Turning the Corner

It's been a frankly amazing month for Percy Main Amateurs, which has veered from despair to delight, as my match reports show -:

Percy Main 0 Newcastle Chemfica 9

Without question, this game saw Percy Main absolutely outclassed from first whistle to last, but in saying that there are two factors that are required to contextualise this result. Firstly, Chemfica manager Kennie Malia has assembled a first rate squad, which he has impressively coached and moulded into a thrilling and attacking side. Secondly, every single Percy Main player on display gave their all, straining every sinew and fibre for the cause. Nobody exemplified this courageous attitude more than Joe “Ducky” Fulcher who, on the brink of his 40^th birthday, ran his blood to water in central midfield.

In the very first minute, Chemfica declared their intent, when Joseph Connor stormed forward, only to slash his effort high and wide. This was only a brief respite, as the visitors went ahead after 5 minutes when Callum Duncan arrived unmarked at the back post to tap in an unnecessarily conceded corner. After 9 minutes, the impressive Luther Karim swivelled in the box and fired a low drive home, with the assistance of the upright and the unfortunate keeper Cameron Fergus’s leg.

On 12 minutes John Campbell almost brought the Villagers back into the game. Breaking into the box, he lobbed on-rushing visiting keeper Liam Blair, who proceeded to wipe out the home striker. The ball was headed for the goal, only for two pursuing Chemfica defenders to collide and somehow fashion a clearance. To add insult to injury, the referee turned down appeals for a penalty. It would be rash to claim this incident cost Percy the game, but other than a glorious curling effort by Campbell that was tipped away at full stretch by Blair, it marked the high water mark of the Main as an attacking force.

After a quarter of an hour, it was 3-0 when Karim outmuscled the home defence before shaping an impressive finish past Fergus. After half an hour, it was 4-0 when Connor tapped into an empty net after the luckless Fergus had made an impressive save from Karim’s effort. Fergus then upended Karim in the area, who picked himself up to drive home an unstoppable penalty to complete his hat trick and made the score 5-0 at the interval.

At the start of the second half, home players and supporters expressed the hope, if not the belief, that playing with the wind at their backs might help the Villagers make it a meaningful contest. Alas, they were disabused of these notions after 48 minutes when Karl Morrison found space in the box and rolled the ball into the net. On the hour, Morrison notched again, collecting a long ball forward and firing home a low drive. Connor made it 8-0 with another crisp, low finish, before Duncan tapped home a cross from close range, making the final score 9-0.

Percy Main 2 Ponteland United 2

As we entered stoppage time, Percy Main led Ponteland United 2-0, with a first victory in 2022 and a first clean sheet since a 1-0 win away to today’s visitors on the opening day of the season beckoning. Sadly, just as it seemed a famous and most needed win was in our grasp, Ponteland came again and grabbed a point following goals in the 91^st and 93^rd minutes to leave the home side and almost all in attendance, absolutely sickened. However, and it is a point that must be reinforced continuously, the main thing to take away from this game is that the Main’s performance was at least a million times better than the debacle against Chemfica the week before.

The first chance of the game saw the lively Billy Walker burst into the box and fire a shade over the angle after 5 minutes. Pont responded with a low effort from former Villager James Walker that was held comfortably by Cameron Fergus, before a brief stoppage to clear dog excrement from the pitch, causing one wag to point out that there was ordure all over the pitch the week before. One highlight of the game was the purple hairstyle sported by PMA’s Daniel Ord, though Ord’s extraordinary Barnet was left in the shade by Mark McDonnell’s superb brace that put the Main 2-0 ahead. New signing Phil Smith put in a superb, uncompromising shift leading the line, but also showed moments of vision and finesse, including two through balls that set the marauding McDonnell away. On both occasions he finished with aplomb, allowing the Villagers to go in at the break with their tails up.

