Burley:Childish war of words between Rangers and Celtic will only fuel fan conflicts

[ian1964 10,409]

CAMPBELL OGILVIE was spot on when he criticised both sides of the Old Firm for their petulant behaviour.

 

But the SFA chairman’s comments about the sniping between the clubs wasting time and money will no doubt fall on deaf ears once more.

 

Why? The petty point scoring we’ve seen from the hierarchy at both Celtic and Rangers recently is not dignified or appropriate.

 

It’s like they are trying to fuel the masses already at boiling point.

 

Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell’s jibe about Rangers was a throwaway comment meant to rouse supporters at the AGM but nothing more sinister.

 

The SFA compliance officer found he had no case to answer for his attempt at stand-up comedy.

 

And as for Rangers being upset enough to file a complaint to the SFA?

 

They have stumbled from one crisis to another in recent months but still find it necessary to get involved in childish debate.

 

Those at the SFA bunker must have thought it was a joke when Gers’ complaint about Lawwell dropped through the letterbox

 

What purpose did it serve other than waste the time of an association already bogged down with more pressing concerns.

 

It makes you sick to the pit of your stomach when you see these two squabble like the biggest kids in the playground.

 

How on earth can you expect punters from both sides of the city to keep the head when the bosses are throwing petrol on the fire.

 

Celtic, for their part, should rise above such petty squabbles.

 

They are financially secure thanks to a sound business structure and money pouring in from UEFA. Why get involved?

 

With a huge Champions League game this week, and the fallout from the trouble in Amsterdam still rumbling on, Celtic need to be focused.

 

Meanwhile Rangers, with another chairman entering through the revolving door, should look in the mirror before anyone pens another letter to the SFA.

 

Somebody should tip this club upside down and give it a good shake.

 

Hopefully then the imposters will fall by the wayside and some sort of normality can be found.

 

Why worry about what goes on across the city when the clubs are poles apart?

 

The teams are leagues apart – both in football and financial terms.

 

I’ve always believed that without these two Scottish football would die a slow death.

 

But if they can’t work together the game certainly won’t thrive.

 

Those who man the Daily Record Hotline should be knighted for listening to this drivel

 

Go on any football forum on the internet and the childish chatter between their fans is pathetic.

 

Should we be surprised when the top brass are at it as well?

[ian1964 10,409]

Gordon Waddell: Fans are struggling to cope with the Old Firm split

EVERYONE’S heard of the five stages of grief and loss at the death of a relationship, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

 

Psychology 101.

 

In years to come, they’ll find a whole new sub-genre. One they will study for decades yet never solve.

 

The infinite stages of Old Firm break-up.

 

Denial, anger, denial, anger, denial. Ad infinitum. They’ll strive to find a way to ‘acceptance’, sure, but it’ll never happen.

 

The psychologists will never understand that both sides in the relationship want it to be over – they say it’s over and fly into a rage at the notion it’s not.

 

But neither side will ever let go.

 

They are dysfunctional together, destructive, unreasonable, beyond counselling. Yet when they’re apart they’ll never stop talking about each other.

 

Never more evident than on Friday night when Campbell Ogilvie issued a statement through the SFA website giving them both a rap for wasting everyone’s time with their pathetic ‘he said, she said’ posturing.

 

And the one thing almost universally taken from it by their fans?

 

That they must grow up and start acting the way national institutions should?

 

Don’t kid yourself.

 

It’s that the SFA president referred to Rangers and Celtic as “two of our oldest rivals”. It’s a guaranteed instantaneous volcanic eruption. On one side, you have gleeful claims this is further acceptance of Rangers’ history still being intact.

 

On the other, denial that a rivalry, which could only possibly be 18 months old, even exists, far less outdates any other.

 

So, the last great existential question: Is there still an Old Firm?

 

They earned their joint moniker in 1904 from a cartoon in a newspaper, an acerbic dig at the pair who were quickly realising their commercial potential by engineering as many games against each other as they could in a season to get the crowds in.

 

And for more than a century since, they’ve milked it. Wooed sponsors together, tried to move to England together, tried to join the North Atlantic League together, tried to rip off other clubs together with their joint five per cent levy on ticket sales,

 

Were we, as a media, complicit? Of course we were. The two were a news-making

phenomenon. We’ve been accused of

making a living on their backs and it’s true in terms of their commercial pull.

 

When I was sports editor of the Daily Record 15 years ago, we had an editor – an Englishman but married into a Celtic-fixated family. He DEMANDED at a bare minimum, a spread on Rangers and a spread on Celtic every day. He was obsessed.

 

It was inconceivable to him that the country could go a day without reading something, anything, no matter how inane, about both of them.

 

One day we did nothing on Rangers. And he went tonto.

 

“But nothing happened at Rangers today.” I said. “It’s an international break. Fifteen of their players are away. I’m not sure they even open the doors at Ibrox.”

 

“I don’t give a flying ****,” he replied. Right before he threatened to sack me for the fifth time

that week.

 

He saw me daring to write about one without the other as the ultimate insubordination.

 

On the park and on the terraces, the teams were at each other’s throats.

 

Off it, they were coital, inseparable, opposite faces of the same rancid coin.

 

Now? On the surface they’re desperately trying to disentangle from each other but, like the worst abusive relationships, they can’t stay away from each other.

 

Will their association ever be the same? Probably not. But anyone trying to say the Old Firm no longer exist as an entity only has to switch on a radio, pick up a paper or look at Twitter or Facebook.

 

And you’ll find tens of thousands of people flitting between denial and anger and denial again.

 

Same as Peter Lawwell is.

 

Maybe he wasn’t bringing the game into disrepute under the letter of the law with his Rory Bremner jibe last week, but he certainly brought himself into disrepute.

 

Maybe Rangers should have more to worry about than writing about it.

 

But as a board member he put the SFA in an invidious position, knowing they’d have to say something or risk World War III.

 

He knew it was coming, had spoken to them about it. By all accounts though, he isn’t prepared to just take his dumps and move on.

 

If he can’t resist a pop back? Then next thing he writes should be a resignation letter to the SFA board. His position becomes untenable.

 

If he can? Call the psychologists, Maybe we’ve just had a breakthrough. Only bargaining and depression to go...

[ranger_syntax 3,761]

Go on any football forum on the internet and the childish chatter between their fans is pathetic.

 

Should we be surprised when the top brass are at it as well?

 

Craig obviously thinks that it is only football clubs that talk rubbish in order to play to the gallery.

 

What a remarkable lack of self awareness.