Our crazy friends over at Ibrox Noise have given me the big laugh of the morning.
They’ve launched a stinging attack on their own board of directors over yesterday’s announcement that the club would be banning those idiotic fans who invaded the Hampden pitch after their team had been spanked by Hibs in the Scottish Cup Final.
I wrote yesterday about how the poor demented section of the Sevco support would be having a really bad day when those letters became widely known. What I hadn’t expected was the general outpouring of rage right across their support including amongst the fan representatives, about a decision which not only was valid but necessary.
They are furious. Their entire support is virtually unified – save for a few brave voices who’ve called these people an embarrassment (guess how they are being treated?) – in disgust at their own club. I have rarely seen such a sterling display of wilful refusal to live with objective reality as the one you can see today on any number of their fan sites and forums.
The whole world must be appalled at what it sees when it looks closely at this club, and the board which is getting it in the neck today only have themselves to blame for their own actions and the way they handled this matter in the first place. Their supporters invaded the pitch for a square go. I don’t care how many Daily Record hacks or BBC Scotland sycophants blame Hibs fans solely and wholly … a section of the Sevco support couldn’t wait to respond and get stuck in.
They are a disgraceful shower, a stain on our national game, and let’s not forget that even before the pitch invasion many thousands of them had been breaking the law all day long with a chorus of sectarian songs which their managing director (now on his way to an SFA seat) said were “provoked.”
If the club had acted robustly and condemned the sectarian karaoke, had they called those who ran onto the pitch thugs and neds, had they threatened bans in the first place and not given their moronic, idiot element a brand new myth – the one that says “we were on the park trying to rescue our players” – no-one would have batted an eyelid. It’s what any other club would have done. Instead they spread lies, justified blatant and widespread criminality and gave the goon squad every reason to believe they were in complete sympathy with them.
Let’s not forget the specific wording of their statement:
“We acknowledge that a tiny minority of Rangers fans also encroached on the pitch but only after having been faced with prolonged and severe provocation and in order to protect our players and officials who were being visibly attacked in front of them. Any club’s supporters would have done the same.”
Sympathy and understanding.
For bigots and head-cases and people with so few brain cells you can hear them rattle as they walk, like peas in a tin cup, and all of it for nothing because eventually the facts were all going to come out and criminal charges were going to follow and then the reversal was always going to come, along with the belated condemnation.
When I saw the Ibrox Noise headline this morning I laughed out loud because it confirmed what I said yesterday, that a section of their support which had long ago lost touch with reality, had been called out and confronted with the actual facts about that day … and by the club itself. Those facts were never actually in doubt to any right-thinking person, but I had an inkling as to how this would go down with the crazy people.
But I had no idea there were so many of them. Even their official fan organisation, Club 1872, has asked for an explanation and hopes that these bans will be overturned if a court finds individual fans not guilty of criminal offences.
But just being on the pitch is a criminal offence.
Fronting up to rival supporters is a criminal offence.
No lawyer with a modicum of responsibility would suggest that his or her client actually put up a fight here; are those fans who cop a plea also to be regarded, as one Rangers Media poster said “as worse than Judas”?
These people are wired to the moon, and if this is how they feel about the club banning supporters I wonder what they’ll say about today’s breaking news, that another of their brethren, Donald Findlay, a previous member of their board, is actually going to defend Craig Whyte, in open court, in connection with what he did to their club.
The word “meltdown” is what comes most vividly to mind.
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