The second half saw Main continue on the front foot. McDonnell was denied a hat trick by the keeper’s legs on 50 minutes, before Antonie Ridley flashed an effort just wide on 68 minutes and Kai Charlton was foiled by a great block tackle with 15 minutes left. Sadly, fatigue became a feature, and the Main were forced to retreat. Without being totally in control, PMA looked to have done enough, before Joe Ronan curled in a delicious free kick that seemed a mere consolation until an unmarked John Keltie arrived at the back post to tap in and break home hearts.

North Shields Athletic 0 Percy Main 6

In the week leading up to this game, which was postponed back in November on account of the devastation wrought by Storm Arwen, the region was ravaged by Storm Dudley and then Storm Eunice. As a result, only those games in the Northern Alliance Premier Division scheduled to be played on 4G surfaces went ahead. This suited Percy Main Amateurs down to the ground, but their hosts not so much, as North Shields Athletic were blitzed by firstly Storm Jordan and then by Storm Kai, as Messrs Stephenson and Charlton each claimed a hat trick.

Such a positive outcome did not seem likely when last week’s front pairing of Phil Smith (groin) and Mark McDonnell (work commitments) were forced to pull out of this one. Indeed, the opening exchanges saw a spirited home side bring the game to the Villagers. The returning Sean Korsbo distinguished himself early on with a couple of good, low saves; the latter of which saw the loose ball headed over an empty net by NSA’s Caleb Skivington.

Thankfully, it was an isolated chance as the Main gained a stranglehold in midfield, where the returning Rob Ridley dictated everything going forward and “Ducky” Fulcher effortlessly controlled the defensive aspects. Fulcher and Ridley combined to send Jordan Stephenson free on the left after 18 minutes. After a touch to control the ball, he lashed an unstoppable shot across keeper Ethan Taylor and into the bottom corner to give the visitors the lead. Six minutes later, Stephenson accepted a through ball from Ridley and slipped it under the advancing keeper to double his tally and Percy Main’s lead. Twice Kai Charlton threatened to increase the lead when he broke free, only to be denied by Taylor, who did his best to keep the beleaguered hosts in the contest. However, Stephenson duly completed a first half treble by collecting a Brandon Studholme through ball and artfully lobbing the ball home. Rob Ridley was then brilliantly denied by keeper Taylor’s foot.

The second period was played with less intensity as the Main were content to allow Athletic to come forward, though Korsbo remained relatively untroubled.  In contrast, Taylor was forced to be on his guard at his near post when Ridley dribbled into the box and shot from a narrow angle. However, the home custodian was unable to prevent Charlton, who has been excellent since his arrival at the club, from opening his Main account. It may not have been the cleanest of strikes, but Charlton had to be in the right place. This was also the case 10 minutes later, when Taylor’s eye-catching save from Studholme’s curling effort fell perfectly for the unmarked Charlton to lash home. Soon after Ridley was again inches away from scoring when he dinked the ball just wide of te far post.

The scoring was completed by Charlton after 80 minutes, by which time North Shields had been reduced to 10 men and the fight had gone out of them, as the Main completed a superb win that did not flatter them at all. The turnaround from the Chemfica massacre a fortnight earlier is almost unbelievable. Long may this continue!

Percy Main 6 Fawdon 1

Following last week’s six goal bonanza away to North Shields Athletic, Percy Main brought their shooting boots to Purvis Park, notching another half dozen against a gallant Fawdon outfit in a first round George Dobbins League Cup tie. With both Billy Walker and Mark McDonnell returning to the home starting XI, manager Derek Thompson had a strong squad at his disposal. However Fawdon were not just there to make up the numbers, defending tenaciously throughout. Firstly the impressive Kai Charlton had an effort blocked by keeper McAulay, then Antonie Ridley saw his free kick blocked. The deadlock was finally broken on 20 minutes when Kai Charlton took possession of the ball in the six yard box and waltzed round McAulay before stroking it effortlessly home. McAulay then distinguished himself with an outstanding block from debutant Lennon Mills. Moments later Billy Walker struck the inside of the post with a long range blockbuster, only for Rob Ridley to pick up the loose ball and hammer it home. Twice before the half time whistle, Jordan Stephenson tried his luck from the edge of the area, with the ball flashing just wide on both occasions.

