'Old Firm games behind closed doors? We may as well shut down the league'

[ian1964 10,372]

By Tom English

in Eindhoven

IF MARTIN Bain, the Rangers chief executive, managed to suppress any cynicism he may have had at the Holyrood summit on Tuesday then the club captain, David Weir, wasn't nearly as cagey when Rangers arrived in Eindhoven for today's Europa League tie against PSV.

Weir described the furore that has built up around the Old Firm in the wake of the so-called "Shame Game" against Celtic as nonsense and dismissed the idea that the fixture would ever get played behind closed doors, as some in the police have intimated.

 

"It will never happen," said Weir. "It is the pride fixture of Scottish football. It has kept Scottish football going for years and you would be as well just closing down the league if that (closed doors Old Firm games] was the case."

 

The captain, quite obviously unimpressed with some of the interventions from Holyrood and Strathclyde Police, didn't stop there either. "You play in a lot of games that have an edge," he said. "Throughout the course of your career you get involved in games like this. That is what football is all about. People love that. Everybody says it is Scotland's shame, but I know by going down south that everybody is talking about it. Everybody is saying Scottish football is on its knees but there has been more interest in the last week than there has been in weeks.

 

"I think we have to be a bit more realistic and put things into perspective and move on a wee bit. That game is gone. As players you are ultimately disappointed to lose the game. That's the bottom line. The other sort of nonsense that goes with it is irrelevant."

 

Weir is not blind to the connection between on-field aggravation and off-field trouble in these games, far from it. But he disputes the level of blame that can be attached to the Old Firm for, say, domestic abuse against women in the hours after Rangers and Celtic play each other. He also questions the rationale for police wanting to address players before Old Firm games to remind them of the repercussions of their actions on the street. "If you do that for this game," he said, talking about the upcoming Co-operative Insurance Cup final, "then you are going to need to do it for every game. I don't see how you can only single out one game and watch what you have to do in one match and not the others. I don't see why that should happen. It should be the case in every game. You have to be responsible for your actions on and off the field, whether you are a footballer or Joe Public. That is the way it should be. It should be at the back of your mind regardless of what you are doing, so I don't see why we should be reinforcing it before the cup final."

 

The captain rejected the notion that last Wednesday's game at Parkhead was especially ugly - "There were no major incidents and nothing that merits politicians getting involved," he claimed - and defended the rights of players to be fiery at Hampden on 20 March. "If you sanitise it and take that out of football then we are in danger of becoming a society where we won't be able to do anything. We would end up constantly on the back foot worrying what are doing."

 

Walter Smith - who, in a rare moment of football chat, revealed that Kyle Lafferty is fit to play this evening but that Vladimir Weiss is probably not - also revisited the summit. It is long been the manager's view that blaming the Old Firm for society's ills is a cop-out, that the nation's problems with drink and violence and bigotry go way beyond a mere football match, albeit a football match that is undoubtedly the catalyst for public disorder. Like his captain before him, Smith played down the somewhat emotional talk of last Wednesday's 'game that shamed a nation'.

 

"You see things happening in England which are worse," he said. "Tackle-wise and otherwise. We see clashes between managers and other things happening on the pitch. That just goes as part and parcel of the game. Percentage-wise we don't do too badly in terms of handling a situation which is a fairly volatile one. I must stress, as a whole, in all the years I've been involved that it's not been too bad (the on-field discipline]. When the police flagged up a few weeks ago that there is a problem then we've all got to listen to that. The Wednesday game then made it worse. But would the social problem outwith Wednesday's game be any worse after that match than after previous games?

 

"It's not actually what happens in the game which causes the problem (of domestic and general violence]. It's the game itself - the Rangers and Celtic Old Firm game at any time. It's a broader issue than just looking at what happens on the pitch. So, anything they try and do, yes, we'll agree to do it and it'll be helpful and we hope it can bring a certain calmness. Everyone has to play their part in that."

 

Of course, he's got the small matter of a last 16-tie in the Europa League to contend with first.

 

 

http://sport.scotsman.com/celticfc/Old-Firm-games-behind-closed.6731468.jp?articlepage=2

[Gribz 743]

Its not exactly the same as some games in South American or even Italy where the crime levels can be far more fierce. Im not defending immature behaviour at these games but to discuss closed door games is too far.

 

If that was ever the case the OF should flex their muscles and not accept away tickets for the other clubs for a period to hit the whole league in the pocket.