The Official Airdrieonians Thread - 2019/20 and beyond

[stuartcraig]

13 minutes ago, Glenmavis Diamond said:

Find one bit of evidence or communication that states Rico actually heard it himself. That's all I'm asking for. It's an assumption everyone is making and even portraying as to what happened. Yet I don't believe that's actually been said anywhere.

Link to the post that started it all.

https://www.pieandbovril.com/forum/index.php?/topic/259978-the-official-airdrieonians-thread-201920-and-beyond/&do=findComment&comment=14727161

 

 

Edited October 18, 2021 by stuartcraig

[Diamond1924]

1 hour ago, Diamonds are Forever said:

 

How is engaging in a cover up of racial abuse 'keeping their hands clean'?

If what you say is true, surely the easy option for the directors would have been to hang the abuser out to dry, making clear this was a reprehensible individual who does not represent the values of the club? In addition the directors would get to show they and the club take incidents like this seriously.

Genuinely unsure why you think they'd turn this into a PR disaster for the club protecting an unknown fan to 'keep their hands clean'.

 

 

Who said cover up? 
 

I’m concerned with the lack of investigation which in turn discards any ownership of the problem from the club.
 

You’re spot on, hanging the abuser out to dry would have been the correct option. So why not? The investigation proved inconclusive, it’s doesn’t mean nothing happened. 
 

 

[D'Jaffo]

Your lot made the back pages for all the wrong reasons today - "Wullie Gibson die in your sleep" is being reported as the disgraceful chant from the Somerset Park terracing.   

Yup and our club have come out and issued warnings against fans that say stuff like that. Banning orders will be next for those identified.

Far cry from your club happy to ignore racist fans.

[D'Jaffo]

Well that tells us all we need to know about you then doesn't it. Who needs evidence when you can believe hearsay instead. What a clown you are. [emoji23]

No I just choose to believe a guy who claims he was racially abused, with zero reason to lie, over a club with fans that have history of association with a known racist and bigot and who quite a number of their fans will be racist.

HTH.

[Glenmavis Diamond]

24 minutes ago, Diamond1924 said:

Cheers for your comment. 
 

I’ll address your numbered points in order. 
 

1. The handling of it HAS been absolutely terrible. I don’t know about you but had the club went into in-depth investigations which were then inconclusive then I’d like to know exactly what they did. Instead, we get a VERY vague response to a VERY serious issue.
 

2. I don’t blame Rico or his brother for posting on social media. It’s hardly an over reaction when the player has been racially abused. As an Airdrie fan, I support their comments.
 

3. I can wish the lad well, thanks. 
 

4. I know the club haven’t done the right thing because of a few things which are pretty obvious. One being an inconclusive “thorough” investigation. Another being a complete lack of symbolic support (no knee taking, no show racism the red card content, no engagement with the Airdrie community). The very fact that a university football team had a demonstration against racism at the penny cars stadium during one of their matches shows just how far out of touch the club are in terms of their moral alignment. 
 

Again thanks for your comments.

1. Why do you, a fan, expect that the club should share every fine detail of their investigation with you? No other club does this. They've given you the overview which speaks for itself. Inconclusive. Not enough evidence. What more do you want? Who they interviewed? Were any early morning raids conducted? 

2. Its not about blame. Its a simple case of being unprofessional in publicly airing your grievances instead of conducting yourself in the proper manner and dealing with the club directly. Slating the club on social media is amateurish at best. 

3. You can wish him well. It's still irrelevant to the situation. 

4. Why have you quoted the word "thorough" as if questioning the clubs investigation when you, claiming to be just an Airdrie fan, would know nothing about what they've done? That's just another assumption you've made. Unless you are someone who in fact does think they know more but are pretending to just be a fan? Especially since you only decided to join P&B today, or at least make a new account, to share your one sided views? 

 

ETA. Thanks for your comments too. 

Edited October 18, 2021 by Glenmavis Diamond

[Glenmavis Diamond]

22 minutes ago, stuartcraig said:

Link to the post that started it all.

https://www.pieandbovril.com/forum/index.php?/topic/259978-the-official-airdrieonians-thread-201920-and-beyond/&do=findComment&comment=14727161

 

 

Again, that doesn't actually state that he heard it himself. As has been said elsewhere, it may have been another players parent who believed he heard it and then informed Rico and the club. And as far as has been reported, that person remains the only person to come forward and say they heard anything. 

