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UEFA’s Case Against Sevco Is Over Paper Balls. The SFA Did Nothing Over Golf Balls.

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News that UEFA have opened their first disciplinary case against Sevco is only surprising in relation to the innocuous nature of the incident. Sooner or later it was always going to happen. This is a club who’s fans have all the baggage of the old Rangers support but without the strutting arrogance of watching a winning team on the park.

As a result, they are more vicious and intolerant than they’ve ever been.

The speed at which UEFA has moved to get a case against them open is startling when one considers that the SFA has yet to utter a single word since the Ibrox match, when the full panoply of disorder and hate which categorises their support was on full display.

Was there a referees report? A delegates report?

That day, one of their fans got onto the pitch to confront our captain. Objects of all sorts rained down on our players. Sectarian singing retched out of the stands for the 90 minutes. It was appalling. It does not auger well for the coming season, or for football in general, that our governing body ignored this.

UEFA is disciplining them for throwing paper balls.

The SFA watched their fans throw golf balls … and did nothing.

And it’s time, at last, to criticise Celtic for this, for not speaking up on this matter. Why in God’s name are their voices utterly silent? So much for protecting our employees, which is the excuse they use for their silence on other matters. A club that genuinely wants to protect those within it doesn’t stay quiet as the governing body refuses to act on such things. We’re back at Ibrox next season; that’s the one certainty here. Our gutless response to what happened last time we were there, our failure to get the SFA to even condemn the racist abuse of one of our players far less act on the attack on our captain is absolutely disgraceful.

Shame on you, Celtic.

Your silence is a joke.

But once again, UEFA has gone where others fear to tread. Once again UEFA has shown that it’s not the regulations here which are at fault but a gutless organisation at the head of our game which refuses to act based on them.

One of the reasons I am not in favour of strict liability is that I’m not for giving more power to these people, for them to abuse, for them to selectively target some clubs and pass off the behaviour of others as if it was nothing … uhuh. No chance.

Club 1872 has released a statement praising the overall behaviour of the Sevco fans and passing this issue off as something minor; I said last week that I wasn’t going to take any lecturing from their supporters on our own fans and Linfield, and this is precisely why.

Let me point something out here.

Sevco fans were generally well behaved in the game on Thursday. There was little of that toxic singing which you hear at so many SPL games. You know what that tells me? That they are afraid of UEFA. That they do fear sanction in continental games. That’s why it was paper balls instead of more dangerous objects. It’s not that their fans were inclined to be gentler with the Luxembourgers, it’s that UEFA scares the living shit out of them.

The thuggish, neddish, trailer park, white supremacist, racist, sectarian goon squad in the Sevco support haven’t been cured of their bigotry; they’ve been frightened into compliance. They’ve been scared into embracing the 21st Century. And if UEFA can do it I’m damned sure the SFA could as well, if they wanted to. If they had the bottle.

When UEFA acts so resolutely the shame falls across Hampden, and forces you to consider their own pitiful response to these sort of events.

They have no spine.

Perhaps I’ve got it wrong though. Perhaps it’s not a matter of that. Perhaps the watching SFA delegates were, themselves, up to their knees in Irish Catholic blood. Perhaps they thought the showboating of our players that day was deserving of a few golf balls. Perhaps they thought that having Brown in the game was enough to justify a fan getting onto the pitch to have a go at him.

Nothing would surprise me.

These people are corrupt to the core.

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