Bottles of Water

It’s a pity that any conversation around St Roch’s on this forum always seems to deteriorate in to a small number of bigots admonishing people they’ve never met for things they’ve never seen them do. Even worse, to refer to them as “neds” and seek and end to the “Celtic and Irish Pish”… our country simply will not move forward for as long as views like that are tolerated in public forums such as this one. Yes, there have been instances of anti-social behaviour by supporters of St Roch’s, and other clubs around the league, but to make discriminatory, class-based comments and suggest that people should not be allowed to express their chosen identity (whatever it may be) and that you can say that because you’re a “tim” is utterly ridiculous. People are free to express themselves how they like within the confines of the law and the rules laid out by the league. If they fall foul of that then clubs must act and I have every faith that they do and will continue to. By the way, you should search for St Roch’s and Larkhall on YouTube. No one on here has ever seen that video before… The very nature of our game means we don’t have access to HD CCTV cameras to catch individual supporters 100% of the time in order to resolve the matters you refer to. At my own club, when these instances arise, we take steps to educate those responsible first and foremost before looking to punish. There is always an element amongst any support that can cause, or find trouble, and I would hazard a guess that we face a similar volume of issues as St Roch’s, just on a lesser scale. At the end of the day, we are committee members, no police officers, and these conversations are often difficult and uncomfortable at the best of times, even for our small support, so I can’t imagine the challenges around dealing with 4 or 5 times that volume as St Roch’s are. That being said, perhaps I am offering logic where none is being sought. I’ve lurked on this forum for some time, and whilst I’m not a St Roch’s supporter myself I may well have a soft spot for them as I found myself infuriated reading through this thread. In a matter of hours it has been hijacked. It took five posts to mention the word “Irish” and six posts to mention the word “Catholic”. No matter the context, surely we are better than that? When clubs are making progress at our level we could do worse to offer them our support and congratulations in the first instance I may well return to lurking after this post, but if not I will only engage on this thread to discuss football matters. I would politely suggest others do the same.