If you’ve been following the mainstream press these last few days, you’ll have noticed that there was a lot of criticism of the Celtic fan media in the aftermath of Friday’s unveiling of the manager.
I will be writing more about it later, but for now I want to draw your attention to those who claim that some of us focussed on irrelevancies and fluff.
I wonder if those same people will criticise the hack who decided to waste the time of the First Minister today by attempting to contrast the government’s treatment of the Tartan Army with the way they responded to the George Square riots.
I’ve written on this embarrassing wailing and the sense of entitlement which underpins it.
It was great to hear Nicola Sturgeon making some of the same points.
She stood accused of having a “softly softly” attitude towards the Scotland fans, wherein she had taken a very different tone with the followers of the second Ibrox operation, and she did not miss the target as she slapped back against the ludicrous question.
“We haven’t taken a ‘softly, softly’ approach,” she said. “We were very explicit in saying to fans who didn’t have a ticket for Wembley not to travel. We can’t physically stop every person travelling and significant numbers of people did travel. I think there is an association between that and some of the cases we’ve seen in recent days — Public Health Scotland is doing of an analysis of this and may publish more detail on that in the coming days.”
She then moved on to the ridiculous attempt at moral equivalence.
“Much of the criticism of Rangers after those events were about the damage and the anti-Catholic abuse that was being hurled around that as well and I think it’s important we don’t forget that aspect of it,” she said.
Because, that’s the thing here.
The violence, the vandalism, the attacks on the police and the racism of their support that day was the issue.
It was always the issue.
The breaches of health regulations were a minor matter compared to that.
Ibrox fans embarrass themselves with this kind of stuff, but this was a mainstream hack today trying to score points with this pitiful line of attack, but of course it has been ping-ponging around the internet for more than a week, with the Ibrox fan sites pushing the nuttiest nonsense and some in the press have been helping them.
And they have the brass neck to have a go at us.