A Love That Dare Not Show Its Face

[Frankie 8,151]

The usual insightful (or should that be inciteful) commentary from Andy Steel on social matters pertaining to the Rangers...

 

http://www.gersnet.co.uk/index.php/latest-news/145-a-love-that-dare-not-show-its-face

 

I received a text last week from my son's primary school. Nothing unusual in that, as the parents among you will recognize, unless you count the fact that for once, they were not asking for money. The requests for cash from his school this year has led me to believe that I'd have made a saving if I'd sent him to the private school hereabouts: the school bosses must have a brass neck a foot thick.

 

Despite constant appeals for cash based vaguely on some kind of school ethos and providing for the kids - and there I was thinking that was what taxation was for, but plainly sacrificing the blood of young men and women to no apparent end in central Asia takes precendent - the same school displays all the control freakery most of us will remember from our own school days. Primary school staff seem to get into the mindset that everyone they deal with are about 10 years old; hardly surprising, but a little awkward when you are 42.

 

Their rather authoritarian text last week referred to their summer fayre, which was themed under the title of 'footballers and fairies'. Despite selecting football as a theme, and despite being located slap bang in the heart of Old Firm country, their text this morning reads:

 

"Summer Fayre "Footballers & Fairies", no Rangers or Celtic strips allowed. Thanks

 

I am maybe not the only person equally as annoyed by the shoddy grammar as I am by the pre-emptory tone and ludicrous nature of the text. It makes you wonder, though, if a body (or two bodies, i.e. the Old Firm) cannot operate openly within the communities in which they exist, is there much of a future for them at all?

 

While there's no point denying a good wheen of Old Firm fans represent the worst elements of fandom, if Scottish society finds expression of support for the Old Firm by 12 year old children unacceptable then it should follow its convictions to their logical conclusion and remove what is, plainly, an unwelcome corruption in its midst. If showing your support for your team via the medium of wearing clothes is such a provocative gesture, then I would urge legislators at Holyrood to outlaw the sale of shirts or scarves, given the chance to wear them - for all but the hairiest, scariest, Beariest of Bears - will be so slim.

 

Given the removal of the Old Firm game itself and given the continuing freak show which continues to surround this (presently) non-existent fixture, its clear that merely removing the game won't stop the trumpets striking up their symphony of discordance. So let's go the whole hog! Ban 'em both!!

 

Ridiculous? Well, the philosophical question behind it is valid. If you, society, really can't stand us or trust us to the point where we cannot express support for our team by the - gasp! - act of wearing clothes, then you have an issue which really needs addressed and not ignored. I can see why pubs might not encourage football colours; drink is a firestarter. But a primary school summer fayre? Really?

 

A society which acts like this is a bit unwell, I think. But the appetite to take medicine is limited. Last week, when moves were mooted to make clubs 100% responsible for their fans' actions - something many, many loudmouth bastards have urged us to do for decades - they suddenly discovered it might be unworkable and wanted a compromise instead. When it came to actually doing something, they shat it. So its likely these people - the non-OF people, who sneer at the mass of OF fans and class them all in with the Lennons or loonies who smear their clubs - will recoil from actually taking this poisoned bull by the horns and dealing with it, preferring the role of frightened sheep to determined physician.

 

Far better to hush things up, to hide shirts away in drawers, and hope that, by a miracle perhaps, things will just get by. What a feeble ambition, worthy of the cowardly, feeble minds behind it. This banning of the shirt won't reduce its cachet, it will only give it a certain outlaw credibility just designed to appeal to the kind of person with personality issues who latches onto the OF anyway in order to give themselves an identity.

 

So we are left with two questions: is this approach to visible symbols of support for OF sensible, and how can the clubs exist in a society which loathes them?

 

As to the first question, no it isn't, but I don't have a solution for the dafties in our society either, so its a bit rich slating others for trying. It just seems that the simple act of wearing a football strip is now automatically linked to offence, which can't be right. A tricky knot, but not one we can help untie by wearing of boxing gloves.

 

As to the second, an excellent article on Gersnet by AMMS recently highlighted the traditional class schism between football and rugby fans. Even within the football community, though, there has always been an element - usually quite strong within the Kirk, interestingly - who would sooner cut off their own right hand than support either half of the Old Firm, and especially Rangers. So societal distaste for us is nothing new - there's elements of our support I find hard to take, even, and I've been going to Ibrox since 1984.

 

But if things have evolved to a point where high minded moralists of a theological persuasion and joined by Mr and Mrs Scottish Everybody, and the clubs are seen as pernicious, a threat, an unwelcome canker, it's hard to see how they can continue for another century or more. Something has to change: society is unlikely to, so it will probably come down to us. And we are not likely to!

 

As the horribly outdated gender assigning theme for the school fayre showed, what one person finds acceptable another will fight against. To a lot of people boys playing football and girls dressing up as fairies is entirely fine; but to others, especially young people, it smacks of the 19th century. I can only conclude that when the tipping point between those who tolerate the Old Firm and those who loathe it reaches a majority in favour of the latter, we are in trouble, even more than we are already.

[chilledbear 16]

Ban the wearing of football tops, expensive rubbish nobody over 15 should be allowed to wear them.

[foggy dewhurst 0]

i think that not just the old firm but every team in scotland have a duty to embrace the local schools and clubs regardless of the denomination it would help bring boys out to play football and help in this stupid thing of divide in the community maybe children should all attend the same schools to learn instead of dividing them at a young age who knows but i have no problems with children wearing their teams strips

[Juancornetto 1]

Don't the kids and parents all support Maccabi Haifa in Bearsden Andy?

 

Another example of the hypocrisy that exists in Scotland. People cling onto outdated traditions and conventions thinking it's a positive thing whilst marginalising football fans for essentially doing the same thing. I wonder if schools in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham or London ban particular football strips?