The Manchester Riot. Scotland Passes Its Shame Onto An English Club.
Civic Scotland’s lamentable failures to take seriously the problems being caused by Rangers fans going to European away ties – there had been trouble in several cities, for which they were directly responsible, including Pamplona and Barcelona – had made it more likely than not that something was going to happen on their travels which would be so bad that it could no longer be ignored, or the damage from it contained.
The whole of English football had been held responsible, and accountable, for the devastating events in Heysel, so it was not a stretch to imagine that rampaging Rangers fans could bring us all serious trouble.
Civic Scotland ignored it at their peril, refusing to make demands on the club itself that it work to weed these elements out of its support.
I was writing for the team over at Cybertims at the time, and I vividly recall predicting that sooner or later their fans would do something that would cast a dark shadow over the whole of Scottish football; it very nearly happened in Manchester.
Nobody died there. For that, at least, we are all thankful, but those scenes will never be forgotten by anyone who witnessed them. The city centre was brought to a standstill as the detritus of Ibrox and all their brethren headed there to get pissed and pick fights with the locals.
The whole day took place in an atmosphere of intimidation and aggro about as far removed from that which Seville experienced as you could ever hope to find.
And in the aftermath, Civic Scotland barely stirred … instead they allowed one of the most shameful cover stories in the history of fan violence to be allowed to go virtually unchallenged; that the evidence of our own eyes was not to be trusted.
These weren’t thugs in Rangers jerseys, these were Chelsea supporters who had decided to travel to Manchester for the day … just because.
And it was them, not the fans who had been trashing the continent in the years prior to it, in the name of Rangers, who had turned that city into a battlefield.
Civic Scotland accepted that. The club was never taken to task in any way for promoting it.
An English academic, Alan Bairner, a professor at Loughborough University’s School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, articulated the feeling south of the border, accusing Rangers of having “the biggest hooligan problem in the British game”.
Not a sentiment that anyone shared or supported here in Scotland.