[Diamonds are Forever]

24 minutes ago, Diamond1924 said:

Who said cover up? 
 

I’m concerned with the lack of investigation which in turn discards any ownership of the problem from the club.
 

You’re spot on, hanging the abuser out to dry would have been the correct option. So why not? The investigation proved inconclusive, it’s doesn’t mean nothing happened. 
 

 

 

Please correct me if I misread your post, but you said that the club were made aware of the comment, that it would have been simple to find out who said it, but deliberately did not do the simple research to find the culprit. Would you not agree that woukd equate to covering up racial abuse? At the very least ignoring it.

I am simply questioning why you think this is 'keeping their hands clean'. Their hands were not 'dirty' in the first place, all clubs will have a tiny minority of horrible people, and all the directors would have to do is, as we both said, hang the person out the dry. The club and the directors would have come out of it as well as any club could. What was their motive for not pursuing it?

You have answered your own question in your last paragraph. The investigation was inconclusive, therefore there is no-one to hang out to dry.

I completely agree with your last sentence and as far as I can see almost every Airdrie fan on here has said the same thing. So I'm not sure what you're point is there. As I said in an earlier post, to me the wider issue is that the investigation should be done by the relevant authorities when a potential criminal offence has taken place. Football clubs do not have the authority, power and in a lot of cases, competence, to investigate serious issues like this. Their role should be to support as best they can an investigation.

Edited October 18, 2021 by Diamonds are Forever

[Glenmavis Diamond]

23 minutes ago, Diamond1924 said:

Who said cover up? 
 

I’m concerned with the lack of investigation which in turn discards any ownership of the problem from the club.
 

You’re spot on, hanging the abuser out to dry would have been the correct option. So why not? The investigation proved inconclusive, it’s doesn’t mean nothing happened. 
 

 

But how can you hang someone out to dry when nobody has been formally identified? I don't see where you're going with this? It would be in the clubs best interests to identify someone if they found someone. And I think we'd all want that to be the case if they had found someone. 

[Glenmavis Diamond]

9 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:

No I just choose to believe a guy who claims he was racially abused, with zero reason to lie, over a club with fans that have history of association with a known racist and bigot and who quite a number of their fans will be racist.

HTH.

And there you have it. You believe a guy who may not have actually heard the abuse himself first hand. Meaning you're basing your whole attempt to gaslight on potentially incorrect information. 

Nice try though. 

[D'Jaffo]

And there you have it. You believe a guy who may not have actually heard the abuse himself first hand. Meaning you're basing your whole attempt to gaslight on potentially incorrect information. 
Nice try though. 

I don’t think you know what gaslighting means. I suggest you buy a dictionary as it’s not a great look to be both thick and racist.

[Diamond1924]

1 minute ago, Glenmavis Diamond said:

1. Why do you, a fan, expect that the club should share every fine detail of their investigation with you? No other club does this. They've given you the overview which speaks for itself. Inconclusive. Not enough evidence. What more do you want? Who they interviewed? Were any early morning raids conducted? 

2. Its not about blame. Its a simple case of being unprofessional in publicly airing your grievances instead of conducting yourself in the proper manner and dealing with the club directly. Slating the club on social media is amateurish at best. 

3. You can wish him well. It's still irrelevant to the situation. 

4. Why have you quoted the word "thorough" as if questioning the clubs investigation when you, claiming to be just an Airdrie fan, would know nothing about what they've done? That's just another assumption you've made. Unless you are someone who in fact does think they know more but are pretending to just be a fan? Especially since you only decided to join P&B today, or at least make a new account, to share your one sided views? 

 

ETA. Thanks for your comments too. 

Cheers for you comments again. 
 

1. I’ll take those as rhetorical questions. To answer them though, I’d like some more detail, a little more transparency would be good too. My question is, why are YOU happy to accept such a weak statement to a very very serious issue. 
 

2. This is golden. Dealing with things in a proper manner? Does a statement with no substance conclude an investigation into racism for you? Brilliant.

 

3. Not irrelevant for me but cheers again bud. 
 

4. Surely a “thorough” investigation warrants a substantial conclusion, no? I’d of preferred no statement until an answer was reached than an inconclusive one. Also, I made my account because as a proud Airdrie fan I felt I had to the respond to the absolute dross on this forum regarding Rico and this situation. It’s grim. 
 

