It is with wariness that I dip a toe into the Old Firm discussion that from time to time features in these pages. Wariness in part due to the strength of feeling invariably expressed – although, as a journalist, I should be encouraged rather than cowed by the prospect.
Wariness also because, although I regularly write about sport for The Caledonian Mercury, it is rarely football that catches my attention. Cricket and chess (assuming the latter to be a sport, which is debatable) are my things, even though I have followed football since childhood and will doubtless do so into my looming dotage.
But crucially, for what I’m about to say, I lived in Glasgow for a dozen years from the mid-1980s. It’s a city I loved and continue to love – return visits are frequent, lengthy absences are regretted – but I was never a partisan football-watcher. There were a couple of visits to Parkhead, none to Ibrox (although in my running days I would do laps of the old brick exterior), and plenty to the more endearing grounds such as Firhill, Kilbowie-of-fond-memory and others.
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So with Phil Mac Giolla Bhain’s recent thoughts on Old Firm-related matters in mind, please allow me to give four snapshots of west-of-Scotland life:— Being hit square on the side of the head by an apple-core thrown by one of a group of Rangers fans as I cycled along Ingram Street on the morning of an Old Firm game. Needless to say, the fans found this very amusing – and I would concede that it could have been used for comic effect in a movie, as it was a remarkably accurate throw. But given that I was cycling in heavy traffic at the time, and the bike veered across the road with the impact, it was distinctly unnerving to be on the receiving end. — Travelling by train back to Glasgow from Largs one summer evening, when two of the carriages played host to running battles between men wearing Celtic tops. They were rival factions, and the mayhem went on for 20 minutes or more. The “normal” passengers, including women with small children who had spent the day at the seaside, took refuge behind a barricade of bags, bikes and buggies. The main antagonists were hefty, drunk and middle-aged. Notable among them was a striking, scary man with long curly hair that came down over the shoulders of his Hoops jersey as he bellowed sectarian obscenities and rampaged from one end of the train to the other. — On a late-summer day, picking up two male hitchhikers at Balloch as I drove out for an evening wander in the Luss hills. They were heading home to Helensburgh after a Rangers match. Despite only having been in the car for the five minutes it took to reach the Arden junction, I later discovered that they had rifled through my rucksack and taken my wallet. More fool me, I guess, for picking them up. — For several years I lived close to one of the main Celtic pubs, scene of frequent violent trouble, hardly any of it reported or punished. Most nights, at roughly 4am, a Glasgow council refuse truck would noisily uplift large recycling containers full of bottles and cans. This served to wake numerous people, but residents were wary of trying to get it stopped. It was reckoned to involve (a) some pretty hard characters of the Glasgow gangster variety, and (b) an unholy and almost certainly illegal arrangement between the pub landlord and persons unknown, possibly quite high up, in the Glasgow council cleansing department. Perhaps rashly (actually, no: certainly rashly), I took it upon myself to pursue this when the pub applied for an extension of its hours – with the result that I was openly threatened by one of the heavies at the licensing-board meeting. A Glasgow CID officer gave me a direct-line emergency phone route to his office and very firmly made the point that I shouldn’t hesitate to use this if required. As it was, there proved to be no need – although other indirect threats were made and it was with relief that I moved elsewhere a few months later.Just four incidents, but I could quote others, and many Strathclyde residents past and present will have similar tales. My point is that such things happen courtesy of both sides of the Old Firm divide, pretty much equally insofar as I have ever been able to tell. It could be argued that there is no real “Old Firm divide” in any practical sense. It’s just one big amorphous mass of bile and bigotry, involving two internal factions who happen to go round wearing different-coloured uniforms. Other than that, there is no discernable difference between them – just as there is no discernable difference between the more formal echelons of the two clubs. They’re both big businesses attempting to tap the same male, tribal, relentlessly beery west-of-Scotland market. Also note this: each of the quoted examples involves adherents to either Celtic or Rangers acting unpleasantly not to their tribal enemies, but to random, neutral bystanders. I’m reminded of a scene in The Sopranos where Tony Soprano becomes angered that “civilians” have become entangled in some vicious internecine gang feud. For Old Firm thugs there are no civilians, no non-combatants – at least not among those living in or visiting west-central Scotland. Talk to people in Glasgow – often well-educated, non-violent, reasonable people – and a pattern of thinking emerges. There is a connection between the prevailing left-of-centre politics of the area and the idea that Celtic are somehow the more politically correct of the two clubs. This is linked to the left’s belief that the Irish republican cause is, ultimately, a just one. Therefore, so the argument goes, the excesses of a few Celtic fans can be downplayed or even airbrushed because of the greater socio-political context, whereas misbehaviour by the Rangers hardcore is inexcusable and deserves to be highlighted. I freely admit to simplification here, although these beliefs do often seem to be generally expressed in a cartoonish, simplistic way. This is a monumentally complex subject, but from where I stand a thug is a thug, no matter what football top they’re wearing or what their background or leanings. To suggest otherwise seems akin to the grimly laughable, unhelpfully romanticised idea that a kneecapping is more justifiable if sanctioned by an IRA man with a university degree rather than by a UDA man who reads the Daily Sport. The reality is that the pain and the grief is the same either way. As to how to lessen the blight that bipartisan football violence inflicts on Glasgow, the answers – if there are any – are big ones, involving social restructuring, a wholesale rethink of segregated education (otherwise these problems will recur endlessly), and doing something serious about the uncivil partnership of men and alcohol. The recent attention-grabbing suggestion that Old Firm games should be banned seems impractical, not least because no sporting league could function if two of its members (in this case its two most successful and powerful members) were legally prevented from facing each other. Behind closed doors, maybe. Neutral far-away venues, maybe – although Manchester is unlikely to be in the queue to oblige. But wholesale banning just couldn’t work. Or, rather, it couldn’t with two teams in the same league. If the fixture simply wasn’t scheduled – as with Scotland–England after the demise of the Home Internationals – then there is scope. Trouble is, that would require Celtic and Rangers to occupy different leagues – eg one staying in the SPL while the other joined the Barclays Premier League. And that, in a way, gets to the nub of the issue: the Old Firm need to be in the same league, battling four, five, six, seven times per season, because they are meaningless alone. They are two sides of the same coin, an equal-and-opposite duality, twin stars forever locked into a mutual orbit – and as bad as each other.
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