SFA urged to consider fit and proper person test for players after Goodwillie backlash

Football clubs and their governing bodies across the UK are being challenged to show leadership, and follow up “easy” words with action on gender-based violence, by fans and campaigners galvanised in the wake of the Raith Rovers outcry.

It is two months since the Kirkcaldy club signed David Goodwillie, who was ordered to pay damages to the woman he was found by a civil courtto have raped in a landmark case in 2017. The move resulted in a ferocious backlash which escalated across the first week of February, with sponsorship withdrawals, multiple resignations and the women’s team moving to sever ties.

By the end of the week, the Scottish Championship club had admitted “we got it wrong” and promised not to select the player. Yet the noisy condemnation did not deter Goodwillie’s former club, Clyde, from agreeing a loan deal at the beginning of March, which was terminated days later after the local council announced it was banning the striker from the ground.

Now the Scottish National party MP Hannah Bardell, who spent four years working at Livingston FC, has written to the Scottish Football Association asking it to consider a fit and proper person test for professional players in the wake of events which, she writes, sent the message that “men’s careers are more important than women’s safety”.

“Footballers, particularly male footballers, are paid significant sums of money and hold a particular status that often makes them role models,” says Bardell. “It’s only right that our footballing authorities have a fit-for-purpose system of deciding who can hold that position.”

Bardell is asking for a meeting between the SFA, the best-selling author Val McDermid, a dedicated Raith supporter who withdrew her shirt sponsorship