The second half was a tale of almost incessant Percy Main pressure, which was regularly rewarded. Mark McDonnell made it 3-0 on 49 minutes, when he converted a free kick, awarded after Charlton’s run was illegally impeded. Fawdon’s claims they weren’t ready when McDonnell took the kick seemed legitimate, but the referee was prepared to reward quick thinking.  Soon after Fawdon pulled a goal back in equally strange circumstances as Tayo Fasan’s block challenge in midfield saw the ball fly into the net, past the stranded Korsbo. There was no real sense of an upset though and Rob Ridley put the game to bed with a fine low finish into the corner of the net to make it 4-1. The icing on the cake was provided by the final pair of goals. Firstly Joe “Ducky” Fulcher rounded off a bout of head tennis in the area by nodding home from close in, before Billy Walker completed the scoring by firing in another free kick, which went under the wall. The draw for round 2 has handed the Villagers another home tie, against Stobswood on March 19^th.

Food For Thought

 Steve Algarve-Bruce has found a new job and sunderland have appointed their 11th boss since he left there in 2011....

Every year, as far as I’m concerned, Saint Valentine’s Day proves conclusively that home is where the heart is, as the comforting delights of simple, nourishing food reinforce George Meredith assertion that “kissing don't last; cooking do!” So much for romance eh? Nowhere was this more evident this year than on a damp and dreary night in the Midlands, where Steve Algarve-Bruce made his home debut, wedged into the dug out at The Hawthorns, in his latest role, as West Bromwich Albion manager. While the Baggies struggled to a dire 0-0 with Blackburn Rovers, their second goalless game under the leadershipCorbridge Epicure, the real shock is that WBA are the eleventh club he has managed. Quite staggeringly, almost a dozen chairmen have fallen for the baloney and bluster of Gorman’s most loyal customer.

No doubt, when discussing his latest sinecure, Algarve-Bruce would choose to focus on its proximity to Birmingham Airport with its direct flights to Faro, where piles of Baracaldo and chicken piri piri await, but also recognise the more prosaic culinary opportunities afforded to him in the Black Country, rather than the fact his patter is as stale as yesterday’s pitta bread and his football as rank as a week old large doner with putrefied garlic sauce. Having endlessly gorged on ham and pease pudding stotties during his recent gig at SJP, not to mention stuffing his squashy face with the various kinds of meat pie on offer when in Wigan, swallowing huge portions of lard-basted fish fresh from the trawlers of Humberside and wastebins full of cheesy chips during his Wearside sojourn, Algarve-Bruce will undoubtedly deliver endless platitudes about bad luck, unrealistic supporter expectations and the shortcomings of the previous boss for about 18 months until he gets the bullet, when not engaged in transcendental Prader-Willi meditation,  face down in a trough of the local signature dish of faggots, usually made from pig offal and other juicy cuts of the animal such as the heart and liver, served with grey peas. Sounds delightful doesn’t it? Well, it is Shakespeare Country, so here’s a recipe for grey peas, from Medieval times. Bon appetit, mes amis -:

Fyrst stepe thy pese over the nyet,

And trendel hom clene, and fayre hom dyet.

Sethe hom in water; and brothe thou take

Of bacun, and fresshe bre thou nowt forsake;

Summe men hom lofe alyed wyle

With floure and summe with never a dele;

these pese with bacun eten may be

As tho whyet pese were, so mot I the.

But tho white with powder of peper tho

Moun be forsyd with ale there to.

