SPFL address Rangers bottle throwing incidents during Celtic game at Ibrox.
NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY
I think we have had enough of bigotry in Scotland. We have certainly had our fill of people pretending it’s not happening here.
Had I been the Celtic physiotherapist at Ibrox Park yesterday, I would have been dismayed by Celtic manager Angelo Postecoglou’s response to a question from a television reporter about a bottle-throwing incident, which took place near half-time in the match with Rangers.
Postecoglou almost brushed this off as a minor incident, a matter of little importance and talked about how much this kind of thing could harm the marketing of football across the world, including in his own native Australia., where Rangers have wisely decided not to take part in a showpiece game with Celtic Down Under.
Postecoglou said the injured member of his backroom staff had receive “a couple of stitches” when in fact 18 stitches had been inserted in the head wound sustained in the bottle attack.
This was one of those “nothing to see here” now move on, please, that drivers expect to hear from the police when they come upon a serious road accident.
Where were the police when this happened anyway? They used to tour the perimeter track of football grounds in stadiums across Scotland on the premise that this kept people safe on and off the field of play.
And bottle throwing, foul and abusive language and being drunk and even urinating down the legs of the spectators in front of you was kept to a minimum.
They now use state of the art spying equipment which means they look at ugly incidents from afar through binoculars. It takes them two or three times it would have to arrest anyone had they been mingling with the crowd and patrolling the perimeter.
Then legislation was brought in which kept supporters apart, which if that hasn’t made things worse, it certainly hasn’t made things better.
It wasn’t a safety measure at all of course. It was to save football clubs the ever rising cost of providing security. It was all about money.
God be with the peaceful days when supporters used to move round behind the opposition team’s goal in the hope of witnessing one of their own team putting the ball in the net there.
Now we are into mayhem, madness and even murder. Yes, murder. Remember Jason Campbell pushing a broken bottle into the throat of a young Celtic supporter’s throat after one of these matches? I do.
Jason Campbell spent 15 years in prison for murdering teenage Celtic fan Mark Scott as he walked past a Loyalist pub.
The 16-year-old was targeted for wearing a Celtic scarf as he made his way home after a match similar to the one that took place on Sunday.
After fleeing and trying to hide, Campbell turned himself in. He was later found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Human rights legislation later compelled the courts to fix a time period to his sentence, with a minimum tariff of 15 years set – “There’s nothing I can say that will change things; there’s nothing I can say that can say enough sorrys to that family. The last thing they want to hear is me say sorry.”
The shock of Mark’s murder brought new a focus on the issue of sectarian violence in Scotland.
Cara Henderson, a teenage friend of Mark, later set up the country’s first anti-bigotry charity Nil By Mouth which has since campaigned to challenge intolerance and prejudice.
If innocent people such as Mark who was at the game and the Celtic physio who was at work are killed or seriously injured, and supporters know that misbehavior or even murder could see them jailed for up to 15 years then the Scottish government must now look seriously at banning these matches altogether.
Or are money – and even votes – more important to than the wrath of the thousands of hooligans who take part in this bigotry by paying lip service to it. It’s not just a small minority.
How many times do the media and the football authorities expect us to swallow the lie that this team or that team have been revealed as having the best behaved set of fans in Europe?
As per ever on the morning after the day before, the suits – there are remarkably few of them who ever kicked a ball in their lives – gather in their plush Hampden Park offices to decide which cliches they will feed to gullible reporters, fans with typewriters as they used to be known.
We are told that Scottish League chiefs are urging supporters to contact Police Scotland after a number of crowd-related incidents at the game. or the content of any comments you upload to a website, so please act responsibly.
But what will they do about anything we report? A big fat zero which is what they have always done.
If you always do what you always did then you always get what you always got. And that’s nothing.
Fans, writing in the media today, suggest the SPFL and SFA need to fully review security at Ibrox Park – and other grounds too, such as Tynecastle, where some alarming incidents have taken place.
Perhaps even Glasgow City Council needs to be asking questions of Rangers to justify not withdrawing its safety certificate.
That’s no more than the rest of us, who were not at the game, would be advised to do if we saw someone stealing sweets from the counter of a corner shop.
An SPFL spokesman said: “We await the match delegate’s report, and we would urge any fans with information about these incidents to contact the police.”
Angelo Postecoglou said post-match: “It is disappointing because this is a game that gets beamed around the world and it stands on its own. You had two teams going at it in first and second spot and you don’t need a couple of idiots spoiling it.”
The Celtic manager should be thankful that there will now be no Rangers v Celtic match in Australia. Bringing bigotry to Brisbane or even the Outback was never a good idea. It’s Scotland’s shame. We should start treating it much more seriously and leave the propaganda to Putin.
One spectator wrote: “Yesterday’s incidents are appalling and well documented, but what seems to have been missed by many – willfully or otherwise – is that Rangers have admitted their security arrangements are not good enough.
“When Rangers said they could not guarantee the safety of Neil Lennon and Chris Sutton at Ibrox, we were expected to believe that was the reason why they wouldn’t allow both ex-Celts into Ibrox. After yesterday, I can fully believe it and have to applaud Rangers’ honesty for admitting they cannot control their fans within their own stadium. But why has that gone unheeded and unchallenged?
“So, here is the issue for the Glasgow City Council, SPFL and the SFA – Rangers have made clear they have a problem. What are they, as governing bodies, going to do to protect fans and players of opposing teams and what sanctions will be handed out to Rangers for their fans violence towards opposition players and staff?”