Last night, in the opening minutes of our game at Pittodrie, a section of the Aberdeen support momentarily cast off their club colours and pulled on the tattered, shabby wardrobe of Sevco. For that brief time they were not part of the home crowd, they were part of the baying mob of Ibrox.
Their lack of self-awareness is extraordinary.
This section of their support taunted the Celtic fans with a song about Jimmy Saville. Apparently he’s “one of our own.” Yes, the same one who was a friend of the royals and the Tory Party. The last time I heard that song we were at the home of Sevco, where they sang it apparently in complete ignorance as to his links to institutions closer to their hearts than ours.
But I don’t look to them for logic. They have none, nor an ounce of decency.
I expect better from fans elsewhere, but there is a part of the Aberdeen faithful which is developing a Sevco like obsession with this stuff. They had a banner at the Scottish Cup final which was in much the same vein; what is wrong with them?
I keep on promising to leave this subject off this blog.
Because it is not a discussion appropriate to football. To use it in the context of this sport – as “banter” – is vile, reprehensible and inhuman. There are honest-to-God victims at the end of the line here; they don’t feature as a concern for a single one of the cretins who brings this stuff to a ground.
The hypocrisy is staggering. The ugliness of it is manifest. It is twisted. It is sick.
Listen, I know this stuff will go on. There are yahoos in every support – those in our own have adopted the puerile, disgusting, song about the Sevco kit man, who’s importance to them is way greater than it ought to be – but those who sit in the stands at Pittodrie and who want no part of this stuff really ought to speak up. It makes their club look like shit.
They have to know who they sound like. They have to know that the comparison is not something they want to be associated with. So why do they allow this element to do this? The Aberdeen support is one with which we’ve been able to find a lot of common cause, especially when it comes to tackling the corruption in the SFA.
They’ve even stood against their own board on the issue, which has won them a great deal of praise on this blog and elsewhere, and they deserve that.
The Aberdeen support does not love Celtic. I would not expect them to. I don’t particularly care if they hate the club and our fans. But this is surely a step too far in expressing it. This puts them down there in the gutter with fans they hate a lot more.