The Forgotten Fans Of Vigo: Celtic Supporters Chip In For Local Fishermen Whilst Scottish Media Focuses On “Mid-Air Riot.”
Aaaah the Scottish media … you have to love them for their total lack of class, and what happened on two different planes going to and from Vigo for Celtic’s match there, on the Road to Seville in December 2002, really does offer some insight into how they operate.
Let’s get the negatives out of the way; let’s talk first about the “mid-air riot”, lest I be accused of revisionism and ignoring the elephant in the room.
First, it wasn’t a “riot” at all; it was something that, in another time and place, might have been passed off as a minor incident.
Only that it took place in the air – a singularly stupid place to be involved in any kind of altercation at all – makes this one different.
That and the fact that it involved Celtic fans, of course.
This was the incident that happened whilst fans were returning from the game, one where we lost 2-1 but went through on the away goals rule. It seems to have started with a Celtic fan lighting up a cigarette in a toilet. The crew were alerted to this, somehow, and an argument broke out after the crew informed a group of Celtic fans that they’d all be detained when the plane landed, in order that the culprit be identified.
The Celtic fans were already a little peeved off. The Vigo trip hadn’t been without incident. A group of police had gotten rough with fans in the airport. How rough? They truncheoned a wheel-chair bound fan. Brian Quinn, the Celtic director, and a former governor of the Bank of England, personally witnessed Celtic fans being assaulted by the police. One of them was his son. He lodged a formal complaint with the Consulate.
A lot of stories had circulated about various incidents before, during and after the game.
Most were over-dramatized nonsense.
Because, ironically enough, both sets of supporters regarded, and treated, each other warmly.
In addition to all that, the flight itself had been delayed for 12 hours, making fans who were already slightly the worse for wear even worse.
What happened on the flight, stripped of the immediate hysteria, amounted to little more than an argument.
At one point, according to the official narrative, someone “hit” a stewardess on the arm; no-one has ever been charged with that. Some witnesses say it was a supporter, tapping her on the arm, trying to get her attention.
Regardless, that appears to have sealed the deal and the plane was routed to Cardiff and grounded. It didn’t involve more than just some shouting and remonstrating, which is pretty daft on an airplane but certainly not something unique to this particular incident.
It wasn’t anything like as bad as described.
When four fans appeared in court in connection with it, in March 2003, the charges were related to being drunk and aggressively abusive on board an aircraft.
In a pub it would have been a breach of the peace.
On a train it would have been a matter of little consequence and folded in to the everyday news cycle.
On a plane, everything is different, and so the flap over it, and the headlines, are perhaps understandable even if the lurid spin of the Scottish media, in particular, was depressingly predictable and anti-Celtic.
None of that is an excuse. It’s just what happened.
People can judge for themselves who they blame based on the truth, and the context in which it took place.
All of it helped to tarnish what was an otherwise excellent occasion, and one which helped push out of the spotlight a gesture on another plane, one going to the match, which otherwise (but maybe not) would have made the headlines instead.
On the way to the game, on board a Cambuslang Travel flight, John Wilson, one of the organisers of the trip, mentioned that Vigo, a port city on the north-western Atlantic coast, had been badly affected by the Prestige oil spill, an environmental and economic catastrophe for the region, and which had happened in November that year.
He had heard of how disastrous it had been for the fishermen of Vigo, who were, at the time, getting by on government handouts of £5 per day.
He asked the fans on board the plane to chip in.
The supporters did so, and his firm decided to match them, pound for pound.
The donations, worth thousands, were handed to Vigo councillors by Peter Rafferty.
That this story is so little known speaks volumes for the media narrative of the time, which was that Celtic fans had caused mayhem on that particular trip.
The truth was very different; once again, we’d made friends with rival fans, and gave generously on behalf of people we’d never actually met, for no other reason than we happened to be there, and we could.
It’s far from the only time we’ve done so; not even mentioning what the club itself does, there’s fan groups like The Green Brigade, targets of much media opprobrium and general public misunderstanding, who run food bank appeals and have raised money for refugees.
Celtic sites, most notably CQN, raise money for schools, soup kitchens, wells in Africa and a thousand other causes.
The Celtic Supporters Association make donations every month.
Their annual Rally is exclusively run for good causes.
What happened in Vigo wasn’t unique.
It was part and parcel of being Celtic fans, but it bears special scrutiny because of the spontaneous nature of it, and the way it’s sort of been forgotten by history, airbrushed out of it by media stories relating to that trip which sought to paint us in a very different light.
