Let’s Wait And See Who Would Support A Guard Of Honour For Celtic At Ibrox.

The one thing about flapping your trap is that when you do so as frequently and with as much consistency as Ibrox does you get yourself into bother. One of the things we hear out of their mouths a lot these days is how they are a club with respect and how they follow standards and how they are some sort of paragon of virtue.

When The Mooch famously allowed Thistle to score a goal after his own player had cheated his way to one, there was a huge online flap after Chris Sutton claimed that he would not have done so had the game been against Celtic.

This led to The Mooch actually picking a fight with our former striker, apparently ignorant of his sweeping command of radio, TV and the print and online media. During that period, he defended the “integrity” of his club.

Well we might find out what that integrity is worth, and the media should be going all in to make sure that we do. Because their own integrity should be called into question if they don’t.

The game at Ibrox will be played after we’ve been to Tynecastle, of course. I wrote about this earlier. But it will most probably be played on the very next fixture after we have been crowned champions.

None of our fans will be there. Relations between the clubs are at rock bottom. What a gesture, what a symbol of tolerance, it would be if the manager and his players gave us the traditional guard of honour and applauded our title winners onto the pitch.

It’s a sporting gesture as old as the game itself. And if the media really cares about taking the temperature down a notch or two, or promoting better relations between these clubs, all the better to solve the ticket impasse, then this is something they should be actively encouraging and banging the drum for and putting pressure on Ibrox over.

Because let’s face it, you know and I know, we all know, that the media would do exactly that to us if we were in that position. I am tired, as we all are, of the media and their double standards.

I am tired of the way they allow that club over there to talk out of both sides of its mouth. You either believe in this stuff or you don’t You either subscribe to the notion of a better, more tolerant, football environment or you do not.

That game will be one of the ugliest experiences, and most degenerate atmospheres, which our footballers ever play in. The very air will be toxic. A gesture like this from Ibrox would not make it less so, but it would be a step in the right direction, and something to build on in the future. If they have the guts for it. If the media demands it.

Or they can continue to express contempt and disdain for us … and we’ll move into the next phase of an increasingly bitter stand-off. Which apparently all in the press corps wants to see end.

Well, we might find out how serious about it they are.