Close to the bone, but from the heart

Usually journalists are quite happy to get a name check from one of their own. We’re like that.

So I should have been happy to be mentioned in The Irish Examiner on Monday by Ken Early.

In the interest of full disclosure I know Ken and I like him. He’s always good craic when we bump into each other at the Aviva and I rarely miss his radio show. However Ken mentioned me as an example of a freelancer who writes about Scottish football and Rangers in particular without anything nasty befalling me.

I beg to differ. I first stumbled into the world of the Rangers internet as a journalist back in 2008. I wrote about a song that had emerged from the Rangers support. It became infamously known as “the famine song”. They chanted the lines at Celtic’s supporters (many of them Irish or of Irish descent) “the famine is over why don’t you go home?”.

The Irish government’s consulate in Edinburgh asked the Scottish government to clarify what steps they were taking to eradicate this racism against the country’s Irish community. I wrote a piece for The Sunday Tribune and then went onto a Scottish radio football phone-in to explain how this was playing over here.

As a Glasgow Irishman (with a Mayo father) now living back home I was probably well placed to write on the “famine song”.

The response was instant. A tsunami of bile hit my inbox and my extinction was discussed on message boards.

The extent of the defamatory material published about me was such that if it had appeared in a newspaper I would now be writing this from my private island in the Caribbean and not a cottage in West Donegal.

The Famine song saga ended with it being ruled racist by the highest court in Scotland. Rangers supporters blamed me.

I then broke a story a year later which led to the Scottish FA’s head of refereeing, Hugh Dallas to be sacked (Dallas had sent a “tasteless message” relating to the Pope’s visit to Scotland).

I got an award for that story, but is solidified me as a bête noire in the Rangers sub culture.

These smears, utterly without foundation are now believed by tens of thousands of Rangers supporters.

Then there were the threats. It was now about death, not defamation.

When I travel to Glasgow now I have to be mindful of not telling anyone who doesn’t need to know when I’m arriving. This is police advice.

Writing about Rangers has changed my life, but not my journalism.

Everything in life has a cost. Ken suggested that I had no price to pay for my work. Wrong buddy. Dead wrong…

Phil is an author, blogger and journalist. You can contact him via www.philmacgiollabhain.ie.