Gordon Waddell: Rangers cup final statement laughable and only themselves to blame

[ian1964 10,440]

Lifted from FF, I can't find the actual article so no link provided.

 

 

THERE will be those who’ll trenchantly tell you this week that the meeting of Celtic and Rangers on Saturday is a first.

 

That a league game between the two has never happened before.

 

Great. Here’s hoping they all behave like that is the case. That the worst poisonous excesses of the century-old hate-fuelled rivalry the rest of Scottish football has had to endure are absent.

 

That the police have no need to talk to the players beforehand about the consequences of their behaviour because the social and moral inadequacy of the fans who support them – and their ability to bring the worst out in each

other – is a thing of the past.

 

And that there is even less need for them to take to the streets and boozers afterwards, irrespective of the result. That’s what happens at regular games, right?

 

Supporters come, they watch, they care, go through 90 minutes of angst, they go home.

 

But I think we all know there’s going to be nothing regular about this. Nothing normal.

 

No matter how many liquidation specialists on social media there are or how often they tell you that the ‘Old Firm’ no longer exists or that the team in blue shirts playing inside Ibrox every other week are an apparition.

 

Saturday will be business as usual. The generation of heat rather than light. Like the two of them have never been apart.

 

You can sense it building. Like a player stretching his hamstrings before kick-off.

 

The IRA chanting at Tynecastle from the Celtic fans.

 

Another evening’s viewing the Friday before last tainted by obscene sectarianism from the Rangers fans at Rugby Park.

 

It was bad enough seeing the entire dressing room giving it the full ‘F*** the Pope and the Vatican’ in the sepia-tinged documentary Scotland’s Game without us still having to endure similar from the stands 30 years on.

 

But there it was, like they were limbering up, a loosener for the vocal cords, a training game for what lay ahead.

 

Which also, by the way, made last week’s Rangers statement on their demands for Hibs to be held accountable by the SFA for the behaviour of their fans at the Cup Final all the more laughable.

 

Conveniently forgetting that their own – and Celtic’s – objections to the introduction of strict liability laws in the past to hold THEM accountable for THEIR fans was exactly why the SFA remained powerless in the current circumstances to do anything.

 

They are legal eunuchs.

 

An organisation that needs its members to empower it yet whose members run a mile every time they’re asked to vote to do it.

 

So forgive those of us who have been banging the drum for it for years being sceptical of the motives behind the Ibrox hierarchy’s sudden desire to see a club accept full responsibility for their support, irrespective of ‘doing all they could’ to ensure their behaviour.

 

Because you know as soon as they’re on the receiving end you won’t see their principles for dust.

 

I’ve got a copy of an SPFL delegate’s report from last season, for example, which highlights sectarian singing amongst the Rangers support.

 

It’s done as a matter of course and ignored by the authorities as a matter of course.

 

Never seen by the public or heard about because they know as soon as they ask about it Rangers will trot out a list of what they do to curb sectarianism – and they’ll be given a pass, without fail.

 

Which is why it still goes on, ad infinitum. And which is why Rangers’ stance last week was rank hypocrisy because in the past the pair of them have fought vehemently against strict liability in the knowledge they both stand to be its biggest victims

 

Again, to repeat, their premise is right. Their players were in harm’s way. Said it at the time, have said so often enough since.

 

The invasion of the Hibs fans was the genesis of the problem and those of us at the game saw the consequences. But to expect the SFA to deal with it when they've left them unarmed is ludicrous.

 

In amongst all the noise next weekend there will be a football match taking place. Everything points to Celtic skooshing it – Rangers’ defensive fragility against Celtic’s pace from middle to front has to concern Mark Warburton.

 

Their balance in the middle of the park is awry as well. Then again, everyone and their auntie was saying Celtic would walk it in April’s cup semi and we all saw what happened there.

 

Either way it has the aura of a defining 90 minutes for both of them, one which will answer questions about where their respective summers have left them and how much their investments – or lack of them – have paid off.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

How does it have anything to do with strict liability. We're not talking about singing songs here we're talking about assaults.

[alexscottislegend 2,090]

I normally have time for Waddell but here he seems to equate singing and assaults. Hope somebody who has access to twitter points this out to him.

[jhunter 0]

again and again and again

 

trying to equate physical assaults on PLAYERS with the singing of songs

 

absolutely despicable and reprehensible

[jhunter 0]

I normally have time for Waddell but here he seems to equate singing and assaults. Hope somebody who has access to twitter points this out to him.

 

christ alone knows why his pieces are absolute trash

 

week in week out

 

he once wrote that Rangers was a club deserving of punch in the face

 

he's a rat.

[MacK1950 2,241]

Hope if he ever gets assaulted his attacker does not sing a sectarian song at him goodness knows what charges and punishment would be inflicted.It would make interesting reading.

[SteveC 150]

]I normally have time for Waddell [/b]but here he seems to equate singing and assaults. Hope somebody who has access to twitter points this out to him.

 

I am surprised to read that given, when we were at death's door, he launched a diatribe glorying in our fall and saying we were a club no-one could ever tire of punching in the face.

[D'Artagnan 173]

The invasion of the Hibs fans was the genesis of the problem and those of us at the game saw the consequences. But to expect the SFA to deal with it when they've left them unarmed is ludicrous.

 

How ridiculous is that sentence ? Nothing left the SFA "unarmed".

 

Their continual catalogue of utter incompetency left them firing blanks.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

If hibs are in the Scottish cup this season rangers should refuse entry.

[Scott7 5,229]

I'm not in favour of strict liability. Hibs, the club, could not have prevented the exhuberance of their followers so why should they be liable?

Hibs, the club, went wrong by failing to acknowledge that the whole affair was caused by their followers and failing to condemn them for their conduct and thereby Hibs, the club, brought the game into disrepute.

Simples.