Voting For Ibrox’s “Atmosphere” Is Easier If You Never Experienced It.

There was an amusing piece of Ibrox feel-good fluff doing the rounds the other day, about how their ground had won yet another one of those meaningless “polls” on the ground with the best atmosphere.

It pipped Celtic Park into second place. There are a lot of countries where there would be a certain amount of pride in the two big club stadiums being first and second on a list like that.

Certainly, outside of Anfield it is hard to think of one English club with an atmosphere that would challenge our own. Without a doubt, too, there is a of singing and noise at the ground across town, which you don’t get at every stadium in the EPL.

But that’s where our satisfaction ends and the scrutiny should begin.

Because if we’re being serious for a minute, the “atmosphere” at Ibrox ought to be a source of shame and embarrassment to this country and that makes you wonder who it is who comes up with these lists. If we’re doing one on the greatest outdoor events of all time, well there was a big one in 1934; they even made a movie about it.

But nobody in their right mind would ever vote for the Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg, which was captured in all its horrific majesty by Leni Riefenstahl and called Triumph Of The Will. It would be like voting for that, or Birth Of A Nation, as your favourite movie.

We’re going there this weekend coming, and for 700 of our fans that whole afternoon will be a torrent of bile.

To vote for Ibrox’s “brilliant” atmosphere is to fundamentally fail to understand it at all.

The people who make these lists, you have to wonder what they base them on.

European nights, when UEFA policies the singing? Or games against us, where most neutrals just presume things are a bit OTT and heightened by all the history and weight of the occasion?

Attend on any normal weekend match-day and you’ll notice something strange; long periods of stony silence and the same sectarian singing. The same reek of intolerance in the air.

If the bigotry and bile are your bag, then Ibrox definitely has unique and exciting things to offer.

But if, like the rest of the people who know that ground from bitter experience, you read those lists and see that name at the top, you can only conclude that those who make them up are quite mad or have simply never been there on an ordinary night.

Either way, it’s another meaningless gong that the media likes to highlight without digging too deeply.

If they even thought about it for a minute they would be mortified.