Aside from Neil Doncaster, no person in the hierarchy of Scottish football is less worth listening to on the subject of “Old Firm shame” than Stewart Regan.
Those two, along with the media, and, of course, everyone at Sevco, has spent the last few years telling the rest of us how much the fixture has been “missed” and ignoring all those of us who said it wasn’t and that because of the death of Rangers it could never be again.
This site has been vocal in denouncing the Old Firm lie, based in no small part on a wish to rid the game of all the hated and the baggage that surrounded this notorious fixture. For that, perversely, I’ve been accused of preaching hate.
The people levelling it are too blinded by their own to see the world in any other way, but that’s kind of the point.
A fixture that can inspire people to hate simply by you writing articles saying you want no association with it is truly something Scotland is better off without.
Except Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster, as well as a host of media outlets, don’t appear to believe that.
In spite of a mountain of evidence and a ton of past precedent revealing the ugly, sordid nature of these games – whether in the guise of Celtic v Rangers or Celtic v Sevco – these people have been relentless in their assertion that this is something on which Scottish football depends.
Now, having promoted ugliness, viciousness, the most debased football game on the planet, having spent months – nee years – openly, publicly, not simply wishing for it but pining for it, like a dog sitting by its master’s graveside, waiting for his return, Regan is disavowing the monster he helped to create.
Because whether it’s wrecked toilets, effigies hanging from stands or banners about child abuse, this is the face of the Old Firm, this is the thing he and others have been marketing, and bigging up, and it didn’t matter how many times he was warned about that.
The hacks have also been at their hypocritical best these last few days, especially that wizened old halfwit Hugh Keevins, who calls every Celtic fan who says they haven’t missed Rangers a liar and who made the ridiculous demand for “his city back” on Monday night, as if it’s been hijacked by foreign invaders.
No, Hugh, its bitter, twisted element has simply crawled out from under the rock again, where a lot of us had hoped they would stay … only to be told by you and yours that we were being childish or dishonest or simply too stupid to understand what we were asking for.
We were asking for an end to this, an end that spared every single citizen of this land – not just this city, but Scotland – any further exposure to this toxic atmosphere.
And it was Keevins’ industry – as well as our game’s so-called leaders – who shoehorned the lot of us back into it, ramming us through the door with relentless use of the OF tag, who made damned sure this was marketed and hyped as one in spite of the very real, impassioned appeals of many thousands of fans not to.
They didn’t listen.
They didn’t care to listen.
This was every bit as awful as we suspected it would be, and every bit as sickening as the Old Firm game ever was.
They did that, the press, Doncaster and Regan.
I don’t even blame the lunatics; idiots do what they do, and bigots do things that churn the stomach, but the stage was provided for them by men who wanted their old comfort zone back, or perhaps just the chance to lord it over the rest of us by clucking their tongues when the inevitable happened.
I penned a long article last night over on Fields, about the Sevco board’s utter hypocrisy in daring to lecture Celtic on sectarianism, they who’ve not even been content with ignoring it like their predecessors did (when our board was being proactive) but have actively pandered to it and even encouraged it.
That article can be read at the bottom of this.
Last night, Regan called on the rest of Scottish football to “act”.
He never specifies what action he wants them to take, but his utter ignorance – actually his lack of interest – in the opinions of those clubs is patently obvious to all. Because this fixture was dead, and he had a hand in bringing it back to life in its current obnoxious form.
The other clubs had nothing whatsoever to do with this; they, like many of us, would have been glad to see the back of it.
This is Regan, passing the buck, shifting the blame, and trying to find some moral high ground to stand on, without having the first clue even what to look for. It might as well be an alien landscape to him; he’s never seen it, far less put a foot on it, in the last five years because the word moral doesn’t apply to this guy or the organisation he runs.
I am sick and tired of these people thinking they are so superior to the rest of us, those of us who virtually begged them to let this corpse rest in its grave.
How dare he?
How can he stand in front of the UEFA Congress and talk about the game in Scotland as if the problems facing it and the ugliness now swallowing it wasn’t manufactured right there in his own office?
He want the clubs to assume responsibility for everything; when does he finally assume some?
When does this idiot finally accept his share of the blame?
The old American aphorism is that “if you break it, you own it.”
Regan doesn’t see it that way. Now that he and his mates have done this and wrecked four years of progress they’re walking away from the damage without a backward look, and expecting the rest of Scottish football to pick up the pieces; well not in this lifetime, not a chance in Hell.
Regulations exist already to go after clubs if he thinks they’ve broken the rules, it’s just that he’s not got the bottle to use them.
If this was anything other than talk, if he and the media weren’t just expressing phony outrage, he would have the courage of his convictions and try to make those rules stick. But he’d need to write a resignation letter, acknowledging his own culpability and guilt at the same time, and he’d need to leave it on the desk when he left.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the clubs would accept it.
This is a mess largely of his making.
Why the Hell does he think the rest of us will end up paying for it?
To read my article on the hypocrisy of Sevco, “And You Dare To Call Us Sectarian?” click here.