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Fraser Wishart is an ex-Rangers player and chief executive of the Scottish Professional Footballers Association (SPFA). As such he is responsible for representing the interests of ALL professional players in Scotland. However, Wishart has demonstrated a curious selectiveness in the cases which he chooses to highlight in the media.
Allow me to illustrate:
February 2008 - Celtic awarded a disputed free-kick against St Mirren. The Celtic player involved, Shunsuke Nakamura, is pilloried on radio phone-ins and TV, and newspapers carry headlines referring to Nakamura as "CON MAN" and "CHEAT"
Wishart makes no statement in the media.
March 2008 - Kevin Thomson of Rangers is bizarrely carried off after a pathetic attempt to win a penalty by throwing himself to the ground in the penalty area and deliberately making contact with Samaras with his trailing leg. Although the press coverage is almost universally sympathetic to the player, Wishart launches a vigorous defence of Thomson through comments which are enthusiastically published in the media.
One specific statement is of particular interest - "What I would say is that in many instances players lift themselves off the ground when they think the tackle is coming, then the tackle doesn't come". You may have already worked out where I am going with that one...
May 2008 - Fraser Wishart, a man paid as a trade union official under the umbrella of the GMB, actively supports a season extension, without consulting his members, even though it was against the interests of players from 11 of the 12 SPL club who pay his wages.
August 2008 - Rangers goal wrongly disallowed against Aberdeen (swoon!), prompting NoSurname into a mental (but dignified) rant against the officials including naming the suspiciously Irish-sounding Tom Murphy and helpfully pointing out that Murphy was the linesman who failed to flag Scott McDonald for being a nanometre offside for the first goal in the 3-2 win over Rangers a mere four months prior to this incident. Amid total outrage among the Scottish media, on Clyde 1 an Aberdeen fan phones in to point out that Rangers goal in the same game came from a free-kick which should never have been awarded. Wishart dismissed this, helpfully pointing out that "Aberdeen still had a chance to defend the free-kick". You know the kind of comment that he, or any of his poodle Establishment colleague failed to make when Celtic were awarded a disputed corner against Motherwell towards the end of the previous season which brought Darrell King to the point of an anuerysm.
August 2008 - Scott Brown, Aiden McGeady and Darren O'Dea are involved in a fracas in nightclub. Newspapers carry witness reports that "A few guys were winding them [the Celtic players] up but as the night went on it started getting nasty.... "The players started to leave but as McGeady got outside he was jumped by a gang who set about him". Curiously the newspapers seemed very reluctant to name the aggressors as Rangers fans, instead referring to them as "A few guys" and "a gang".
November 2008 - Aiden McGeady is attacked outside a nightclub. Despite reporting "It's believed[my emphasis] the 22-year-old Celtic winger was subjected to a volley of vile sectarian abuse by three cowardly yobs" and "There was about three of them and they started dishing out some abuse, it was pretty heavy stuff" and "It's understood they branded him a "Fenian b******" before landing two hefty blows", the Sun can't quite manage to identify whether they are Rangers supporters or not. Funny that. The Sun is also at pains to stress that Rangers players have also suffered at the hands of thuggery, with one having his car daubed with "Celtic slogans" [I guess it's a fair cop then] and another scandalously having his address published on the internet, Among all the subsequent anguish and gnashing of teeth among the Scottish media at these crimes ostensibly committed by Celtic fans, no-one feels the need to point out that none of the predicted violent attacks on the player's property came to pass. Hmmm, another strange one.
At no point in all of this does Fraser Wishart feel the need to decry Rangers fans and bemoan the inability of players to go out without being attacked for "the colour of jersey they wear on a Saturday". Maybe Wishart's concern was for tolerance of crimes against fashion
August 2009 - Aiden McGeady is sent off against Hibs for diving. Fraser Wishart is mysteriously absent with any public proclamations of support for the player along the lines of "What I would say is that in many instances players lift themselves off the ground when they think the tackle is coming, then the tackle doesn't come"
February 2010 - Fraser 'Judge Jury and Executioner' Wishart decries an “assault” on Rangers goalkeeper Alan McGregor “just for the jersey he wears”. Maybe he should be called as a witness as McGregor himself was reported to have told police he did not know what happened or even where.
Despite all this, no-one in the Scottish media has queried Wishart's role or, for example, his publicly disavowing the actions of his own members when they happen to play for Celtic. In any real trade union, he would have been dismissed.
Alan McGregor
The Alan McGregor case is another one that shows the staggering disparity in the Scottish Media's treatment of Celtic and the Establishment club. Now I am a pretty liberal guy and am a firm believer in "innocent until proven guilty". However the reluctance to address the allegations of sexual assault against this guy is very out of character for tabloids for whom this kind of stuff is their bread and butter. Any concern over prejudicing a trial simply doesn't wash when you consider the trash these low-lifes have published in the past.The sexual assault allegations have been roundly buried by the media and have been completely absent from discussion on the recent "assault" story.
