Zippos at Craig Gordon, Zimmers at Craig Brewster

What a kick up the eighties! Travelling to Pittodrie needing a win to o’erleap Ayburdeeeen … in DECEMBER!

S’been a few years since that’s happened - and, after going “up to the sheep station at midday” (”oh-oh.oh-oooooh-oh.Don’t wanna go …”) this Sarturday, I hope it’s a few decades before the red menace are ever above us in the league again. Horrible city, horrible club, horrible fans - Aberdeen FC are just one horrible concept in general. Me really no likey.

Can’t believe they got off with relegation so often during the last 15 years and, as much as I like Jimmy Calderwood and Jimmy Nichol, I’d love for a thumping Rangers win on Saturday lunchtime to begin a steady spiral back down the doldrums for the Granite Shitty shitebags. Short-changing their infamously parsimonious fans over the years by performing in only four league games a season, you don’t need to be Big Carl “The Barrel” Jung or Wee Siggi Id-ey Freud to work out why their fans decided to sublimate their loathing for their ain team and transfer it into a jealousy-fuelled, attention-seeking decision to try and catch Celtic’s manky coat-tails as Number One Rangers-haters.

What an ambition in life! Admirable.

I remember the days of Ferguson’s Aberdeen gubbing us at Ibrox, Hampden and the Sheep-dome. Remember them all too well. Remember the night they won the Europeanm Cup-Winners’ Cup for godsakes - I was at Hampden the following Saturday as the biggest Aberdeen support ever to assemble in any stadium ever saw their greatest-ever side scrape past a valiant effort by one of the poorest Rangers sides in history.

And then Fergie left. And they didnae know what they’d had. So they Sacked Alex Smith because he failed to win the Championship by one game - one FEKIN BRILLIANT game, mind! - and then there was Porterfield, Miller, Aitken, Skovdhal, Hegarty and God Knows who else - all making a total arse of following Fergie. Only now, 22 years after their last Championship, have they got a grip on just how bad they are. That’s why they can be having a fantastic season if they’re jousting for second and third place while we have a shitter of a season to vie with them for the very same spot.

That’s why Aberdeen ’s best siging of the season is a 40 year-old ex-Manager.

Thank gawd Craig Brewster cannae play for them on Saturday. That guy is one class act and has certainly been at the root of a few undoings of The Gers, from his winner in the 1994 Scottish Cup final on to his post-Millenial days with Hibs, Dunfermline and Inverness. The man’s a marvel and, with Stevie Crawford at East End Park in particular, part of a near-balletic strike partnership which was as entertaining as it was deadly.

It would be embarassing, however, for Rangers to have them on our books at the present stages in their retirement … erm - careers - but it’s already a slight beamer to require a win to jump over Auld Ayburdeeeen in the table. Carry on our form of the last two SPL matches and we’ll easily achieve what, to most Aberdonians, is a beloved passtime - leap-frogging sheep.

Talking of Aberdeen and pittifultodrie and coins being bounced off Rbbie Winters’ heid (top man, Robbie - didbn’t make a meal of it when he could so easily have milked the moment like a Lennon or an O’Neill. Who said he could have “coined it in”??!!) - I see The mighty Teds have , in the words of Undertaker Buonesera “suspended da registration” of the East Kilbride RSC for their alleged part in or unwillingness to assist in finding the perpetrators of the chucking of lighters at Craig Gordon at Tynecastle and, of course, the awful singing those oh-so-taboo sectarian songs.

Seems like there’s a competition developing between the Old Firm these days. Like the SPL, it’s screened on Setanta most Sundays but, unlike the current SPL, Rangers are neck-and-neck with the hooped Herberts: It’s called “look How Many of our own fans we’re banning” and the common thread is any song deemed to be sectarian - and away games.

I saw the stuff going onto the park at Tynecastle and instantly cringed because I knew there’d be repercussions and more bad publicity and shed-loads of hysterics on this blog giving it “SEE! this proves yer all neo-nazi bigots”.

Yup - yer read that correctly: I didnae cringe because I hate to see my fellow fans indulging in unpleasant behaviour. Or because I feared for the cranial safety of the best keeper in Britain. No. I cringed because I knew it’d start all that school-kid name-calling in the media and cyberspace. And I knew there’d be more Bears banned.

