Elgin City football club have moved quickly to distance themselves from a youth coach who fired a foul-mouthed broadside in the direction of new Rangers signing Kris Boyd.
Police Scotland have confirmed that they are looking into comments made on Twitter by Chris de Sykes, who was a volunteer community coach with the Moray SFL 2 club.
Following the Scottish international rejoining Rangers after a successful second spell with his first club Kilmarnock, a post on De Sykes Twitter account spoke of how he hoped the player “breaks his legs and ends his career” – accompanied by several swear words and other insults.
It is understood that Mr De Sykes is a keen follower of Kilmarnock FC.
Kris Boyd started his career at Kilmarnock before moving on to Rangers when they were still in Scotland’s top league. After a spell in England he returned to Kilmarnock where he enjoyed a successful spell with his goals attributed to keeping the Ayrshire club in the Scottish Premiership last season.
However, with his contract up this summer he was set to move on, turning down an offers from Kilmarnock and Aberdeen to remain in the Premiership he chose to rejoin Rangers in the Championship.
Elgin City moved quickly to distance themselves from the comments of their coach, issuing a statement on their club web site headed “Unacceptable use of social media”. It read: “Following a completely unacceptable personal posting on social media, Mr Chris De Sykes is no longer associated with Elgin City Football Club.
“The matter has been reported to the appropriate authorities.”
The Elgin City chairman, Graham Tatters, later added: “We have acted decisively and I don’t know what more could have been done. He is only a young lad but that is not an excuse for expressing such sentiments or using that sort of language.
“I want to make it clear that he was not a paid employee of the club but worked with us only on a voluntary basis.”