Football MUST take back control from the mindless yobs who are threatening to kill our game, writes Bill Leckie

Scottish Sun

18-05-2025

THE people who run football can act as shocked as they like about what happened to Jack MacKenzie at Tannadice on Saturday.
But if any of them dare tell us they were surprised, they shouldn't let the door smack them on the backside as they leave the building for good.
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Nobody should dare say they're surprised at what happened to Jack MacKenzie
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Celtic keeper Viljami Sinisalo was pelted with objects in a recent match at Ibrox
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And pyro and pitch invasions have become an all too common occurence
Because the shameful moment when a player was badly injured by a missile thrown from the stands has been coming for a long, long time.
I've lost count of how often this column has warned that clubs, Blazers, cops and stewarding firms alike were sleepwalking towards the kind of incident that changes the game for everyone.
Yet they've just kept on staggering along, mouthing platitudes about how this sort of thing simply won't do, pleading with halfwits to behave, threatening sanctions that mean nothing.
And, most of all, hoping against hope it doesn't all go pear-shaped on their watch.
Well, it has. A footballer is lucky not to have lost his sight thanks to the stupidity and the anger of some knuckledragger who decided to hurl a plastic seat into a crowd scene.
That the knuckledragger in question was wearing the colours of the team MacKenzie plays for throws the senselessness of their actions into even sharper relief.
It also made sure the reaction from the Dons, from host club Dundee United and from the SPFL was all the more urgent and all the more laden with outrage.
Outrage isn't enough, though, not this time.
Stern words and wagging fingers aren't enough.
This simply MUST go down as the day and hour when those in charge accept that they haven't done enough to prevent something this inevitable happening.
It MUST be the day when football takes back control of stadiums from the morons who are slowly but surely killing matchday for tens of thousands of true supporters.
Celtic fans fight in the streets during title party as Glasgow's Trongate left strewn with litter
The smoke bombs. The flares. The gang mentality. The drunkenness, the drug taking. The abusive chants, the offensive banners. The pitch invasions.
Scottish football has let it all creep up on us while kidding itself on it was somehow a good thing, that it brought atmosphere back to games.
Atmosphere? Sorry, but if this has become our definition of the word, give me the rustle of sweetie papers any day.
Remember, what happened to Jack MacKenzie wasn't some isolated incident.
It's only ten days since Celtic keeper Viljami Sinisalo spoke out about having bottles, lighters and more aimed at him during an Old Firm game.
His team-mate Arne Engels was struck at Ibrox earlier in the season.
We constantly see fireworks being thrown on to playing surfaces, often — as with that fateful black plastic seat — endangering the very players those chucking them claim to idolise.
Somehow, though, those in power have failed to join the dots. Either they've failed to spot the danger of this sinister trend or, more likely, have chosen to ignore it in the hope that it goes away.
Guess we could ask Jack MacKenzie how that's working out; him or any number of residents and business owners in Glasgow's city centre who, for the fifth year on the bounce, have been held hostage by lawless mobs whose idea of a title celebration is to make life hell for anyone and everyone around them.
For the people who run Celtic to ask supporters not to invade the streets in the wake of Saturday's trophy presentation was as pointless as asking the sun not to rise and set.
It was a cop-out, their way of shrugging that they did their best, of washing their hands of the inevitable consequences.
Again, I lose count of the columns asking why the Parkhead board, Glasgow City Council and Police Scotland can't get together with fans groups and arrange something official, something controlled, something accountable.
Again, I join an entire city in scratching my head at why yet again it's been allowed to turn out the way it did.
This is where we've come to, though, a place where the vast majority of genuine supporters feel increasingly disenfranchised thanks to the very clear decision taken by those in authority to pander to a selfish, self-entitled and often downright nasty minority.
Right back to the day Hibs won the Scottish Cup in 2016, football has done nothing to stop the kind of pitch invasion that saw Dundee United fans goad rivals in the lead-up to MacKenzie being wounded.
Cops and stewards who clearly don't search bags well enough then stand by and watch the fireworks and flares those bags contain being let off in enclosed spaces.
In short, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. So while some might choose to see what one moronic excuse for a human being did at Tannadice as an isolated incident, for me it's part of a much wider issue.
As that seat spun through the air, it was a crime that had been waiting to happen. Not to mention one that might soon pale into insignificance compared to what happens next — if, that is, all concerned fail to see that enough is enough.
I'm not trying to shock here, just being realistic.
Fact is, fans flooding on to the turf hasn't led to a genuine tragedy.
Yet.
Fact is, fireworks and flares haven't led to a genuine tragedy.
Yet.
Fact is, massed gatherings in city centres haven't led to a genuine tragedy.
Yet.
Then again, fact is that before Saturday afternoon a player hadn't yet been the victim of serious assault.
Which leaves us with the question: How much longer are we prepared to keep gambling with lives?
SHAUN DENNIS was hard as nails on the park, but could be soft as marshmallow off it.
Utterly ruthless when it came to defending his penalty box, but the kindest man on earth to his loved ones and pals.
Plus, he was one hell of a footballer, a gnat's eyebrow away from making the very top.
I adored the big fella. It was my privilege to know him.
And, like so very many others, I was brokenhearted to hear on Friday that he had passed away aged just 55.
We knew he was ill; he'd been diagnosed with a brain tumour back in 2022 and it had slowly been doing its worst ever since.
Yet the bad news — the very worst of news — came so quickly that it simply didn't seem right, didn't seem real.
This strapping, courageous, talented, fun-loving, grumpy, streetwise, daft-as-a-brush lump of granite, reduced to a shadow of himself by something growing in his head. It all just seems so unthinkably, incalculably wrong.
So what can you do but remember him at his very best? He won three league titles with his beloved, hometown Raith Rovers. He scored their first-ever Premier League goal.
He took a penalty in their fairytale shootout win over Celtic in the 1994 League Cup Final.
Along with another fallen hero in Ronnie Coyle, he was at the heart of the side who came through two rounds of the Uefa Cup then led Bayern Munich 1-0 at half-time in the Olympic Stadium.
He had four years at Hibs, but always gravitated back to Stark's Park, where he played more than 400 times, became their most decorated player and even had a spell as caretaker manager.
No wonder that in 2017 this special man was inducted into the club's Hall Of Fame when it was my joy to interview him on stage and see tears well in his eyes.
Yet now he's gone — and a household, a band of brothers, a club, a town and the game itself have lost a legend.
Shaun, you were a rough diamond. But also the rarest of gems.
WELL done to every manager and player who wakes this morning having survived the nerve-shredding anxiety of those play-offs.
Mick Kennedy and his boys at East Kilbride, preparing for life in League Two.
Rhys McCabe and Airdrie, surviving in the Championship.
As for Dick and Ian Campbell, now with 11 promotions to their names after taking East Fife into League One?
At a time when they're mourning the death of their younger brother Duncan, further proof — if proof was needed — of what a uniquely committed pair the twins truly are.
THERE'S no secret to Lewis Ferguson's success.
He's just a good kid from a loving home who's making the absolute most of his talent, a model pro working like a bear to get a little better every day.
Result? At 25, he's gone from Hamilton Accies to captaining Bologna in Serie A and lifting their first major silverware in half a century.
It's a wonderful story that reflects so well on him as well as on parents Carol and Derek — and one that, after beating AC Milan to win the Coppa Italia, you'd hope is only just beginning.
All of which leaves only one puzzle to be solved. Why is he still having to hang about the fringes of our national team?
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