As I said in the piece Why Sevco Matters, there are times when I’m going to look at the club across town for a little light relief and humour.
This is one of those times, and it’s a beauty, and no mistake.
Everyone’s favourite Sevco fan site, Ibrox Noise, famous for such delightful articles as the one calling for a boycott of every SPL ground and for the sickening ones like the article it once published on a child abuse scandal, has found new ground in the demented wing of the nuthouse.
This one suggests that religious bigotry was behind the snubbing of several of the club’s players in the PFA Champions Team of the Year.
Yes, not content with having five out of eleven players in said team, Ibrox Noise wanted the rest and blames religious intolerance for not getting them.
I kid you not.
This is what today’s editorial – entitled “PFA Scotland Awards; fixed or genuine?” – is suggesting.
I urge you to spare yourself and not give them the hits; I can summarise their argument up pretty quickly without you needing to bother.
They allege that the sight of Michael Duffy – our on loan player at Livingston – refusing to clap as Sevco were given their guard of honour (their second of three, by the way) when the clubs met recently means that players can’t be trusted for vote for their peers for “the right reasons.”
The website has demanded – and again, I’m not joking – that every player with a vote be forced to do so in front of a camera and made to “justify” their decision.
Why not sweat them in front of a dangling lightbulb, whilst strapped to a polygraph machine too?
Now, I myself have lamented that this organisation voted Mark Warburton as manager of the year; it’s a ludicrous decision and totally inconsistent with previous years.
But that, in itself, should shoot down in flames any notion of an anti-Sevco conspiracy, not to mention that five of their players actually made the cut in the Championship select.
There are problems with this system.
It is inconsistent. It is occasionally horrendously wrong.
Of those things there’s just no doubt.
But none of the decisions made has the slightest thing to do with religion for God’s sake.
This isn’t an anti-Protestant conspiracy as that barmy site appears to believe, any more than a failure to give the manager of the year award to Ronny Deila last season is an anti-Catholic one.
I mean, does anyone have a clue what religion Deila is? Or Duffy?
Does anyone care?
Does anyone actually honestly give a monkeys?
Jesus, aren’t we past this as a civilised country? Why do so many of these goons continue to wallow in this cesspit? It would be bad enough if they kept these views themselves, but they appear to believe that such warped thinking is reflected in wider society, that it’s the common currency out there.
They are an embarrassment to Scottish football, but I make no apologies about drawing attention to them.
When that website published it’s article on Stein I vowed I’d keep a very close eye on everything they did from then on, and I’ve made it my business to highlight the nuttier ideas that take root there. I think its writers are amongst the stupidest, most ignorant, people in Scotland.
Pretending these kind of folk are not there was once hailed as the only sensible strategy, but now these people have blogs and megaphones through which to shout their nonsense and that means it has to be challenged and their nonsense exposed for what it is.
We all have our issues with how Scottish football works.
I think too many people in it are intimidated by the blue jerseys and give that club far more respect than it’s due.
Scrutiny of them is almost impossible in some quarters because of fear of what their more criminally minded fans might get up to.
I think some of the processes that our governing bodies follow are hopelessly inadequate and open to corruption, and I discuss those things here and elsewhere.
But rational people don’t make these kind of crazy connections and allege that every issue Scottish football faces comes down to what church you attended or what school you went to. This is the mark of truly unhinged people.
But they remain endlessly amusing.
I wish Scottish football didn’t have them, but I tell you … I’m never going to get tired of laughing at them as long as they are here.