Ibrox’s Fan Media Don’t Let The Facts Get In The Way Of A Good (Smear) Story.

One of the narratives doing the rounds in the gutters of Sevco social media today – and which I highlighted yesterday – is this suggestion that Celtic “timed” the announcement of the Australian tour to detract from a certain other story.

There are three basic elements to this which I want to highlight, but let’s start with the obvious one. This entire narrative, apart from being loathsome and disgusting, is based, not surprisingly, on a brazen and barefaced lie.

Celtic didn’t chose the timing of the announcement.

That decision was made for us by two entirely separate bodies; the Australian media, who knew every detail of the event and were writing about it in advance of our announcement, and the Scottish media, who lazily simply copied and pasted it from what the Australian press had put in the public domain.

That story was out there. The facts were out there.

The entire thing was already public knowledge and all Celtic did was confirm it, not that they had to.

The Australian media had this thing cold. Some of their sports writers had been talking it about for weeks, not that most of us believed them. But they had it. They knew what they were talking about.

As tends to happen, our media was running it shortly thereafter.

Most of the early coverage by the bloggers came either from the Australian story or the follow ups in Scottish press outlets.

I don’t believe Celtic wanted it out there any more than the Ibrox club did, not that early, but once the story was in circulation there was no point in keeping it quiet.

In fact, Celtic’s confirmation of it was actually pretty low-key at first, and at no point in the course of publicising the tour did we do what would have generated the maximum headlines; we never, at any stage, publicised it on the basis of the game against them. Indeed, it took weeks before we even confirmed that they were a participant.

It was the Australian media who made the decision to go large for us, by immediately requesting numerous interviews with Ange himself, which Celtic were happy to grant. This is another area where their social media outlets are basically telling lies; it was not Celtic who christened this the AngeBall Homecoming Tour … that was their media, with a steer from the organisers themselves. I get why Sevconia hates that, but we can’t let them lie about it.

The Scottish press then followed suit, by asking the manager about it for the next two weeks, almost every time he was in front of a camera.

The second element of this is the utter lack of knowledge of the media – and these are “official media partners” of the club – that is betrayed in the very idea that announcing a friendly match would have wiped away the coverage of a major event involving our club. Professionals in the mainstream press would have sniffed that strategy out in two seconds flat and not one of them would have gone along with it.

Which brings me to the third thing here, which is that this whole affair shows Sevconia’s dark obsession up for exactly that. An obsession. And when you are obsessed with something it is difficult to understand that the rest of the world might not be.

For years now the mantra over there has been that there is some huge “cover-up” of this whole issue. Which is weird to me since I’ve read literally acres of media coverage on it, watched at least two full-length documentaries on abuse cases in football where the Boys Club issue is discussed in detail and we’re only in the place where court cases are even possible because the Scottish Government – allegedly a co-conspirator in the “cover-up” – abolished the statute of limitations and then legislated to allow complaints to be grouped together.

Without those changes, all of this would be moot.

I’ve written on this blog, previously, that their default positon is hatred.

Theirs is easily the most poisonous and vicious and hateful football support on this island.

No other even comes close.

They went from singing about being up to their knees in our blood to mocking the dead of the Great Hunger to slandering our greatest ever manager only to arrive now, at the very bottom of the scum swamp. And looking at the world the way they do they see only two sets of people; those who share their hatreds and those who don’t.

And anyone who is on that side is their enemy.

They really do believe that because they want wall-to-wall coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that it should be so. And when it doesn’t happen they gnash their teeth and claw and bite and throw their shit around like lunatics in an asylum, unable to understand why the rest of the world doesn’t want to dwell on this awful subject all day, every day, in the way they do, and in a hope (that will be in vain) not that the victims get justice … but that “Celtic is brought to justice.”

Football justice, first, although none of them can name the rule we supposedly broke.

Financial justice next, which means administration at the very least … this is their biggest, and most ridiculous fantasy, as though our club has no public liability insurance or the means to settle this.

These matters, and others peripheral to it, are in the hands of the authorities and working their way through the system.

What’s more, the judgement they think we “announced” this to detract from, and which happened several days before the Australia story broke, was given plenty of coverage in the media; just not enough for these vampires, who thrive feeding off the pain and suffering to get their fix of fenian blood by other means.

I abhor these Peepul.

I really do, and I long since came to understand that in the half-lit corners of their forums and websites that they are capable of rationalising all their hatreds and paranoia and spite … and we allow them that because it is their club which has to deal with the tarnished reputation they bring it, and the only people who ultimately suffer are the many fans of their club who are sick of it being polluted by their filth.

But we must not allow them to lie.

It is becoming one of the defining features of Sevco social media; don’t let the facts get in the way of a good smear story.