 

I’ve no idea what that means, nor do I have a clue what newly installed Sunderland boss Alex Neil’s dietary preferences are, though I’ll be a little more informed about the kind of fare that was on offer to him during his formative years, after I finally get to see his hometown club Airdrie in action on March 26^th when they play host to Cove Rangers. What I do know is that if Neil’s experiences at the SoS are similar to the 11 incumbents who have, however briefly, held aloft the Pallion and Pennywell Poison Chalice, since Algarve-Bruce was prised from the manager’s chair just over a decade ago, then large slices of humble pie will be the signature dish served up by my old Basque pal Patrick Lesca, the Head Chef at the Donald Stewart Bistro of Broken Hearts.

Yes, that’s right; almost a dozen permanent managers in 10 years, not including a bunch of caretakers you’d not recognise if they were lined up in an ID parade directly in front of your eyes. Here’s the exhaustive list of busted flushes, if you don’t believe me: Martin O’Neill, Paolo Di Canio, Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat, Sam Allardyce, David Moyes, Simon Grayson, Chris Coleman, Jack Ross, Phil Parkinson and Gary Johnson. At the time they were appointed, many of them seemed a good fit and the best appointment possible. Alright, so Di Canio was always going to be a Fascist lunatic and Grayson, Parkinson and Johnson were the kind of expendable lower league, landfill gaffers who wash up at a dozen different L1 & L2 locations over the years with gradually declining effects, but the others did have some merit at the time of their appointment, or so it seemed.

O’Neill the lifelong Mackem arrived promising a “party with Marty,” but crashed and burned in a gluepot of stodgeball. Poyet seemed a genuinely innovative choice, but the Gus bus ended up careering off the road. I’m not sure I know why Advocaat left, though the adventures of avaricious Allardyce saw him come a cropper with a pint of Pinot Grigio in his paw. Moyes is now doing better than at any time since he left Goodison, even if he appeared doomed from his first week on Wearside, when he made his haunted and gloomy prediction of relegation after a home loss to Boro.  Coleman looked rested and primed for a return to club management, but it just didn’t happen for him. Jack Ross, who in this humble Hibby’s opinion should still be in charge at Easter Road, was treated appallingly, sacked at a stupid time and on the flimsiest of pretexts. The same could be said of Lee Johnson; yes 6-0 is a shocking loss at Bolton but giving him his cards on the back of that one result was surely a ridiculously overreaction. Mind, I did feel for Sunderland fans at the time of his arrival, when he was peddled as an upgrade on Phil Parkinson, rather than an almost exact copy.

What Johnson’s dismissal subsequently showed was that, in complete contrast to the clarity of ownership of Newcastle United, there was absolutely no indication who owns Sunderland and who made the decision to fire Johnson. Indeed, for nigh on 18 months the self-proclaimed People’s Club has refused to reveal who actually owned them, spitting out endless, provocative No Comment replies, like a Town End Farm housebreaker under caution, after being nabbed going equipped up Hylton Road. Belatedly, The Athletic announced on 15 February 2022, that chairman and Leeds Poly dropout Kyril Louis-Dreyfus was not the majority shareholder, unlike previously hinted,  as his stake in the club is only 41%, with the remaining 59% of shares in the grip of former owner Donald Stewart (34%), and directors Juan Sartori (25%) and Charlie “Crystal” Methven (5%), operating under the cover of the Mandrax Group. Or something.  One wonders just how that egotistical bore Jonathan Wilson will square this circle, after banging on about the admittedly appalling show of human rights abusers that own Newcastle. Perhaps he could begin by appraising himself of Amnesty International’s latest report on Uruguay, where Sartori wields significant influential, if not instrumental power, as a fabulously wealthy political influencer. To save Dr Jonathan, a man believing himself to be the new Brian Glanville, but is actually more akin to Jonathan Miller with a dollop of the detestable David Conn about him and who we’ll return to at a later date, the bother of doing his own research, here’s the headline comment on Uruguay -:

The crisis caused by COVID-19 deepened structural inequalities in Uruguay during 2020 and 2021, especially impacting the rights of those historically marginalized. The Urgent Consideration Act (LUC) threatened the rights to peaceful protest and freedom of expression. Inadequate prison conditions continued to worsen. Violence against women increased. Impunity remained a concern and evidence emerged indicating key information about past human rights violations had been withheld.

