The SFWA Player of the Year awards is one of the largest player awards of the season.
It gives the journalists and media an opportunity to have their say on who they believe has been their best player in Scotland.
Simple and straight forward process you would think?
And it was. Until a keynote speaker stepped up and allegedly made racist and misogynistic jokes which caused Sky Sports presenter Eilidh Barbour to walk out of the event and post her disgust on social media:
https://twitter.com/EilidhBarbour/status/1523414664243150852?s=20&t=2sKxxaoOuSqSjiGygwC91w
It is thought Barbours table and another unnamed table walked out in disgust at the nature of an after dinner speakers choice of humour and the social media storm that ensued embarrassed the organisers of the even to make a public apology.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Ange Postecoglou opened up on the furore when asked and as always, the manager’s reply was top class, “For me, the key thing to coming out of that is you can treat it as a little bit of a controversy or you can treat it as a moment where you can be better, you know.
“And I think we’re constantly looking for these moments where we can all be better in terms of what we’re doing, the way we approach things, we’ve got to understand there are people in that room who have different values, different views, irrespective of that.
“There’s an opportunity there to learn, I think for all of us.
“I don’t think the organiser, they have come out and apologised, and I don’t think they did it with any harmful intent.
“But, you know, if they just focus on the controversy or trying to put it to one side, I think there’s a failure there to actually be better the next time.
“Understand it, talk to the people who were upset on the night and, for me, I think again I’m in that space where I think we shouldn’t really be having those kind of moments.
So I think people should already know. But in the, in the place of a misstep, what you want to do is be better than next time.”
Clearly a lot in our game needs to change to help improve the attitudes of people in regards to racism and misogyny in football.
Hopefully as more people speak out, more will done at the top level of every major organisation to educate and raise awareness of these two issues that still seem to be a blight not only on our national sport, but also in society.
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