It is not difficult to imagine the rainforests which would have been decimated over the past couple of months if Artur Boruc had been the subject of a similar complaint. The Daily Ranger/Hun etc would be digging up lapdancers, ex-girl friends and wee lassies from Poland who's pigtails he pulled when he was 6 years old to fill up front, middle and back pages of their rags with lurid stories. They would be demanding Celtic sack the player and he be made an example of.
Paranoia? Consider the front page splash in the Sun a few months ago accompanying a photo of Boruc straightening a woman's hair with a pair of hair straighteners. Some sort of sordid connotation was implied against the clearly depraved Celtic goalkeeper.
But in the case of McGregor... the rags print a photo of the CELTIC stadium in relation to the original sexual assault story, the whole thing is allowed to die within a couple of days, then weeks later when the player is again involved in an unsavoury incident, no links are made between the two events and his poor bird is blamed for everything. The press simply accept the implausible story put out to deflect attention from one of the Establishment team's prize assets, that no-one at all was responsible for the assault. Maybe McGregor is suffering from the same mental condition as Edward Norton's character in Fight Club.
Then of course we have Walter the Dignified One. After having made noises about McGregor being unfit/ having to buck his ideas up, Nosurname acts decisively to..er.. do nothing and keeps the errant player in his team for the game against Celtic. Such decisive and effective leadership skills as demonstrated by the Hun manager with Nosurname being absent from Celtic Park when it came to McGeady who was actually dropped from the team after conflict with the manager. No, in that case Strachan was out of order and the player was a niggly wee shite. In fact, in their glee the Scottish media couldn't make their minds up who they wanted to put the boot into more, although I reckon Strachan shaded it with the "Strachan Out if Celtic lose the next game even though they're top of the league" stories. Anyway, consider the logic applied to each case and try to work it out.
Billy McNeill
Radio Clyde - caller berates Billy McNeill for having the viewpoint that decisions have went against Celtic for 50 years, caller is cut off as he start to get abusive.
McGuire responds
"Billy is a legend, and he is allowed an opinion, its just that an opinion"
Big Fat Derek adds
"every team gets decisions against them, but its just honest mistakes, I got a penalty against me in the 77 cup final, the ball hit my thigh, not my arm, and the referee gave a penalty, wrongly, and to be honest, I had forgotten about it 5 days later, I didnt go on about it"
OK so you're not mentioning it 33 years later then Derek, and thats the first time you have mentioned it since 5 days after the final? Utter pish. I am not old enough to have watched this game live, but am well aware of the circumstances surrounding it as every time Celtic and the Huns are involved in a cup final, Johnstone is wheeled out to whinge on about the penalty that never was contrary to the evidence of everyone else's eyes. As an fair minded person would tell you fatso, the ball hit your arm.
Anyway, one decision against them in 33 years. They've got it hard. Next they'll be on about a dodgy corner we got in 1965.
Walter's schizophrenia
Wattie the Cardigan says Rangers were let down by the referee on Sunday and they should have had a penalty for Hinkel not doffing his cap and saying "after you m'lud" to Edu. Is this the same Cardigan who said the referee had a good game? I think we have some selective memory problems for the soon to be pensioner. So if he is so concerned about the poor refereeing, and being such a dignified guy and all that, will he be doing the decent thing and say he is supporting Celtic in their appeal of Scott Brown's red card? Thought not.
 Fraser Wishart is an ex-Rangers player and chief executive of the Scottish Professional Footballers Association (SPFA). As such he is responsible for representing the interests of ALL professional players in Scotland. However, Wishart has demonstrated a curious selectiveness in the cases which he chooses to highlight in the media.
Allow me to illustrate:
February 2008 - Celtic awarded a disputed free-kick against St Mirren. The Celtic player involved, Shunsuke Nakamura, is pilloried on radio phone-ins and TV, and newspapers carry headlines referring to Nakamura as "CON MAN" and "CHEAT"
Wishart makes no statement in the media.March 2008 - Kevin Thomson of Rangers is bizarrely carried off after a pathetic attempt to win a penalty by throwing himself to the ground in the penalty area and deliberately making contact with Samaras with his trailing leg. Although the press coverage is almost universally sympathetic to the player, Wishart launches a vigorous defence of Thomson through comments which are enthusiastically published in the media.
One specific statement is of particular interest - "What I would say is that in many instances players lift themselves off the ground when they think the tackle is coming, then the tackle doesn't come". You may have already worked out where I am going with that one...
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