Allegedly, it was the Oxford supporting second largest shareholder and his Mandrax pals who were pushing for Roy Keane to get the manager’s job. Now, as someone who adores Keano, I knew this would be a disaster in everything apart from future memes. Bearing in mind Roy’s track record for provoking conflict at Sunderland last time, then  events at Ipswich and during his assistant roles to O’Neill with Ireland and at Forest, as well as a spell at Villa under Paul Lambert, a certain pattern of behaviour can be discerned. Things never end well. Keane has shown little in the way of empathy towards players less gifted, less motivated than he, preferring the stick to the carrot in every instance. Can you imagine how things would have played out at Sunderland this time around? He’ll have put half the squad on life support machines.  Thankfully, for the sake of the players’ wellness, Mandrax couldn’t raise the coin to pay Keano’s salary, so he can continue berating every player under the sun from the safety and comfort of a Sky Sports sofa.

The other leading candidate for the job was supposed to be Grant McCann, recently jettisoned by Hull City’s new owners. Now he really is a coaching carthorse; arguably, he’s worse than Phil Parkinson and, without question, Sunderland would have been no further forward than when they appointed Johnson if they’d given it to the unshaven, beery Ulsterman. I remember thinking at the time that giving Johnson the job was a gross insult to all Sunderland fans who’d suffered over the decades. Nothing during his tenure made me think different. So, when the music finally stopped, after the Bolton battering was augmented by a home loss to Doncaster and an away one to Cheltenham, Alex Neil was left holding the parcel. To general guffaws, the third-choice candidate arrived with a track record of getting the bullet firstly from Norwich and then Preston.

And yet, I think Sunderland have, perhaps by unintentional means, made the best appointment they could in the current circumstances. Neil won’t get them automatic promotion; we can safely assume. Indeed, his best result could be a narrow loss in a play-off semi-final, as that’ll avoid the chance of another humiliating, boozed up session, fuelled by Universal Credit emergency advances, around Trafalgar Square, before being picked apart by a side with footballing ability and a touch of class about their support. Ironically, I could be talking about their next opponents; 1988 FA Cup winners MK Dons. Going up this year will make next season almost an impossibility for Sunderland, as they’d probably replicate Barnsley’s performance this time around. Sure, it would make for a rip-roaring Netflix documentary series, but it would possibly destroy the confidence, if not the careers, of a young team, most of whom I’d never heard of.

glove 9 & TQ 52; March 2022

To try and spread words, glove 9 will be given away free with TQ 52 next month. Here's a bit I've put in the music magazine to explain my largesse -:

If you read issue #50 of TQ, you’ll have seen the long interview I did with the editor about glove, the lit zine I established in early 2017. Further discussions between us led to the decision to give away copies of glove #9 with TQ #52. I would never be so presumptuous as to suggest glove is the fiction and poetry equivalent of the august publication it accompanies, but both publications come from the same geographical area and operate among a comparable artistic milieu, with a similar ideological ethic underpinning our endeavours. However, I really think the writers in glove deserve to transcend the idea of, perish the thought, a no readership underground. It is a sobering thought that there are only 2 subscribers the magazines have in common (hiya Flan & Kev); hence the reason why you’re getting a non-musical (as opposed to unmusical) gift.

If reading isn’t your thing, then please pass glove on to someone else. However, I’d urge to peek inside; there’s more than a dozen writers who deserve your attention. Contributors come from China, Utah and Berlin, as well as Stourbridge, Uttoxeter and North Shields; every one of them has something to say.

