Why Scottish football is on its final warning – leader comment

It is hard to find much sympathy for footballers behaving badly at the best of times.

Moussa Dembele, right, vies for the ball with Celtic FC's Belgian defender Boli Bolingoli-Mbombo. Picture Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images

In the middle of a pandemic, no reasonable person would attempt to defend the thoughtless actions of those young players who seem incapable of following simple lockdown rules. The quarantine rules for anyone returning from Spain were crystal clear as were the expectation of professional athletes who had to safeguard themselves as part of a protective bubble with their team-mates. The behaviour of the players at Aberdeen and Celtic who have brought the wrath of the First Minister down on their sport is inexcusable.

The stupidity of a handful of young men, however, is no reason to bring the shutters crashing down on our national sport just as it stutters back to life.

In what other industry would it be considered reasonable to shut down an entire national network due to the behaviour of less than a dozen foolish, young employees?

The public image of footballers as brash, overpaid mercenaries with no interest in anything beyond the high life and the next big pay day is one that dogs the sport. Like any cliché, it grounded in a degree of reality, but at the same time does a great disservice to the vast majority of those to whom it is applied.

Although Scottish premiership first team players are extremely well-paid by most standards, the majority of footballers in Scotland are not so richly rewarded, and none earn the millions on offer in the gilded world of the Premier League.

Most clubs today have foundations embedded in their local communities, supported by their players, which do a lot of good work with, to take just two examples, educational and dementia charities. It would be wrong to pull the rug from under these clubs without just cause.

Nicola Sturgeon has made clear that the ball is in the court of the football authorities. They must seize the opportunity to show that the kind of behaviour we have seen in recent days is not endemic within the game.

Significant penalties are now required for players who break the rules and their clubs to show the sport means business. Not just fines, but sanctions such as ordering clubs who break the rules to forfeit games to their opponents.

No club or player can say they have not been warned.