I’m in no way condning what happened at Tynecastle - it was stupid - but I have to be careful of hypocrisy here. When Stilian Petrov took a carton of Coke in the napper in 2005 for celebrating like a knob in front of the Copland Road stand, I was almost whole-heartedly chuffed. It would be a sore and sobering moment for the Bulgar without being permanently damaging. And Petrov himself had the good grace to apologise to the Copland as he ran back to his own half. He knew he was asking for it. And for the same reason I have to congratulate Thomas Gravesen who, after an initial and instinctive raising of the arm upon wellying in Celtic’s opener last Sunday, made a point of haring back up to the half-way line, towards the Broomloan, before even as much as smiling.

Och, I know I know - by the letter of the law we shouldnae be reacting with what is violence to what is, after all, just cheap childish goading. And the slippery slope theory denotes that permitting a carton of the leading brand of cola (and the reason Santa Claus is always depicted wearing a pseudo-Aberdeen strip) to be bounced of a player’s napper could lead to golf balls and Katyusha rockets soon following. BUT the slippery slope theory IS in full effect atthe moment. Imagine Petrov was thirty years older and had got as close to the OLD Copland Road End, in the sixties or seventies - it would have been a hail hail of half-full glass bottles AND a pitch invasion. He’d have died. He woudln’t have done it.

That I can remember and name the unpleasant incidents of the last few years is a testimony to how santised and safe football crowds in Scotland have become. That’s why Petrov could stand goading the Copland for so long that day and only one minor missile is chucked accurately. That’s why the authorities can now focus on what SONGS they don’t like never mnind what kind of behaviour. Quite an achievement - because football fans ARE very often strictly-speaking very unpleasant, football IS an unpleasant environment when analysed in objective terms. We all know it’s an environment with the capability for unbelievable beauty and emotional catharsis of the most searing, memorable type. But a lot of the time -ie SINCE Andy Goram left - football can serve us in less easily-packaged, less-sellable but indubitably more ways: It’s very often society’s dustbin. All that stuff you repress during the week, ye can let go at the game on the weekend. You don’t give a shit about religion or politics but your job’s crap and you need to be unpleasant to the world which makes ye work that job - sing a nasty song and make others as upset as you are.

I didnae think we should have reacted with anything other than laughter to Artur Boruc blessing himself “In our face” on Sunday. I thought Craig Gordon was in no way deserving of a lighter or two chucked at him and neither was Robbie Winters needing a pay rise in such a direct fashion. But, at other times, I’ve seriously wished I had the kind of willpower which would enable me to relinquish my sugar fix and hurl a mars bar or coke carton in the direction of - mmm, let’s see - Craig Bellamy on his knees twixt Copland and Govan. That’s why I wasn’t gonnae go OTT in condemning the Sellik fans for yukking stuff at Nando as he waved to The Gers support from the corner of the ground in which he was being abused by the parkhead locals in 2005. He knew what he was doing did our Rickers. I only condemn those who claim it never happens among their own. Those who suddenly become more innocent than innocent when other fans behave badly.

I heard one Rangers fans’ representative tonight, on the radio, pleading for a bit of lenience and understanding from Rangers towards their own fans. Bang on. And more communication between the club and the support - yup, dialogue is good. Then the “ned” factor was mentioned. Know what he’s getting at but a dangerous tack to take - Classifying a social type when we, the entire Rangers support, are so often a victim of that kind of mass stereotyping ourselves. I can’t speak for anyone else but what many see as “neddish” behaviour has often been the very thing to quell potential trouble at games - a harmless way of letting off steam with banter and slander. And what ISN’T classed as Neddish is, say, for example, sending death threats to football players or fans - yet it’s far more sinister and cowardly than “neddish” behaviour. And give me a bit of Burburry-bunneted cheek over po-faced Main Door protesting any day.

Or maybe I’m just loathe to condemn anyone as, while I haven’t ever chucked a missile at the football, I’ve certainly sang a whole load of what can be strictly-speaking described as “sectarian songs” and I’ve ceratinly engaged in behaviour which is very, very “neddish”. And I’m 37 you know.

(Seen the new book the Rangers ICF? Page 48 - Celtic-Hamilton incident - I was in that mob!)

I don’t know the guys from East kilbride and it seems that they are definitely being made an example of. If they’re gonnae throw stuff at opposition players, my advice is make it something liquid, cold and contained in a paper cup - and make it at a player who deserves it. And if yer gonnae sing sectarian songs, well - I think we’ve been down this road before … and I want some time to wrap the last of my pressies. Let’s just say that I like Martin Bain’s recent proclamation on ALL forms of UNPLEASANT songs:

Let he who is without sin, cast the first lighter.

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Published:
12.21.06 / 11pm
Category:
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