If you are in any way inspired or intrigued by this issue of  glove, please consider subscribing and / or submitting in future. I’m to be found at iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk and @glovelitzine

 

The Evil That Men Do

 This week Raith Rovers signed the rapist footballer David Goodwillie, which was a morally indefensible decision -:

Until January 31^st, perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Raith Rovers FC, like Port Vale in England and several Scottish clubs like Queen of the South or, perhaps more pertinently as we shall see, Heart of Midlothian, was that their name had no geographical connection with the place they play their home games. In point of fact, Raith is not a town, village or hamlet making Sam Leitch’s comment on Grandstand in the late 1960s, as news broke on the teleprinter of an impressive Rovers victory, that “they’ll be dancing on the streets of Raith” even more asinine than he no doubt intended. Kirkcaldy, a desperate no-horse town in the unfashionable part of the Kingdom of Fife is the location of Starks Park, where Raith Rovers play their trade.

Without question, the finest moment in their 139-year history, which reached its plainly avoidable nadir on January 31^st, was November 27^th1994 when, against all odds, Raith won the Scottish League Cup 6-5 on penalties after a 2-2 draw with Celtic. As a result of this amazing victory, Raith secured a place in the following season’s UEFA Cup. Their debut saw Faroese champions Gøtu Ítróttarfelag journey to Kirkcaldy, where they lost 4-0. Holidaying in the nice part of Fife, Crail to be precise, I was lucky enough to be in the crowd that August evening. Other than following Raith’s subsequent UEFA Cup win over Íþróttabandalag Akraness at the next stage, before their narrow loss to Bayern Munich in round 3, the club did not impinge on my consciousness until they signed David Goodwillie from Clyde on January 31^st.  This was the darkest day and most nefarious act in the club’s history.

Goodwillie, a ponderous journeyman striker in the mould of Conor Sammon, has played for Raith Rovers before, on loan from his first club Dundee United during the 2007/2008 season. Following a lengthy spell at Tannadice, Goodwillie moved to Blackburn Rovers for £2.8m in 2011, signed by that redoubtable failure, Steve Kean.  Goals proved hard to come by for the cumbersome target man and he was loaned out, without real success, to Crystal Palace and Blackpool, as well as making a brief return to Dundee United. When he moved permanently, after 3 years at Ewood Park, it was back to Scotland with Aberdeen, who then loaned him to Ross County before he moved on a free to Plymouth Argyle in July 2016.

While on-field successes and goals in particular proved elusive for the striker in the first half of his career, legal problems dogged him at every step. In June 2008, Goodwillie was convicted of assaulting a man in a Stirling nightclub, and was fined £250. In September 2009 Goodwillie was arrested after a nightclub doorman was knocked unconscious. Two months later, Goodwillie was convicted of assault and received a £200 fine. In 2012, Goodwillie was convicted of assault for repeatedly punching and kicking John Friel after Friel attacked Goodwillie's teammate Danny Swanson in a Glasgow takeaway in 2010. He was sentenced to a 12-month probation order and ordered to carry out 80 hours of unpaid work. Such drunken, boorish, anti-social behaviour was redolent of the mistakes made by many young Scottish men, including professional sportsmen such as Duncan Ferguson back in the day, but Goodwillie was soon to be exposed as far worse than a run-of-the-mill bar room brawler. Rather he was proven to be a sinister, sociopathic, predatory monster whose evasion of criminal proceedings remains a stain on the record of Police Scotland and whose latter career is arguably as much of a disgrace as the sordid revelations of Jim Torbett’s actions at Celtic Boys Club.

Goodwillie and his teammate David Robertson were accused of raping a woman in January 2011. Goodwillie was charged with rape, but the Crown Office did not pursue a criminal prosecution due to Police Scotland failing to secure sufficient evidence from the scene, subsequent to the incident. Despite this failure on the part of the constabulary, The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority determined that the woman had been raped and awarded her £11,000 in damages. Remember, Scottish Law is very different in both procedural and terminological ways to English Common Law.

