Union Flags and Neil Lennon

Old Firm games becoming battle to be best loser

By ANDREW SOUTHWICK

ALEX Salmond and Iain Gray are in serious need of a visit from the nurse if they want to be the man left in charge of Scotland on May 6th.

By the looks of it, you would need to be verging on insanity to want to be First Minister just now, and be the one to sort out the country’s sectarian mess.

Has Scottish football always been this bad, or has Sky Sports’ trendy HD channel just begun to show it up for what it really is from every ugly, grotesque angle?

Sunday 24th April. Mercilessly the last Old Firm game of the season.

Of course, the war doesn’t end for too long. We’ve another month of sniping in the press and violence in the streets between rival supporters as the league title race draws to a slow, painful conclusion.

Smug players, who play in sides that would not have got over the halfway line against the majority of the players who’ve graced the shirt before them, will blow the trumpet about how much better they are than the other lot.

We’ll have cries of conspiracies, that Rangers have the Scottish FA in their pocket, that Celtic have scared the referees into giving them decisions.

Whoever the winner is, good sportsmanship from our two combatants is as likely as Tavish Scott getting the keys to Bute House. For although there will eventually be a happy winner, we’ll be left with a sore, bitter loser who won’t accept they were beaten by the better team.

And then of course, after a few months rest bite, we all can look forward to Rangers v Celtic again for the next season’s SPL crown.

For six previous games Scotland, and at times even the world, had shaken its head at the sectarianism and bigotry that blights these morose clashes.

In the lead up to the final installment of seven Old Firm clashes, we were reaching boiling point.

Death threats led way to attempts at taking lives. Whatever you think of Neil Lennon or the others who were targeted, no man or his family should have to go through that.

We were told though that this was the minority, and that the decent fans were ashamed. Sunday was a chance for them to stand together for just one minute and show solidarity.

Celtic fans planned to rise on the 18th minute and applaud Neil Lennon. Had just half of the 40,000 Rangers fans joined in, it would have sent a powerful message to the bigots that they will not win.

That’s all they had to do. In the same way Celtic fans had stood silent on January 2nd for the Ibrox disaster victims, Ibrox could have rose just for a few seconds and joined in the applause. Not to show support to a man they have every right to dislike, but just to show a moment of solidarity with their rivals and show that football is bigger than violence and bigotry.

Unfortunately, the bigots triumphed once again.

Lennon was treated to more abuse, this time only verbal, but again the kind of sickening chants that should be reserved for prison courtyards.

The Celtic manager responded at full-time by cupping his hands around his ears to those screaming abuse at him.

Now, in the cold light of day, it is easy to suggest what Lennon did there was simply fan more flames, stoke more fires that will no doubt prolong the 24 hour police guard he currently lives under.

However, how many of us have been in Neil Lennon’s shoes?

When you have had an attempt made on your life, have had to live in fear, with little option but to face up to it, all rational thinking surely leaves you?

Walking into Ibrox, and having three sides of the ground crow about his ordeal, you can only imagine what he must have been feeling.

His side, whether you feel they were pretty or gritty, fought hard to earn a point that gives Celtic the title edge.

His emotions must have been pulsing through his veins. And anyone who has ever bounced around a terracing hugging your mate just because your team has scored a goal will know that in elation you lose all semblance of respectable behaviour.

As Lennon walked off with the sight of thousands of fans continuing to bay for his blood, how can anyone tell him he should have been calm, kept his head down and walked on?

How can any of us say that when we would never know ourselves until we were in that situation?

As it goes, a simple cupping of the ears was possibly the least offensive gesture he could have made.

Many who were in that situation - the Rangers support shouting abuse at him for example - could have turned round and walked out without the need to spit their bile in the first place. Where was their need to stay and spout their hatred?

Where was their provocation?

And those who complained to the police about Lennon’s response, why was your complaint not about the fans round about you singing in the first place?

Furthermore, where was this same condemnation from Rangers supporters when Nacho Novo was displaying his rear end and putting the middle finger up to Aberdeen fans at Pittodrie? You appreciated the humour then, but not on Sunday it seems.

However Celtic fans, don’t even begin to take the moral high ground, not when many have sung to that same Spaniard that they pray he dies in his sleep. Not when plenty Rangers players and managers have been abused at Celtic Park.

And of course, to add to the terrifying mentality of some fans, we have people offended at small Union Flags being waved. Ironic since some of those who reckoned it was nothing more than provocation happily stand side by side with fans who sing about the IRA.

Singing about the IRA is political they say. The Irish are entitled to sing about their homeland. True, but explain why waving the Union Flag is different?

And this comes from a staunch Scottish Nationalist who would have left his red, white and blue flag on the seat.

However, as it was put to me yesterday, identity is not the problem, intolerance is.

I’ve heard both Rangers and Celtic fans try to distance themselves from the “Old Firm” tag, as if to say one side’s problem has nothing to do with them.

Thing is, to the rest of Scottish football, you’re just two cheeks of the same arse.

   AND of course, what of the forgotten others? Swept aside to make room for the Glasgow twins spat was another significant derby taking place at the weekend.

Raith Rovers travelled to Dunfermline with the First Division title on the line.

With no television coverage, we had a full house, a traditional 3pm kick-off, and a sizzling derby to put the icing on the cake in what has been an enthralling three-way battle for SPL promotion.

However, the Fife rivals saw their party gate-crashed by uninvited guests from Glasgow.

STV’s build-up offered nothing more than a smug look at the cute little derby. They made everyone aware that people from Fife have funny Fife accents. They just about made everyone aware that the two teams were battling for the title.

They compared them both to the all important Old Firm clash, ruffled their hair, and reminded them of their place in Scottish football.

One Sunday paper’s match report was nothing more than a preview of the day’s Ibrox showdown.

No wonder there is a growing demand from fans of the other 40 senior sides to move on without Rangers and Celtic.
They tell us Scottish football would die without them, that we’d be reduced to a backwater league, that the TV companies would leave.

Well, if that means more days like Saturday when two Fife rivals can fill their stadium for a title fight, at a proper kick-off time of 3pm, then sign me up for Armageddon.