Scotzine, the popular general football website, has announced it’s closure due to threats and abuse.
Over the last decade editor Andy Muirhead has attempted to cover every angle of the Scottish game and come up with more than it’s fair share of exclusive tales.
The demise of Rangers was naturally a big focus with a number of characters involved in the Ibrox soap opera taking action against stories that appeared on site.
One of their top stories was discovering that the Dallas Cowboys had had no contact with Sevco despite the claims of a commercial tie up made by Charles Green during a rabble rousing trip to North America.
Covering those issues naturally brings unwanted attention with Scotzine prepared to go toe to toe with some of the unsavoury characters lurking in the background of the Scottish game.
During his departing article Muirhead reveals: “But it is only a website and there are more important things in my life.
“And that is a major reason behind my decision to call time on Scotzine. I can no longer commit the same amount of time I have over the past ten years, but above all the main reason is the level of venomous abuse and threats aimed at my loved ones.
“I have received many threats over the years directed at me personally, these I can handle. But threats and abuse aimed at my wife is the last straw. I would love to be able to get my hands on the scumbags who think they are hard men by bullying women, but given they hide behind their anonymity while sending out their poisonous hatred not much can be done about them – even though I would have taken great pleasure in breaking their legs.
“Despite the threats and abuse aimed at my wife – on more than one occasion, when she was pregnant with my son Ollie and now as she is pregnant with our second child – the refusal of Police Scotland to do anything about the threats not once, not twice but four times is beyond a joke.
“An organisation which is supposed to protect innocent men, women and children tells you to ‘lock your door’ and ‘don’t open it unless you know who is knocking’ – if this is the level of policing in Scotland and how they deal with online threats then god help us all because they are as useful as a chocolate teapot.
“Nothing matters more to me than my family, and that is why I am ending my time with Scotzine.”
With 17,000 twitter followers Scotzine clearly had an audience but attempting to over all levels of the game as well as woman’s football can become more of an endurance than pleasure with little return in the way of audiences.
The beauty of the internet is that new ideas and sites emerge on a weekly basis with social media allowing audiences and markets to develop quickly.