A Celtic Official Has Been Injured At Ibrox And Nobody Really Seems To Care.

It is now nearly forty eight hours since a Celtic official was injured at Ibrox, hit by a thrown bottle. As the time has passed, and we learn more, the details of what happened that day both inside and outside the ground get harder and harder to stomach.

Apart from a few words of outrage, nobody seems particularly outraged.

Police Scotland lumped events in which people were injured in with an attempt to spray expanding foam into a couple of keyholes. I’m not minimising that, but I don’t think those two criminal acts should be competing with one another in order of importance.

There are no Shame Game summits.

There are no hastily convened meetings between football and the government.

Neil Doncaster has given one of the most spineless interviews I’ve ever heard from someone involved in administrating the sport, and it was brazenly dishonest as well.

The Ibrox club has not issued an apology to Celtic over the matter.

Earlier in the season, the Ibrox club refused Chris Sutton entry because they could not guarantee his safety.

Their claim, not ours.

If you’ve seen the police operation which is necessary when only 700 of our fans are in the ground, it is entirely obvious that it is a dangerous environment and the bottles thrown onto the park were only a small matter compared to what Celtic fans had to endure in that tiny section they were given. I have read some of their accounts and it was an horrendous afternoon, and one that asks serious questions about the home club.

But who is asking those questions?

Nobody.

Their decision to cut our ticket allocation has made the fixture manifestly hazardous and the police, who should be taking that decision out of their hands, do not want to.

The SFA should not be allowing it.

Instead we get mealy-mouthed talk about how the game is better off without strict liability.

But let me repeat the headline fact, as it does not seem to be getting anything like the attention that it deserves.

At the weekend, a member of the Celtic backroom team was hit on the head by a flying projectile, at Ibrox, launched not from the cheap seats but from around the area where the cost of a season ticket is many times higher than elsewhere in the ground.

That is a momentous, and dark, development in the long running history of these games.

That should be making everyone in this country pause for a minute and draw breath.

Their club has not made a statement expressing their regret at the injury done to a member of the visiting team’s party and the Scottish footballing authorities are dancing around the subject.

So too are the media.

Chris McLaughlin didn’t even sound particularly convinced that it had happened and STV chose, last night, to present their story on the disorder with a picture of a Celtic fan. The press applauded Ibrox’s SLO for commenting on the bottle that was launched at our goalkeeper but never asked him why he won’t talk about the one which hit our physio.

Does anyone actually give a shit?

Even Celtic has not made an official statement on the disgraceful scenes at the weekend, but it must be clear to all at the club that Ibrox is not a safe environment either for our fans or for our officials and staff.

The home club’s failure to offer an apology or even an expression of regret can only have amplified that view.

I’m certain that Celtic isn’t doing nothing … but whatever it is, you have to wonder if the low-key approach is really going to cut it this time.

If the media and the authorities aren’t interested in dealing with this on their own, then our club should be putting its anger and frustration and lack of faith in the security arrangements in the public domain, because that will spark the debate, that will move the needle and it might end in something getting done.