On Sunday evening, the great and the good of Scottish football will converge on a Glasgow city centre hotel to recognise those individuals who have lit up the game across the past 10 months. PFA Scotland’s annual awards dinner is always a hotly anticipated occasion, but this year’s gathering feels extra special, reflecting a season filled with drama and intrigue from the first whistle.
It says much about how competitive the Premiership has been that there is not a single Old Firm player among the Player of the Year nominations. The highlights reel has been packed with thrills and spills worthy of an epic feature.
However, amid all the joy and sporting theatre, one day assuredly will not make the final cut. The sight of both sets of fans inside the ground at an Old Firm derby is unlikely any time soon. The Scottish Cup quarter-final tie between Rangers and Celtic on March 8 was a hideous scar on what has otherwise been a magnificent feast of football. The ticket row that stemmed from it has further sapped the spirit.
With both clubs reluctant to take responsibility for the behaviour of the more extreme elements among their respective supports, it feels like we are trapped in a depressing never-ending cycle of blame and counter-blame. Headed by Mark Blackbourne, it is to be hoped the SFA’s investigation identifies what led to scores of rival fans entering the pitch, then goading and throwing missiles at each other over a police cordon. It was the darkest day in a season brimming with golden moments.
If the investigation’s findings mean that Old Firm games from here to eternity are played in front of no visiting fans, then so be it. Some things are simply more important. Some might mourn the passing of the ‘unique’ atmosphere which supposedly gives the fixture such appeal. Many decent people would be thankful that modern-day Scotland would no longer be subjected to such hooliganism and sectarian bile.
The squabble over the distribution of tickets for the final league match of the season at Celtic Park was another unedifying episode in a bleak story. Believing there was compelling evidence that those Rangers fans who entered the field of play that dark day were ultras, Celtic demanded that the Union Bears were not handed a percentage of the 2,500 tickets for the game on Sunday week. The scenes that followed Celtic’s Scottish Cup win at Ibrox have continued to cast a shadow.
With Rangers refusing to accede to this condition, the matter was batted to a sub-committee of the SPFL. Did Celtic have a valid point? Given those in question left seats earmarked for ultras and were dressed like them, they probably did. The trouble is that excluding specific groups from a ballot sets a precedent. Individuals should always be held accountable for their actions by the police and the clubs. Those who transgress should feel the full force of the law and should be hit with a banning order. But excluding a particular section en masse at one club’s behest crosses into new territory. Where will this now end?
While Celtic will feel pleased that there will now be no Union Bears inside Parkhead next weekend, that is more down to time constraints and technicalities than anything else. To be clear, the SPFL sub-committee did not completely side with them. It felt unable to make a proper determination because the matter was only referred to the board 16 days before the match in question. As a result, the current deadline of 14 days before a match for such matters to be decided looks set to be extended to 35 days from next season. That is clearly no use now.
The sub-committee also convened without the benefit of knowing the findings of the SFA investigation. That ensured they effectively granted Celtic the benefit of the doubt, feeling — on the evidence presented — that it was not in a position to ‘overrule a risk assessment’. The form of Motherwell and Hearts have made this Scottish season one of the best in memory. In other words, Celtic’s stipulation of no ultras being given tickets stood. It left Rangers with Hobson’s choice: take the briefs with the condition attached or leave them. In all probability, under protest, you’d imagine Rangers will now take up their 2,500 allocation on the basis that they cannot distribute any to the Union Bears.
Anyone believing that this is the end of the matter, though, needs a day off and a lie down in a darkened room. You’d be astonished if the Ibrox club do not now look to attach the same conditions when Celtic visit Ibrox in the league next season. They will surely cite the images of gates being rushed at the visiting end that day and the abhorrent vandalism which was daubed in the stadium’s interior. They will point the finger of blame at Celtic ultras and adopt the same position. And so on and so forth.
Before then, of course, we will all be expected to hold our noses and buy into the hype surrounding next week’s clash. How long before former players from both sides of the divide crawl out of the woodwork with anecdotes and predictions aplenty from what we are repeatedly told is the greatest match in world football? We surely will not get too far before being reminded that the entire planet will be watching. With the appalling events of March 8 and everything that has followed pockmarking an otherwise memorable season, that should be a cause of concern, not celebration.