Thanks again. Take care 

[The Moonster]

9 minutes ago, Glenmavis Diamond said:

Again, that doesn't actually state that he heard it himself. As has been said elsewhere, it may have been another players parent who believed he heard it and then informed Rico and the club. And as far as has been reported, that person remains the only person to come forward and say they heard anything. 

He quite literally says he was disappointed to hear it from a section of the crowd where his family would normally sit in his statement. 

[Glenmavis Diamond]

Just now, D'Jaffo said:

I don’t think you know what gaslighting means. I suggest you buy a dictionary as it’s not a great look to be both thick and racist.

Haha it really is quite pathetically sad that you're revelling in the idea of this being true. You come across as someone who is hopeful that someone was racially abused. That's pretty sick. Your clear hatred of Airdrie and Airdrie fans is hilarious. 

[Glenmavis Diamond]

1 minute ago, Diamond1924 said:

Cheers for you comments again. 
 

1. I’ll take those as rhetorical questions. To answer them though, I’d like some more detail, a little more transparency would be good too. My question is, why are YOU happy to accept such a weak statement to a very very serious issue. 
 

2. This is golden. Dealing with things in a proper manner? Does a statement with no substance conclude an investigation into racism for you? Brilliant.

 

3. Not irrelevant for me but cheers again bud. 
 

4. Surely a “thorough” investigation warrants a substantial conclusion, no? I’d of preferred no statement until an answer was reached than an inconclusive one. Also, I made my account because as a proud Airdrie fan I felt I had to the respond to the absolute dross on this forum regarding Rico and this situation. It’s grim. 
 

Thanks again. Take care 

I'll keep this one short and sweet for you. I'd say that a lack of evidence and witnesses is pretty substantial.

According to the clubs statement only one witness has been identified. ONE. From circa 200 people in the vicinity of the alleged racist abuse. That's pretty explanatory in itself that this one person can either identify the alleged offender or not. What more can the club do? 

I also stand by my suggestion that a players agent slating a club on social media is unprofessional. I can absolutely understand Rico's brother being emotionally driven to comment. I still think its unprofessional though, given they're both effectively calling the clubs integrity into question. 

 

[Diamond1924]

11 minutes ago, Diamonds are Forever said:

 

Please correct me if I misread your post, but you said that the club were made aware of the comment, that it would have been simple to find out who said it, but deliberately did not do the simple research to find the culprit. Would you not agree that woukd equate to covering up racial abuse? At the very least ignoring it.

I am simply questioning why you think this is 'keeping their hands clean'. Their hands were not 'dirty' in the first place, all clubs will have a tiny minority of horrible people, and all the directors would have to do is, as we both said, hang the person out the dry. The club and the directors would have come out of it as well as any club could. What was their motive for not pursuing it?

You have answered your own question in your last paragraph. The investigation was inconclusive, therefore there is no-one to hang out to dry.

I completely agree with your last sentence and as far as I can see almost every Airdrie fan on here has said the same thing. So I'm not sure what you're point is there. As I said in an earlier post, to me the wider issue is that the investigation should be done by the relevant authorities when a potential criminal offence has taken place. Football clubs do not have the authority, power and in a lot of cases, competence, to investigate serious issues like this. Their role should be to support as best they can an investigation.

Cheers for your reply. 
 

Again, I’m afraid I’ll have to reject the cover up narrative. A cover up would suggest they know who it is and have not pursued the consequences. 
 

Instead, I am saying that it appears that very little has been done to even identify the culprit. 
 

Keeping their hands clean does not imply that they had dirty hands prior. Surely you can see the absolute lack of engagement with the fans and zero demonstration of anti-racism content constitutes a total lack of involvement from the board. 
 

I don’t know if some fans have come to expect so little engagement with the board but deary, deary me. On a matter like this, the opportunity was there to do the right thing.
 

Cheers again, take care 

[The Moonster]

Just now, Glenmavis Diamond said:

I'll keep this one short and sweet for you. I'd say that a lack of evidence and witnesses is pretty substantial.

According to the clubs statement only one witness has been identified. ONE. From circa 200 people in the vicinity of the alleged racist abuse. That's pretty explanatory in itself that this one person can either identify the alleged offender or not. What more can the club do? 

