As if his club was not already mired in shame, and up to its ankles in the dirty waters of the gutter after the last few days, the managing director of Sevco appeared almost determined to make matters worse when he spoke to numerous media outlets yesterday at the launch of the brand new umbrella fans group Club 1872, a reference to the year in which the liquidated OldCo Rangers was founded.
For the most part his comments were simply idiotic. When he got on to discussing Saturday’s events they became shameful. When he reached the point where he was discussing the sectarian singing of the supporters they became absolutely disgusting.
In a rambling statement he tried to excuse the behaviour of his fans, and their choice of songs, by saying they were “provoked.”
Provoked into sectarian singing?
How much of this nonsense do we have to endure before it’s called what it is?
He then says he’d rather have his fans doing that than invading the pitch, apparently not realising that, in fact, they did both and the whole country saw it.
What is wrong with these people? Seriously?
In making these remarks, Stewart Robertson has removed any doubts people may have had about his suitability to serve on the SPFL board.
He is demonstrably unfit for any such position.
His remarks are an insult to every club and every supporter in the country, and they are an insult to every single person who has been a victim of sectarian abuse or attack.
Where do these ideas come from?
That’s an important question because as far as everyone was aware, Stewart Robertson was a perfectly decent person whilst he was at Motherwell. That means this stunning transformation into someone who’s willing to stand there in front of a camera and spout this kind of guff comes down to one of two things.
Either he always held such perverse views and was hired, in part, because he reflected that mind-set, or he quickly became infected with the sort of paranoia and nonsense that pervades Ibrox these days.
If it’s the first then we should be concerned, and whatever the truth it’s clear that Ibrox itself is a dangerous place and it would have been unquestionably better for everyone in Scottish football if it had closed when Rangers went under and never opened its doors again.
Either way Robertson wasn’t, as he seems to believe, excusing some slightly off-colour behaviour from his club’s supporters.
He was excusing blatant criminality, a mass breaking of the law.
He says the Sevco fans didn’t start singing The Billy Boys until the Hibs fans were on the park, which is an outright falsehood in the first place. Many, many thousands of them were regaling the whole nation with their sectarian songbook for the entirety of the match.
Yet even if his version wasn’t utter nonsense, he’s talking about placing that illegal act “in context” as though there’s any situation in which thousands of people singing about being up to their knees in other people’s blood is even remotely tolerable.
By his abysmal and twisted logic there are circumstances where this kind of conduct is excusable, and perhaps even acceptable, which is to say nothing for the diabolical and flatly untrue statements about his club’s supporters invading the field to act as some kind of rescue squad.
That insults the intelligence of every person who watched the events unfold.
But again, even if it were true and not some deranged fantasy behind which he and the rest of his board is content to hide, his club is now on the record as supporting the rights of its fan to thuggish, neddish behaviour in the pursuit of vigilante justice.
That’s equally scandalous.
That this guy can even think about putting himself forward for a seat on a board where he hopes to hold influence in the national sport demonstrates a profound disconnect with reality that is frankly mind-boggling and when he puts his name up for nomination he ought to be laughed right out of the room because if he’s elected then something is deeply, deeply wrong with our national game and the people who make these kind of decisions.
Following this car-crash interview, the fans group issued a statement demanding the resignation of Rob Petrie, for his own comments in the aftermath of the game, when things were still very confused and the events not fully understood.
It’s patently obvious that this was co-ordinated with the club, and that they’re speaking for the board, but again they are barking at the moon, because if Petrie is unfit to serve then the notion that Robertson is becomes even more ridiculous.
One of the posts that’s due to open up is that which belongs to our own director, Eric Riley, who’s stepping down. It is imperative that we name someone from Celtic to replace him, or find a suitable candidate amongst the other clubs and throw our full weight behind that person. Ann Budge must take the seat vacated by the departing Stephen Thompson of Dundee Utd. If Robertson gets elected because no-one else could be bothered standing the game has lost its moral bearings.
The last few days have certainly been instructive in gaining a clearer understanding of the Sevconian mind-set.
Club 1872’s statement laments the “dehumanising” of their support at a time when their fan sites refer to Celtic and its fans in the most shocking ways and the old anthems of hate are ringing out again in the stands. They bleat about how they are perceived by the rest of the game whilst accusing everyone in it of acting out of malice and hate.
It’s become clear, as if it wasn’t before, that this is a club with no interest in joining the greater Scottish football community unless it’s to lord over it and which has no real intention of reforming itself or becoming better than it is, even if it knew how to.
In the space of less than a week they’ve levelled staggering accusations at everyone from the Scottish government to the police. They’ve thrown invective at the fans of at least two clubs but took great care to make sure their litany of abuse covered everyone. They targeted the media, even naming certain people as if reading off an “enemies list”, actions which reached their zenith yesterday in its followers making shocking threats of violence against a female journalist.
Through all of it, their PR machine pumps out over and over and over again this notion that they are the real victims, perhaps even the only victims.
There is so much wrong with their mentality that it’s difficult to know where to start, but one thing becomes ever clearer; these folk can’t be allowed near the levers of power in our national sport until eminently qualified people have judged them to be sane and the deeply ingrained sickness at the heart of their “institution” is eradicated once and for all.
Without that, the only rational course of action is to leave them on the margins, and there let them rot.