Ibrox Has Never Taken The Health Crisis Seriously. This Was Always Coming.

The news yesterday that Ibrox had suffered a major outbreak of the Delta variant was not in the least bit surprising. The surprising thing is that they bothered to declare it.

From the start of the global health crisis they have pointedly refused to treat it seriously.

Instead of doing so, they attempted to manipulate the situation to their own advantage. Right from the moment that stadiums were closed they were more concerned with what they might gain from the situation than with protecting people.

They demanded that the league campaign be finished when that was plainly impossible. Not only that, they demanded it be completed in front of full stadiums, one of the most reckless suggestions that had been made up until that time, and blatantly cynical.

They violated the rules when they played a reserve game without getting a full battery of test results back, which endangered rival players, officials and support staff.

They were not sanctioned for this and scandalously got away with claiming that they had misunderstood the rules. They were gleeful when Celtic suffered as a result of positive tests.

Rumours have swirled around the club for months, some involving the Belfast testing facility which didn’t return a single positive case during the last campaign, in spite of at least two instances where their players were caught, by police, openly violating the rules.

They ignored police requests to tamper down talk of celebrations when they won their title. They praised their fans after mass outbreaks of illegal gathering and even riots.

Their players and manager were videoed driving through the crowds with the windows down, fist-bumping and singing along with the fans. They have never enforced protocols as strictly as Celtic and other Scottish clubs.

As last as last week their players were still travelling to training in one another’s cars. I am amazed that this outbreak isn’t more widespread.

Before this season got underway, Lundstram told the media that there had been an outbreak in the squad.

Nobody in the press thought to ask more about that issue. I actually went further than all of them and wrote to both the SFA and the Scottish Government to inquire in more detail about what the notification protocols were.

The entire system depends on people acting responsibly. It depends on honest self-disclosure.

When I asked what would happen, or how would we find out, if people concealed outbreaks or exposures an incredulous health official actually emailed me back to ask why anyone would behave so abysmally and contrary to public safety.

Oh we know that there are several possible answers to that question.

Where it all fell down here was revealed by Phil, who used his credentials to inquire as to what measures the Armenian authorities would take upon a plane full of athletes landing in the country.

Every one of them would have been tested. There would have been no way to hide the outbreak and UEFA would probably have quarantined the whole team.

Am I saying they declared it here because there was no way they could avoid it? No, but if there was a way they could have gotten away with admitting the size of this I have little doubt they would have been tempted to explore the idea.

Their club is guilty of cynically exploiting this crisis at every turn and their behaviour throughout it has reeked of irresponsibility. Why should we believe that they would not have pursued concealment rather than disclosure? Why should we think they haven’t before?

We know that in the case of the Dundee Utd game they didn’t wait for test results. Is it a stretch to think that they would have failed to disclose others? That they would have lied to test and trace? That they would have sought whatever advantage they could?

This Ibrox outbreak was avoidable, but declaring that it had happened was not. Their club has been ripe for something like this. The only surprise, when you consider how lax they’ve been, how little they have taken it seriously, is that it took this long.

And if you believe that it did, I have a bridge to sell you.

Its is tempting, at this moment, to recall what Marty Byrd says in answer to a drug lord’s riddle in the opening episode of Ozark; he’s asked whether a man should fire a cashier he caught stealing money, in spite of her pleas that it was a one-off after years of loyal service.

“Fire her,” Byrd says. “It’s not the first time she stole from you. It’s the first time you caught her.”