I also stand by my suggestion that a players agent slating a club on social media is unprofessional. I can absolutely understand Rico's brother being emotionally driven to comment. I still think its unprofessional though, given they're both effectively calling the clubs integrity into question. 

 

The agent claims there's 3 witnesses. If it is indeed the case that other witnesses have not been properly spoken with, or ignored, then he'd be quite right to call the clubs integrity into question. You keep saying others are just blindly accepting Rico's side of the story when you're doing the exact same in favour of your club. 

[Glenmavis Diamond]

1 minute ago, Diamond1924 said:

Cheers for your reply. 
 

Again, I’m afraid I’ll have to reject the cover up narrative. A cover up would suggest they know who it is and have not pursued the consequences. 
 

Instead, I am saying that it appears that very little has been done to even identify the culprit. 
 

Keeping their hands clean does not imply that they had dirty hands prior. Surely you can see the absolute lack of engagement with the fans and zero demonstration of anti-racism content constitutes a total lack of involvement from the board. 
 

I don’t know if some fans have come to expect so little engagement with the board but deary, deary me. On a matter like this, the opportunity was there to do the right thing.
 

Cheers again, take care 

Please can you tell me what else you think the club could have done to investigate that they have not yet done? 

[Glenmavis Diamond]

2 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

The agent claims there's 3 witnesses. If it is indeed the case that other witnesses have not been properly spoken with, or ignored, then he'd be quite right to call the clubs integrity into question. You keep saying others are just blindly accepting Rico's side of the story when you're doing the exact same in favour of your club. 

I've not once said people are blindly accepting Rico's side of the story. I've also not once said I don't believe Rico. I don't even know what his side of the story is. I'm going by the club saying they have 1 witness and 1 witness only. If Rico's agent says there is more, I still think saying so on social media is the wrong way to go about it. They should deal directly with the club and then, if they feel the club are not taking it seriously, go to the police themselves. 

[Diamond1924]

1 minute ago, Glenmavis Diamond said:

I'll keep this one short and sweet for you. I'd say that a lack of evidence and witnesses is pretty substantial.

According to the clubs statement only one witness has been identified. ONE. From circa 200 people in the vicinity of the alleged racist abuse. That's pretty explanatory in itself that this one person can either identify the alleged offender or not. What more can the club do? 

I also stand by my suggestion that a players agent slating a club on social media is unprofessional. I can absolutely understand Rico's brother being emotionally driven to comment. I still think its unprofessional though, given they're both effectively calling the clubs integrity into question. 

 

Just a quick one for yourself as well. 
 

The alleged comment was overheard by a players father. It wasn’t a chant. It wasn’t a shout. It was a conversation volume comment which meant that the one witness was able to hear it and thankfully they did. Hence why there was only one witness and not 200. Research goes a long way. 
 

I don’t think it’s unprofessional. I think a young player being racially abused is the issue here and not the subsequent reactions from Rico’s agent and brother. After all, if anyone is going to be informed to make a comment, it’ll be them surely? 
 

 

[Diamonds are Forever]

26 minutes ago, Diamond1924 said:

Cheers for your reply. 
 

Again, I’m afraid I’ll have to reject the cover up narrative. A cover up would suggest they know who it is and have not pursued the consequences. 
 

Instead, I am saying that it appears that very little has been done to even identify the culprit. 
 

Keeping their hands clean does not imply that they had dirty hands prior. Surely you can see the absolute lack of engagement with the fans and zero demonstration of anti-racism content constitutes a total lack of involvement from the board. 
 

I don’t know if some fans have come to expect so little engagement with the board but deary, deary me. On a matter like this, the opportunity was there to do the right thing.
 

Cheers again, take care 

 

What you have described seems somewhere in between these comments. You said that it would have been very easy to find out the culprit but actively chose to ignore it - instead 'keeping their hands clean'. If an organisation is aware of what is very likely to be racial abuse but ignores it, and then puts out a statement saying there wasn't any evidence then I'm not sure how else anyone could interpret that. At the very least you are claiming they are not pursuing allegations of racist abuse that would easily result in them finding the culprit (your claim) - in attempt to 'keep their hands clean'. That is a big claim to make. I've not actually said you are wrong, I have just repeatedly asked you to try and explain why they would do this as it makes no sense to me, you still haven't answered this.

I'm not sure what relevance the rest of your post has, except to avoid answering the point raised above.

Edited October 18, 2021 by Diamonds are Forever