You’ll know us by our noise

So we get a 13k fine for singing bigoted songs. That’s the news. As is the fact the fine could have been a whopping 25K and we WONT be having part or all of our sacred ground closed for future UEFA games … unless we do it again. Unless, that is, us Rangers fans sing those songs which I freely admit to singing.

That’s the news. That’s the detail. You can get all that on the BBC website or wherever you want to read, hear, see your news.

Sky Sports News said “Rangers have been warned about their fans’ behaviour and fined a few grand” - they actually made more of Alex Rae becoming payer manager of Dundee (All the very best, Alex - I thought you were brilliant, mate but your departure means that, for the first time in my life I’m now older than EVERY player on Rangers books) than they did about the story which came up first on BBC Reporting Scotland: Jackie Bird giving it “GUILTY OF SECTARIANISM!”… after her stern, skinny “good evening”.

So that’s the news but already I’m skewering it into opinion and whether yer Blue or Green (or ORANGE, don’t forget!) you’ll already be getting emotional about the way I’ve even detailed the way the “news” has been reported.

Already you’re looking for agendas. Already you’re guessing my opinions. Already you’re deducing what you think are MY agendas.

Some of you think I’m selling Rangers out. Some of you think I’m a fanatical bigot. Some of you think I’m taking it too lightly. Some of you think I’m helping an anti-Rangers press. Some of you think I’m just talking shite (okay, MOST of you think I’m just talking shite…) but the MAIN thing about this topic is that it gets everyone so over-emotional that rational thought just goes out the window. And football fandom is such a wholly irrational business that dealing in the coldly scientific is irrelevant, useless anyway.

Basically, if you care about this issue, you’ll tend to have your opinions fixed one way or another and you’ll tend to be excitable about contrary views. If you don’t care then you wouldnt be on this site. If you do care, I bet there’s a 90% chance you’re Scottish, a 9% chance you’re from one of the Irelands (and already trying to work out what I’m getting at by “one of the Irelands”) and a 1% chance you’re English. There’s fuck-all chance you’re a Villarreal fan - and a next-to-fuck-all chance you’re from anywhere on the continent or beyond.

This is why, as a Bluenose, as a Rangers fan, whatever you think of the covergae of this subject and whether you think it’s right or wrong to sing these songs, it’s almost impossible to form an opinion which isn’t informed by the actions of other fans. It’s sooooo tempting to circle the wagons and employ the “two wrongs make us right” attitude.

To think I can sit here and say UEFA’s fine is right or wrong and talk solely about today’s “judgement” from the governing body is as pathetic as it was for anyone to claim their initial verdict somehow made us “not guilty” in any truly objective realm. If our ground was to be closed or we were booted out of Europe then, yeah, we’d have some talking to do on the UEFA findings but 13,300.00 doesn’t amount to as much as a dirty look as far as Rangers are concerned. The concrete effects (no bus-panning pun intended) of today’s edict are not the issue. It’s the debate which it again opens up. It’s the whole topic of Rangers fans singing sectarian songs which is the real issue and barely can I get that sentence out before I hear the thousands of Bluenoses already claiming that there is no song on the Ibrox hymn-sheet which can be called truly sectarian and already I hear so many of the Celtic fans out there claiming there is no debate - it’s cut and dried - Rangers fans are bigots…

Yese all know what I mean. Let’s just call it “this topic”

Me? I’ve always freely admitted how confused I am about my own feelings on “this topic”. And I think a lot of Rangers and non-Rangers people are even more confused about it than me - the ridiculous instinct for machismo “certainty” on emotive issues clouds their judgement. It makes them say things they haven’t thought through. The confusion is what causes the conflict. If we can at least get it out in the open and admit to it, we’ll make massive inroads to solving the bad blood.

My past actions are definite. My instincts from moment to moment change as my situation changes - and what I do as a result of those instincts cannot be changed. I see celtic fans celebrating at Ibrox - I want to piss them off: So my instinct tells me to sing a song I know they’ll hate. I see the Rangers players below me giving it their heart and soul on a Spanish pitch in a Champions League knock-out match, I want to sing a song which is hearty and thunderously rousing - again I sing “Hullo Hullo”.

But, as happened during our most recent home cock-up, against Aberdeen, the discussions and the way they’re carried forward by the media can certainly help change our future instincts. “Hullo Hullo” died a wee death that day. It definitely faded. Not saying if I think that’s right and I know for a fact thousands of non-Gers fans will laugh it off as a spit in the ocean of Ibrox sectarianism - but it happened. Yet to sit here, in my padded cell, and form any cut-and-dried opinion on whether or not I think we should stop singing “Hullo, Hullo”, far less the many other songs we sing - I just cant and wont do it.

We have a Catholic manager and we’ve been signing Catholic players for 17 years now. Bringing out the orange away strip threatened to ruin the idea that the club itself was being run on purely secular grounds but, basically, the bigotry charge now lies with us, the fans.

All I can say is I love Rangers like no man should love anything other than his immediate family, his slippers and his leather chaps, and that I’ve talked about this til I’m both blue AND green in the face: If you want to have a pop at me about my opinions on Rangers and sectarianism then you first have to know what my opinions are. And you can’t. Because I don’t know myself: But here is everything I and others on this site have said about it so far this year. Ye want a fight? Well, then ye have to get yer facts half right first.

http://rangers.openfootball.co.uk/index.php/2006/04/12/uefa-finding-bluenoses-are-tree-hugging-hippies/

http://rangers.openfootball.co.uk/index.php/2006/03/16/protestants-bigots-huns-naw-just-true-blues/

http://rangers.openfootball.co.uk/index.php/2006/03/12/milosevic-is-dead-but-we-still-have-rangers/

http://rangers.openfootball.co.uk/index.php/2006/04/19/up-to-our-toes-in-common-sense/

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Published:
05.24.06 / 11pm
Category:
News