As Ibrox Goes Scattergun Nobody In The Media Thinks It’s A Joke Anymore.

For years now, certain persons with Scotland’s sporting media have shied away from aggressively reporting on Ibrox out of fear.

That has kept them in line.

They have watched as their colleagues have been targeted and flayed. They have seen social media firestorms consume people in their profession, launched as wars of vendetta by the craziest of that club’s fans.

I have no doubt that in the course of events, some of them even found it funny.

When Chris McLaughlin was banned from Ibrox the BBC stood by their man in refusing to cover live matches there. But his colleagues took a different lesson from the affair, and many upped the levels of sycophancy.

When Michael Stewart was kicked off the radio for a spell because he had upset the hierarchy over there, no-one came to his aid.

They all put down their heads and thanked God it wasn’t them.

But nobody is kidding themselves anymore that they can stay silent and stay hidden and hope that the soulless gaze of Ibrox doesn’t fall on them at some point.

They know now – all of them – that they are one misstep or misspeak away from that white hot spotlight and the pain that comes with it. Being banned is the least of their worries.

Because Ibrox’s deranged media and PR department is gun-crazy and on the rampage.

This is not target shooting, it’s a spree killing.

As one petrified characters says of Schindler’s Aemon Goeth, there is no code you can follow, no set of rules, that renders you truly safe … if you happen to get these maniacs on a bad day then you are toast.

Nobody in the press corps is kidding themselves on any longer, and even if it were not so, what’s the prize?

To be asked to pay £25,000 to sit in a room with shaven headed yobs and goons who stare at you as if you were a shit on the bottom of a shoe?

The media has to make a stand, as a collective, against this lunacy and refuse to give that club a scrap of publicity until it comes to heel … how much more of this routine degradation and humiliation are these people willing to stand for?

Nobody is laughing anymore, not anywhere in any news room, because this is no longer a joke and it’s no longer happening to someone else.

It’s happening to all of them.

It’s happening all the time and they either stand as one or they’ll be picked off that way … one by one by one until the last man standing is a fat git in a XXXL Castore top.