Hibs defender Ryan Porteous has opened up on the "off the scale" abuse he received after being sent off against Rangers.
The 22-year-old went in for a challenge on Joe Aribo which was high and hard, and though he insisted he won the ball he was shown a straight red card.
It's not the first flashpoint the Hibs man has been involved in against Rangers, and manager Jack Ross revealed he'd been subjected to a barrage of abuse.
And Porteous himself has now come out swinging as he slammed the culture of vile hate online.
He told the Times : "I do think old-fashioned 'stick' is a part of football and, being a player, you have to take it.
"But when a 22-year-old guy like me makes a challenge on a football pitch, and then receives death-threats, and gets slandered by many people as a racist because I dared to tackle a black Rangers player, and is then wanted 'to die of cancer', I just think all of that is wrong.
"Maybe some players wouldn't come out and talk about these things ... they would shy away from it. But I can't. It's totally off the scale and it has to be called out.
"You have a generation of kids growing up, who might see this stuff - religious abuse, gender abuse, homophobic abuse - and think it is normal, and think they can get away with it.
"Kids today they can see adults calling someone a 'Fenian' or a 'tarrier' and they think this is acceptable, they maybe don't know any different. Well, it's not acceptable. It can't keep happening. It needs to be called out again and again.
"Here we are living in 2021 and you still get stuff like homophobic abuse going on."
And the centre-back defended the tackle he made on Aribo which led to the sending off, as he insists he's never gone into a challenge to hurt someone.
Porteous said: "Amid all the comments after the game at Ibrox I was more interested in what my own manager had to say. And he told me I had been brilliant for him ever since he came into this club, and that it was not an issue, and that I hadn't let him down, and that I hadn't let any of my team-mates down.
"The only people that matter to me are the people at this club who can influence me now: and that is Jack Ross and John Potter and David Gray and my teammates. If any of them thought I had let them down in any way, they would come and tell me. But not one of them came to me like that. They were all sympathetic to me over the way it happened.
"Listen, it was a tackle. It happens. People get sent off every week. I actually feel my disciplinary record is fine. For a centre back I only got booked five times last season, in maybe 38 games? That's not bad.
"I don't differentiate the way I play the game, whether the crowd plays a part in it, or whether my reputation plays a part in it. I'm never going to change the way I play. I'm an aggressive defender and my manager basically tells me: 'don't change'.
"If the ball is there to be won I'll go and win it.
"But there is no way that I go out to injure or hurt anybody. I never have. In fact, I don't think anyone has ever been injured from any of my tackles.
"Having said that, we can all improve our decision-making in games, and I'm only 22."