Five years after being raped, the victim took civil action in 2016 against Goodwillie and Robertson, in the first case of its kind in Scotland. The judge ruled that they had each raped her and ordered them to pay £100,000 each in punitive compensation. The civil case was judged on the balance of probabilities and did not need corroborative evidence for the verdict, unlike in a Scottish criminal case. As this was a civil case, the victim did not have the right to anonymity, unlike in a criminal case, meaning her name is in the public domain. For reasons of morality and in support of her, I have chosen not to identify her. Soon after the case concluded Goodwillie left Plymouth Argyle, while Robertson retired from football. In November 2017 three appeal judges at the Court of Session upheld the ruling against Goodwillie and Robertson. Therefore, it is perfectly permissible to refer to both Goodwillie and Robertson as rapists.

After the verdict in the civil case, but before the subsequent failed appeal, Goodwillie signed for Clyde in early 2017, to only minor stirrings of discontent among the Clyde fanbase and wider Scottish society. Indeed, the unchallenged utterances of then Clyde chair Norrie Inness, from more than five years distant, seem preposterous, bigoted and morally unacceptable. Whether they were seen that way at the time is a moot point, as is any debate as to whether public opinion has moved forward in our wish to condemn misogynistic bullshit like this during the past 6 years -:

"I think we have to beware of those who seek to use these matters for political and personal benefit and we should seek what is in us to be authentic and true and make the right decisions, even if it isn't universally or politically popular… David is a free man with a financial charge on his head, this arising from the civil action against him… He is appealing and this will eventually establish a status and end point, but to be clear, Clyde FC will play no part in this. It is down to others to deal with… There is no positive purpose or societal gain whatsoever to wish ill on him and allow his talents to stagnate and waste… Football and society would be failing if this was allowed to happen. If he ultimately has responsibilities to honour through any final binding decision, he should use the skills at his disposal to earn and honour it. Is it not right to create the conditions for him to potentially service society's demands on him? I have helped people in need in the past and it can be testing and challenging, especially when they - sometimes - let you and themselves down, but I will not change. If the opportunity arises to do so, then we should all embrace this approach."

On the pitch, in almost 5 years with the Bully Wee, Goodwillie scored 92 goals in 140 games. Without question, his time at Broadwood has been the most successful period of his career, which may now be coming to an end. He received a hat-trick of personal accolades at the club's Player of the Year awards for 2017–18, winning another award the season after. The team then won promotion to League One in 2018–19. At the PFA Scotland awards, he was shortlisted for Player of the Year and named in the Team of the Season for League Two for 2018–19. Named club captain ahead of season 2019–20, Goodwillie became the first Clyde player to score five goals in a single match in 68 years and the first to score a hat-trick of penalties in one match. Both feats came in a 6–1 win over Stranraer. In April 2020, Goodwillie, with his 78th goal, moved in to the top ten of the club's all-time leading scorers. And then, all hell broke loose when he signed for Raith Rovers on January 31^st, 2022.

Questions of individual or collective moral responsibility in regard to the evil that men do are a vexed problem in football. It seems clear that criminal acts by a single person, generally a player, are far easier to comprehend, condemn and counter than the ongoing nefarious corporate conduct of owners or sponsors. Stalin’s observation that the death of a single man is a tragedy, but the death of a million is a statistic, comes into play when one is asked what is worse; Joey Barton stubbing out a cigar on a team mate’s eyelid or the Saudi Arabian state carpet bombing Yemeni civilians? Marcos Alonso and Lee Hughes were both convicted of causing the death of innocent passengers when at the wheel of their cars, yet both returned from criminal convictions, including gaol time in the case of the latter, to play at the pinnacle of the professional game, their convictions apparently spent and debt to society repaid.

