By the time this current crisis ends, with the bug departing the global scene, vanishing back to the animal reservoir it came from in the first place, by the time we’ve counted the cost we’re all going to be sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I don’t know about you guys, but we’re a roughly a month into this crisis as it stands on this island and in Europe as a whole but I already feel emotionally and mentally drained by it. This kind of thing is hard to live with. Tension is wearying. Any emotional weight that you find yourself having to carry for any period of time is draining and exhausting.
Imagine, or try to, how exhausting it must be to combine all this with a commitment to malice and spite, poured out day by day, on forums and articles, on Twitter, on Facebook, just an endless tide of it, the endless feeling of being angry and paranoid and looking for enemies.
This is the life of a Sevconut, and I don’t know how they manage it but I do know that the rest of Scottish football is fed up hearing it.
Over on their forums, they see this moment as a unique chance to settle debts, and not just with Celtic. Sparing Hearts isn’t one of their motivations, but if it screws Dundee Utd in the process then they are just fine with it, because that club is on the list of Enemies.
You know, it’s been so long that I couldn’t even tell you what the Hell they are pissed about in relation to the Tannadice team. But I do know that it was nearly a decade ago and they haven’t gotten over it yet. And this isn’t all.
There are many of them who hope that this will be a slate-wiper; that’s not as benign a term as it sounds. It would be great if Sevco could wipe the slate clean and learn to respect, and build good relationships with, the rest of the teams in this country, but that’s not what the phrase means. It’s a term you often hear in relation to pandemics.
It means something that puts us all away; an Armageddon moment.
And there are a lot of their supporters who are hoping that this crisis does that to Scottish football; that it puts teams out of business, just so they can watch what Scottish football does next. Far from being sad that a force out-with the control of clubs might send some to the wall, they are salivating at the prospect because if Scottish football rallies round these stricken organisations – suffering through no fault of their own – it means Rangers were victimised after all.
This is the mentality you are dealing with, one which views this crisis as a means to test out their myriad conspiracy theories. It makes the campaign to void the campaign seem small time. For a lot of them, they have much larger targets in mind.
The sense of grievance, of being wronged, of being an innocent party, is rampant in their support and if they nursed it in silence that would be one thing, but they don’t. They seem to believe that we all want to hear about it, constantly. There is no support in the country, or probably anywhere else, that picks over the bones of past events like they do.
The average Scottish football fan is already sick of it … can you imagine how bad it’s going to get?
If this season cannot finish and Celtic is awarded the title – as we should be – the volume on their anger and paranoia will be turned up to full. Scottish football will be plunged into another saga of bitterness and rampaging lunacy.
In those circumstances every story that the rest of us will think of as bad news – clubs in peril, players being laid off, staff losing their jobs – will be greeted, in Sevconia, like their own first title win. Until it happens to them.
You see what I did there? Not unless … until.
More on that tomorrow.
Stay safe brothers and sisters, and keep an eye on those who need it.