Increase the peace - bin rags like these! (Part 2)

Celtic fans I know call The Record “The Daily Ranger”. Rangers fans I know call it “The Daily Rebel”. Can we all please wake up and smell the Buckfast and realise that BOTH implications are true?!! The Daily Record is as Anti-Celtic as it is Anti-Rangers. It’s also as pro-Celtic as it is pro-Rangers. All that happens is that when you read something NICE about your own team it doesn’t register because you believe it to be so obviously true anyway but when you read something NEGATIVE about your team then your hackles go up and you MEMORISE IT!

For me the only football fans in Scotland with a REAL grievance about the “bent” of the football coverage are the fans of EVERY NON-Old Firm team in the land. The tabloids are obsessed with Rangers and Celtic because they’re the biggest two clubs in the country and because the religious associations of each give the hype that darker, more sinister edge which sells even more papers.

In the Scottish football museum at Hampden they actually have the article from a tabloid of a century ago, the article which openly asks a “scottish club team” to do something to defend the domestic game against the “Irish invaders” - ie Hibs and Celtic!!! The bl**dy papers were the ones who encouraged the feeling that the dominance of the clubs with an Irish influence was bad for the Scottish game and it was the papers who championed Rangers as the only team ready to take them on. A million and one social, political, economic and historical twists and turns have occurred since but still the punters hate each other and the papers moralise about it while actually encouraging it. Now I think the general line is that wanting to be Irish is okay but wearing England jerseys is wrong. Why does no-one say what we all know - they may be bl**dy annoying and slightly daft in certain situations but in themselves BOTH ACTS ARE PERFECTLY OKAY!!!

The Feyenoord fans are coming to Glasgow and they want to wear Celtic jerseys and wave Irish tricolours to wind up The Bears? SO WHAT?? Visiting continental fans have been doing that for YEARS! But the Record wants it to be a “recipe for disaster” or some such badly-written ominous portent. Off the top of my head I remember Marseille fans chanting “Sell-teek, sell-teek” when we played them in 92/93, and The Borussia Dortmund fans wearing celtic jerseys on their last couple of visits to Ibrox. The Dortmund fans bulit up a close relationship with The Smellies during a couple of previous Euro games at park-ned and the Paul Lambert and Murdo McLeod thing certainly helped - a lot of them had Celtic strips anyway. I wouldn’t wear my Schalke 04 strip to the Westfallen because (a) I’m friendly with a few Dortmund fans and (b) I would never wear another teams colours when following The Rangers BUT it’s up to them if they want to be silly.

I’ll be cheering on Ireland during the World Cup (Except against The Germans … or if they meet Uruguay, Italy or Argentina in the latter stages but that’s nothing personal - just my love of the four best footie nations on earth!)and I’ve had some brilliant nights both in Dublin and with Irish lads and lassies in Glasgow so I don’t really see why I should be getting so wound up about it (Well, of course I see why The Record wants me to get wound up about it but experience tells me there’s no need to go down a particular road just because it’s the first one you come to). What happens when these foreign fans come to Ibrox and sport celtic colours is there’s a brief moan, groan and shout of abuse from the Bears ane then we get on with watching the game. That’s not enough for The Record, though - they want blood-shed - THEY are the ones writing the recipe for disaster and they’re hoping the less sober or intelligent Bears are gonnae go ahead and cook it up for them.

It’s nothing short of criminal.

I give sellik a total pounding every now and again on this site. It’s usually only the day before or after an Old Firm game because I mostly like to talk about MY team. Ye usually find that there’s all sorts of guys come on and accuse me of bigotry when my rant was deliberately very careful to steer away from even the SLIGHTEST bigoted or political reference. It offers an opportunity for me to re-state my manifesto on the whole topic of Old Firm fan rivalry and fan rivalry as a whole, condensedley and namedley, “We all hate rival fans except the ones we know personally - funny that!!!”.

Conversely I get a lot of e-mails from Rangers punters giving it “You’re PRO-Celtic!!” - they too are giving me the excuse to re-state said manifesto: When ye don’t know a person and hear they support the team you “hate” people assume all sorts about that body which is basically untrue. This is why I never wear a Rangers scarf, shirt, pin-badge or flippin boxer shorts when out in a public place other than Ibrox. I KNOW what non-Rangers fans think of me when they see the colours - if they don’t know the person first and the person’s team second then I don’t want them knowing ANYTHING about me. The tabloids perpetuate and are responsible for half the hatred which would be ladelled upon me were I to walk down Queen Street or Argylle Street with my Gers scarf on - they’re also responsible for half the reasons why some passing Bluenoses would assume I hated all catholics or had no time for Eire.

The RIVALRY between the Old Firm is a great thing but the HATRED is pathetic, misinformed and has to stop. So many footie fans don’t realise there’s a difference. So many people at every footie match on earth are there just to be angry and hate rather than to love and celebrate. Come to Ibrox and there’s a ready made script of hate, written by the lowest common denominator, for ye to take up and recite. The Daily Record and it’s rivals polarise Old Firm and religious issues and SCARE us all into picking sides and clinging to the unsubtle sign posting which makes it patently clear which side we’re on.