The triumph has faded into memory, as they always tend to do.
The streamers have been put away, the party hats piled up with the rubbish, and all that remains of it all is the hangover, and at Ibrox the hangover always, always, always comes with the disgrace.
The club that played there before this one had the “honour” of two European final riots.
They are the only club to be presented a European trophy in a dressing room because their supporters were busy dismantling the stadium and fighting with the police outside. Manchester will never forgive, or forget, their visit there to contest the UEFA Cup Final in 2008.
They caused mayhem all across the continent, incurring European bans for sectarian singing and all the while the club itself released statements like those which they released today; the first one, full of praise for their supporters and putting the retrograde actions of thousands of their followers down as the work of a “minority” and the second hyper-aggressive posturing, and full of paranoid nonsense about fit-ups and over-reactions.
The NewCo is not materially different from the club which preceded it; even that club acted when Donald Findlay was caught belting out bigoted dirge.
This one has been through over a dozen serious incidents, and on every occasion it has taken the same forceful tone. That club does not feel shame, but it is afraid of being seen for what it is.
You really have to marvel at that; those inside its walls and harken back to the Grand Old Days Of Yore are fiercely proud of their “staunchness” but when you quiz them about it they back off and squeal like little bitches and deflect, deny, deflect, deny.
You know what? The club is pitiful.
Its second statement of the night cannot be taken remotely seriously by any sentient individual.
They’ve been caught – red handed if you will – and rather than accept they have a problem they howl about injustice.
Can this be the same club that hollered about zero tolerance and “enough is enough” only two months ago?
And what did I say at the time?
They are brilliant at playing the victim card but when the chips are down that club has big, big problems in its own house and I will believe they care what happens in the wider world when they sweep their own shit into the gutter where it belongs instead of leaving it to fester at the heart of the place.
Ibrox reeks of this stuff, and there is not a soul connected to Scottish football who is not fully aware of that. Too few have the guts to say it out loud.
Their statement tonight fools nobody, but it’s not really supposed to because we know the whole idea of Sevco as a multicultural club tolerant and open to all is window dressing and sectarianism is built in with the bricks over there and has been all the way through the history of the stadium.
Have they really tried to tackle it?
Their much vaunted openness campaign has already seen at least one of its poster boys become the victim of their boo boys and yahoo brigade because he spoke out against certain elements within it at an antiracism rally.
Which I thought was the whole point of their campaign.
But no, he was ostracised and the club itself pushed him to recant and then “clarify” his statements.
In his shoes, I’d have told them to ram it.
Of all the PR reps in the world who were out there and available to hire, who but them would have gone out and appointed a right-wing politician from the lunatic fringes of Orangeism and Ulster Unionism?
“Everyone Anyone”? It’s like a bad joke.
So no, we’re not fooled in the slightest by that press release tonight but the purpose is to scare people, not convince them, and whilst that might work on Radio Clyde and the gutless wonders like Keith Jackson it is incumbent on the rest of the media not to back down and to keep reporting this, and it’s even more important that the politicians have their say.
Hamza Yousef has said that any Ibrox player who was involved in sectarian singing should be sacked by the club; well, I’m not a vindictive man, and I’ll settle for them admitting they have a big problem inside the walls and accepting the ten match bans that they actually told the world were inadequate for dealing with the racism affecting their player.
But that won’t happen of course, because in spite of the evidence we saw with our eyes and which is in no way contradicted by the vast, vast weight of history at Ibrox, they are still denying they have a problem, just as their first statement denied that their fans do.
Until they are forced to confront those problems they are never going to.
They can call this “trial by social media” as they will, but if the internet was making such an allegation about Liverpool or Manchester City or Barcelona nobody would believe it.
Here, there are very few who don’t believe it.
I wonder why.