The shame old, shame old

[ian1964 10,367]

IT'S what this game of ours should be all about.

 

Two next-door neighbours, coming head to head with the whole season at stake.

 

One's top of the league, the other a point behind in second.

 

No wonder no one's thought about anything else for weeks.

 

And now it's here at last, there's not a spare seat to be had.

 

From the moment the gladiators swagger side-by-side into the arena, you can't hear yourself think.

 

Best of all, when it's done and every single one of them has wrung every single ounce of energy out of himself and into the the churned-up turf, winners and losers alike go home babbling about the only thing that matters.

 

The football.

 

But enough of Dunfermline against Raith on Saturday. This was Ibrox, 24 hours later. The anti-derby. The opposite of sport. Everything that this game of ours has been allowed to become.

 

A day when the sight of cops everywhere you turn should be a reassuring one - yet which in reality only rams home how depressing a fixture it is these days, how little it has to do with joy or entertainment and how it's all about praying the lid doesn't come flying off a big box of mayhem.

 

A day when the only result that matters to anyone who's not involved through choice is if they get through it all in one piece.

 

The ref and his linesmen, those legions of cops, hundreds of stewards, the girls on the pie stalls, the media. Taxi drivers, bus drivers, casualty nurses and doctors.

 

So many people put through the ringer just so the lawless, brainless element among two sets of fans can have their fun.

 

A minority? Yes, they may well be. But they are the fleas on the tail that wags the dog - and leave the rest of us yearning for a right good fumigating.

 

I mean, what chance is there of peace breaking out between these two when the one guy you'd think would want to keep his head down struts around the pitch winding up the world? Neil Lennon's been sent nail bombs in the post. Internet halfwits are being rounded up as we speak for running online death threat campaigns against him.

 

So if anyone should have been happy to get away with a result and head home to open Easter eggs with the family, it was surely him.

 

But no. He parades around the pitch at full time with both hands cupped to his ears, telling the Rangers hordes he can't hear them. And in one ill-judged gesture, he makes sure the whole firestorm of abuse and recriminations keeps on blazing away.

 

He said he was only having a laugh. And if these were jolly occasions, the world might have seen the joke. But let's be honest, they offer all the fun of a night in intensive care.

 

Or maybe that's just me, seeing as the official line from inside Ibrox was that everyone had a smashing time and Radio Scotland commentator Rob McLean announced that the occasion deserved "ten out of ten for atmosphere, noise and colour and good humour."

 

Good humour? Yeah, maybe in the way French peasants used to crowd round the guillotine for a fun night out or passers-by snigger when an old lady trips over a dodgy paving stone and breaks her hip.

 

From where I'm sitting on days like these, everyone hates everyone else. No one's happy.

 

At every throw-in and corner, twisted faces hang over the barriers, pointing and screaming abuse. They're like angry mongrels barking at postmen.

 

All over the pitch, players who every other week can pass and run and shoot with the best of them pull shirts and click heels, riddled with fear over the dire consequences of losing.

 

OK, so the second half was way better in the first and you could only admire the brilliance of Rangers keeper Allan McGregor as he kept his side in it. But in the end, it sums up the overall lack of quality that it will be most remembered for a striker failing to tuck away a soft penalty given by a ref who - for the second Old Firm outing on the trot - got away with making the wrong decision when it mattered most.

 

Between that messy incident and Lennon's antics at time-up, it was just about the most fitting possible end to a horrible week when this rivalry has felt more tired and tarnished than ever before.

 

I have friends on both sides who once would have sold their granny for an Old Firm ticket, but who'd now rather watch in the safety and sanity of their living rooms.

 

I've spoken to fans of many other clubs who used to tune in to gawp with a hint of jealousy at the craziness of it all but who didn't even put the telly on yesterday.

 

Yet still those who run Scotland's top division insist that these are the two clubs around which everyone must be built, whose every demand must be met.

 

EssPeeEll chief executive Neil Doncaster calls this need to pander to the Bigot Brothers "an unfortunate reality". Well, he was at East End Park on Saturday. He saw first hand how a local rivalry CAN be passionate without being poisonous.

 

And I hope he went home ashamed that he and his cohorts are flatly refusing to open the door to more clubs who have something fresh and energetic honest to offer.

 

If that's how the powers-that-be want things, if that's the respect they have for all those in this country who love football for football's sake, then the end if well and truly nigh.

 

Last week, former Celtic striker Mark McGhee admitted he wished he'd had the bottle to walk off the pitch in protest when the sectarianism got cranked up into overdrive.

 

What a message it would send to the halfwits who spoil it for the rest if a modern-day player could read his words and act upon them.

 

In fact, how good would it be if EVERYONE who hates the baggage that comes with this fixture just got up and walked out and left them to it.

 

Except that you instantly see the flaw in that plan.

 

Which is that the halfwits wouldn't even notice.

 

Read more: http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/sport/spl/3544479/The-shame-old-shame-old.html#ixzz1KUFasCRz

[Little General 80]

then why did he go to the game? if he didn't like don't go.

[Frank Hovis 0]

Leckie is a fat nobody, who cannae get a burd.

 

Another in a long line of parasitic journo hacks who can't stop writing about how bad and nasty the Old Firm is despite it keeping their poxy publications afloat (and their jobs) through their sensationalist Old Firm related tripe.

 

Have the courage of your convictions Bill and walk in to your editor tomorrow and tell him you don't want to report or attend Old Firm games again, I dare ye.