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Tonight Sevco Morphed Into A Wilfully Evil Institution, Surviving On Naked Hatred.

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Sweet Jesus, what a despicable club they’ve become.

Let me say, right now, that I have the utmost sympathy for the large number of Sevco fans who want nothing more than to follow their football team, without baggage, without bitterness, and who would welcome the people in charge of it acting like human beings for once.

I apologise to them for the general tenor and tone of what I am about to write, because I intend to use very harsh, very emotive, language in this piece.

Tonight Sevco has morphed into a thoroughly evil institution, one that seems to me to be run by men who are utterly mad, bigoted, and vengeful and who will do and say anything at all as long as it offers the merest deflection from their own failures of duty and responsibility. The media, which never assumes any of its own, is not required to provide context and so won’t. They’ve already called this one; they love it when the regime at Ibrox gets down and dirty.

This is all their Christmases come at once.

I am outraged and appalled by what a handful of Celtic fans did this weekend, and I’ve not hidden that fact.

The article I wrote earlier, on that very subject, does not miss. But it was also highly condemnatory towards Club 1872, whose statement on that display was barking mad and infused with a viciousness I could barely credit to rational individuals. Still, and for all I’ve written on the mentality of those at the top of the Marble Staircase, I never imagined their club would follow suit because that does defy rationality. It does defy logic.

But I should have known better.

Because there is no act so disreputable, so beyond the pale, so unworthy or socially irresponsible that it goes too for the Glib and Shameless Liar, the convicted tax crook, and his attack dogs. Not when it takes the focus off his own failure to build a half-decent football team. Not when it tries to erase from the public consciousness his and his board’s appalling and absurd defence of sectarian singing and the band of neddish louts who fought on the pitch at the cup final.

Tonight’s statement of mind-bending malevolence strips away all pretence that Sevco is run by sane individuals capable of socially responsible behaviour, or even something so prosaic as good judgement. Unmasked now, they stand under the lights as thoroughly warped, men every bit as dangerous as those who’s bile occasionally pours out of their stands.

I have never seen such a bunch of foaming at the mouth degenerates in charge of a football club in Scotland.

Even the media-friendly utterances of Vladimir Romanov at Hearts never reached down for the gutter in the way this club’s so often do.

But tonight doesn’t cross the line as much as it leaves the line in the dust behind them, so far behind it’s a dot in the rear view mirror.

Tonight’s statement, a blanket attack on Celtic, its supporters and our reputation is the shocking act of lunatics either too blinded by hate to see clearly the potential consequences of what they’ve unleashed or who quite wilfully, knowingly, set those forces loose.

Either way, Sevco is no longer a mere football club and its director’s no longer mere custodians of one.

Tonight it is an institution running on hate, whose board are behaving like the worst sectarian rabble rousers, trying to assemble a lynch mob.

And the objective of all of this, of course, is money.

Keeping the fans on board has never been more important to Dave King and his directors, and with Celtic so thoroughly and comprehensively out of sight at the moment the pressure on him is enormous, and that’s the driving force behind tonight’s statement and it is all the more disgraceful because of that.

A lot of their fans will be ecstatic at that statement tonight, but that only demonstrates how well King knows his audience, and how gullible and susceptible to this kind of outright manipulation and pandering to prejudice some of them are.

Their stupidity and ignorance offers no alibi for what King and his board are doing.

When blood flows from this action, it will be on their hands as much as those who wield the knives, the bats or perhaps even the bombs.

I cannot believe they’ve stooped so low.

Tonight, in an effort to drag us into the gutter, they’ve upped the level of hate in this country to an unparalleled and dangerous level. It is the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever seen in years following, and writing, about football here in Scotland.

The overwhelming majority of my club’s supporters are disgusted by the actions of a handful of our own at the game on Saturday. But those people have no connection to Celtic beyond that which is in their own heads. Tonight’s act of blind bigotry came from the top of Sevco itself.

If it’s own supporters don’t take that seriously they deserve the reputation King and his cohort are earning for them. My club’s fans have stepped up. Theirs are in one Hell of a spot tonight. Will they take their own responsibilities seriously and do the same?

Tonight, Sevco has gone beyond the limits of decency.

Thankfully, it’s not up to Celtic fans to change that.

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