We haven’t got time to delve into the litany of players convicted for beak and booze fuelled brawls in pubs, takeaways and taxis over the years, but one principle seems to assume primacy when judging lapses in the personal morality and conduct of footballers. Male on male violence and serious driving offences are tolerated, being seen as unfortunate but acceptable errors of judgement, and sexual assaults on adult women, regardless of the severity, can be intellectually plea-bargained away by relying on grotesque victim blaming, if there is any hint of the involvement of alcohol or drugs in these incidents. Witness the lack of condemnation of Bernard Mendy, which is not an example of the media and football fans understanding the principle of sub judice for the first time ever. Also, consider the words of Ralph Records regarding Mason Greenwood. Despite immediately suspending the player, there were no words of sympathy for the victim in this case; only confirmation that Jesse Lingard wouldn’t be allowed to move clubs as Greenwood’s absence left the squad a player light. That, in essence, is the corporate, business model response to personal tragedies; not “how does this effect the victim?” Rather, “how could this effect our profits?” Football is a microcosm of society; racism, homophobia and misogyny are as ingrained in the game as they are in the attitudes of politicians, journalists and the police in society as a whole. How else can we explain the continued employment of Ched Evans by Chesterfield, Sheffield United, Fleetwood Town and Preston North End, regardless of the decision of the Court of Appeal to quash his rape conviction? He has admitted to sordid sexual conduct, but at the end of the day, he scores goals.

Indeed, it appears that sexual assaults are considered to be deserving of outright condemnation when they involve females under the age of consent. Such circumstances result in the same kind of hysteria that the tabloid press reserves for every day, common or garden beasts, nonces, short eyes or whatever epithet you chose to label them.  Adam Johnson rightly did three years in stir for his gross, sexual exploitation of a schoolgirl. He was punished, but his club sunderland, who benefitted from Johnson’s services for almost a whole year between being charged in March 2015 and sentencing in February 2016, suffered neither official censure nor material condemnation, despite it being common knowledge that Johnson had admitted to sunderland in May 2015 that he had kissed the girl and sent her sexually explicit messages. 

In Scotland, Heart of Midlothian unbelievably appointed Graham Rix as manager in 2005, despite the fact that Rix had been sentenced to 12 months in prison in 1999 for having underage sex with a 15-year-old girl. He was placed on the sex offenders’ register for ten years and banned by the FA from working with youth players under the age of 16, but this was not seen as an impediment to being appointed boss of Scotland’s fourth biggest club. Hearts again showed appalling judgement in the case of full back Craig Thomson, who was also placed on the sex offenders' register for five years and fined £4,000 in June 2011 after pleading guilty to two counts of indecent behaviour, related to "sexual conversations" that he had engaged in online with two underage girls, aged 12 and 14. Despite calls for Thomson to be dismissed, Hearts opted to allow Thomson to stay at the club, acknowledging that his actions were unacceptable but claiming that there were sufficient mitigating circumstances. Hearts' decision was criticised by the mother of one of his victims and a children's charity, while a water supplier withdrew their sponsorship of the club. Days after their decision to retain Thomson, Hearts loaned him to FBK Kaunas, another club controlled by then-owner Vladimir Romanov. Thomson was not released by Hearts until 2013, despite further sordid revelations that he was arrested in November 2011 and charged with "trying to lure a 12-year-old girl into meeting up with him.” This case was dropped for want of evidence, and Thomson subsequently signed for Edinburgh City, playing for a further five seasons. His last brush with the law came in late 2013, when Thomson bizarrely faced a police investigation for working as an unlicensed window cleaner. Recently, former Celtic striker Leigh Griffiths was questioned by Scottish police after it was discovered he had been engaging in online conversations with a 14-year-old girl, though the communication was deemed not to have been sexual or in any way improper. It does however show that the free agent’s discussions with Falkirk over a potential move are not the first time he’s chatted with the Bairns…

There can be no doubt that the board of Raith Rovers committed a grave misjudgement in signing David Goodwillie. Their fans and sponsors, especially Val McDermid who combines both roles, as well as the wider Scottish football community, are to be commended for the vehemence and acuity of their protests that have forced Raith’s directors into a shamefaced climbdown. I’m not particularly interested in humiliating these naïve and ignorant men further; what I would love is a societal change, whereby sexual, domestic or any kind of violence against women, is unreservedly condemned like all other forms of hate crime. Only when society as a whole accepts that women victims of male sexual violence are always the innocent parties, can football learn from previous errors and move on.