Aberdeen’s Guard Of Honour For Celtic Was Great. The Media Response Was Abysmal.

There was a good moment for Scottish football this weekend, a moment that the media would not even have bothered to comment on except that one shabby outlet attempted to wring a controversy out of it. It was Aberdeen’s decision to grant us a guard of honour, which the Ibrox club and the one from Paisley had pathetically decided to refuse us.

For Aberdeen there was no question of refusing.

They did it without a second thought, and to me it was a lovely moment of respect and honour for a team that has been brilliant all season long. It was a great gesture that cast a shadow on the pygmies who could not bring themselves to offer us the same consideration.

I really appreciated that they did it.

I know there are a lot of people who don’t get why this is a big deal. I just believe that our game has become a harder, colder place than it needs to be and these little gestures make it more friendly and open and decent.

No more than that.

I think it’s a chickenshit move for anyone who would refuse to grant so small an honour and whilst I expected no less from Ibrox than such colossal disrespect I was appalled by St Mirren’s decision.

Aberdeen did the right thing. The press chose to focus on one member of their team who didn’t applaud us onto the pitch, said person being Ross McCrorie.

I couldn’t have cared less whether he applauded us or not.

He stood there, in respect, with the rest of his team-mates and that was more than anyone from Ibrox or St Mirren did.

He did, in many ways, what I wish some members of our support were able to do on Remembrance Day; he gave us the bare minimum, but the bare minimum was enough. I am not going to give him stick for it.

As far as I’m concerned he played his part in making the gesture.

The media’s decision to focus on this was spiteful and vindictive and another example of how petty and small minded some of our hacks actually are. That they think a single Celtic fan gave a toss that the guy didn’t clap is ridiculous.

He stood there with the rest of his team and I don’t care whether he enjoyed the experience or not; the gesture mattered and his decision to stand alongside his team mates mattered as well.

The headlines that he “snubbed” the guard of honour were emblematic of a media which focuses on fluff and nonsense and looks for controversy wherever they can get it, and is not beyond inventing it if nothing presents itself in the moment.

McCrorie could have stayed in the dressing room; that would have been a snub. If he thought that not clapping sent some kind of message then it cheapened him, not the gesture itself.

Our media decided to focus on that rather than the gesture itself.

There’s a good reason for that. If they had focussed on what Aberdeen did as a club that might have cast a harsher light on what the two clubs before them had failed to do … and that was never going to happen.

They found something else to talk about instead, and they blew up McCrorie’s actions into a fabled piece of “staunchness”.

I found their conduct far more pathetic than his.