In Glasgow and across most of the world where the Gregorian calendar is in use, it’s the year 2017.
However, take a 45 minute flight west from Glasgow airport and you’ll need to set your watches back almost 3 and a half centuries.
Goings-on this week once again show the Six Counties up as the land that time forgot.
Despite much heralded claims of political and social progress in the North of Ireland in the past 2 decades, a series of recent events have shown that to be complete and under drivel. It is as backward and insular as it ever was.
The power sharing assembly at Stormont has collapsed, the whole peace process is on a knife edge as the Prime Minister engages in a career suicide pact with the DUP and it took nigh on 100 hours of discussion between Celtic, Linfield, the PSNI and UEFA this week to agree on a date for a potential football match between the 2 aforementioned clubs to be played in the province.
When a date was finally agreed, it was decided that no away fans could attend the game in Belfast as the sight of Celtic tops and a group of presumed Catholics in one place is apparently too much for the natives to handle without whipping themselves into some kind of murderous frenzy.
No wonder most of the civilised world still thinks of the place as a backward hole.
We are talking about a place where communities remain segregated by 30 foot high walls – laughably called ‘peace walls’ – to stop the natives killing each other, sectarianism and violence is an everyday fact of life and it’s not uncommon for some young courting couples to keep their relationship secret to avoid being disowned by their own family for the simple reason that they attend different places of worship.
Any modern forward thinking society would be embarrassed at such a situation.
This isn’t 1970s or 1980s Apartheid South Africa we are talking about, it’s supposedly part of 21st century Britain.
Ordinarily you would expect elected officials to be seeking solutions and drag the place kicking and screaming out of the dark ages. In the Six Counties, they are part of the problem. They crave division and hatred. It keeps them in work.
I normally don’t bother with or comment on Irish political issues as, generally, they don’t affect me. Maybe one day they’ll exit the dark ages over there and join the rest of us in more enlightened times, but who knows when or if that’ll happen? Much like lawless Arabic territories or undiscovered Amazonian tribes, I was happy to let the locals in the north evolve at their own pace. Their ingrained hatred had no effect on my life, so I had no need to comment.
However, the aforesaid UEFA Champions League draw does affect me. This is the first away European game in over 5 years I’ll have been able to attend – The last being away to Rennes in Autumn 2011. So it was with some anticipation I awaited Mondays qualifying draw.
UEFA’s master of ceremonies assured us that by 16:30 CET on Monday all venues and fixtures would be agreed for the first 2 qualifying rounds.
Celtic entered the draw in the 2nd round and as the seeded team would be away from home on the 11th/12th July to the winners of La Fiorita and Linfield tie with the latter being heavy favourites to progress.
By 16:30 on Monday, all ties and potential ties were agreed.
All ties except one. Linfield v Celtic.
Linfield couldn’t play on the 11th because their fans, players and officials are busy burning catholic effigies on bonfires.
They couldn’t play on the 12th because they follow up the catholic ignitions of the previous evening by marching about in decorative uniform playing songs about killing Catholics.
Bigotry, you see, takes precedence over everything else in mid-July in Belfast.
The rest of Europe has no problem getting games to go ahead on the generally accepted Champions League days of Tuesday and Wednesday. In Belfast though, everything stops for the best part of a week to indulge in rampant anti-Catholicism.
Anyway, after a bit of pandering to bigots, a date was eventually found for the game and it will now take place on Friday 14 July with no Celtic fans.
If there are no Celtic fans, why the need to change the date?
Surely if the concern was about our fans being in and around Belfast on 11/12 July, then the game could have gone ahead on the scheduled date without our fans?
If there was a genuine security concern about Celtic fans travelling to Belfast for the tie then Linfield should forfeit the right to play the game at their home stadium.
If Celtic are content to play at Windsor Park but aren’t taking tickets because of specific security advice they should come out and state exactly what this advice is.
The route fans would have taken to Windsor Park means that there would have been little to no chance that Celtic fans would encounter Linfield fans until they were actually inside the stadium.
So, what exactly was their concern?
If it’s because they didn’t trust our fans not to react to the anticipated provocation they should be big enough to admit this.
With the game being moved to the Friday with no Celtic fans, our club have pandered to bigots here. They’ve made every concession to a club and support who despise everything about us and will make the away leg as hostile as possible for our players and the club have shat on their own fans at the same time.
As for UEFA, One can only wonder what their delegate made of the negotiations:
Linfield Official: ‘We can’t play on the 12th, it’s a public holiday here’
UEFA Delegate: ‘And?’
Linfield Off: ‘Well, most of our fans will dress up in funny outfits and parade whilst playing songs about killing Catholics’
UEFA Off: ‘Are you fucking serious?. Well, what about the 11th?’
Linfield Off: ‘No can do. We’ve got big bonfires to light with an effigy of the pope getting burned’
UEFA Off: ‘WTF?’’
News outlets in Scotland and Ireland provided regular updates on the discussions but none explored the fact that in this day and age 2 football clubs – supposedly part of the same sovereign state – were unable to settle on a date and time to play each other as one of the clubs has prioritised hatred and intolerance over its obligations to UEFA.
The fact that this is accepted as the norm for the Six Counties should shame all who live there.
That’s the long and short of it here, anti-Catholic parades have taken precedence over a European Football competition.
Surely it’s past time that UEFA told the Irish FA that if they are unable to guarantee that games will go ahead on the dates that fit in with their calendar then they will be excluded from competing in future tournaments.
It’s then up to the IFA to decide whether they want to be stuck in some time warp with similar sporting sanctions that were imposed on South Africa or if they want to grow up and join the rest of the world in the 21st century.
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the latter.
Tony Begley is a Celtic season ticket holder with a profound dislike for bigots, and for pandering to them.