and “It’s understood they branded him a “Fenian b******” before landing two hefty blows”, the Sun can’t quite manage to identify whether they are Rangers supporters or not. Funny that.

The Sun was also at pains to stress that Rangers players have also suffered at the hands of thuggery, with one having his car daubed with “Celtic slogans” [I guess it’s a fair cop then] and another scandalously having his address published on the internet.

Among all the subsequent anguish and gnashing of teeth among the Scottish media at these crimes ostensibly committed by Celtic fans, no-one felt the need to point out that none of the predicted violent attacks on the player’s property came to pass. Hmmm, another strange one.

At no point in all of this did Fraser Wishart feel the need to decry Rangers fans and bemoan the inability of players to go out without being attacked for “the colour of jersey they wear on a Saturday”. Maybe Wishart’s concern was for tolerance of crimes against fashion

August 2009 - Aiden McGeady is sent off against Hibs for diving. Fraser Wishart is mysteriously absent with any public proclamations of support for the player along the lines of “What I would say is that in many instances players lift themselves off the ground when they think the tackle is coming, then the tackle doesn’t come”

February 2010 - Fraser ‘Judge Jury and Executioner’ Wishart decries an “assault” on Rangers goalkeeper Alan McGregor “just for the jersey he wears”.

Maybe he should be called as a witness as McGregor himself was reported to have told police he did not know what happened or even where.

Despite all this, no-one in the Scottish media has queried Wishart’s role or, for example, his publicly disavowing the actions of his own members when they happen to play for Celtic.

In any real trade union, he would have been dismissed.

More paranoid ranting available at www.celticparanoia.blogspot.com

 

TONY BANANAS & HACKWATCHER