There is a moment in the glorious fifth season of The Shield, Shawn Ryan’s seven season opus about a corrupt team of police officers and how an act of violence in the very first episode sets in motion an engine of pure chaos and destruction, when the internal affairs cop who has been investigating the team turns up at a crime scene and faces his nemesis and asks a question that in that time and place is stunning in its brutality … but also right on the nose.
“Are you happy now, Detective Mackey?”
I feel that way right now, like shouting that in the face of every Ibrox fan who sneered at us and demanded that their club slash our allocation to 700. I feel that same sense of simmering rage, that same sense of fury at how their self-serving behaviour has led to utter disaster not just for their fans and ours fans but for the whole of Scottish football.
The madness which they unleashed has spread to the whole game, and the announcement last night that Aberdeen are cutting the away allocations for every club in the league to just a couple of hundred is not at all unexpected but all the more shocking for having become the norm.
So yes, I want to grab the first Ibrox fan-site editor who applauded their club for that selfish decision when they made it and demand an answer to that furious question;
“Are you happy now, you absolute clown?”
You got what you wanted; how do you like what you got?
Look, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was birthed in their house.
Other clubs had talked about cutting our allocations, and Kilmarnock had actually taken a full stand off of us (and played games in a three quarter empty ground, which is just disgusting) but no club in the country had resorted to this and none of them would have but for Ibrox opening that door, at the behest of their lunatic element who couldn’t handle 7000 Celtic fans celebrating.
The moment they did that, the ball was up on the slates, because Celtic had warned them well in advance that we would have no choice but to answer in a reciprocal fashion, which is exactly what we did.
That we would never have taken that action unilaterally is neither here nor there as far as the consequences go.
They knew the consequences and did it anyway, disenfranchising their own away support into the bargain … and now we’re all experiencing the blowback.
Because it was their act of spite which gave other clubs license to do the same. “If this is how they treat each other, what’s stopping us simply slashing allocations for their fans as well?”
And it’s now escalated beyond even that … because now, in the absence of regulations protecting the rights of away clubs to have decent supporter allocations it’s every club for itself, and to Hell with how it impacts on the atmosphere at games and the spectacle of football.
Hearts cut the allocations of every club bar one, and that’s the telling one because they still want the derby atmosphere, even if it means their bitterest rivals get 3400 tickets to our paltry handful.
Aberdeen’s decision to cut everyone’s allocation to 300 – the section of the stand which doesn’t even have a cover on it would be my bet, a disgustingly cynical act in every way – is worse.
Every club which thinks it can get away with this, or which sees some narrow advantage in this now cannot wait to leap aboard the bandwagon, and nobody in our governing bodies seem prepared to act to put a stop to this collective outbreak of lunacy.
They should have intervened before now, and so should the police, to force Ibrox into reversing its position. There were ample grounds, on safety alone, to justify an intervention of that sort. But having refused to get involved, having allowed Ibrox to do this and get away with it, they opened the floodgates and now the waters are pouring in and washing everything away.
Now clubs are rushing not to welcome away fans – who are every bit as important as home supporters – but to see what the bare minimum they can accommodate is … and safety isn’t a concern or they wouldn’t even try. The situation at Ibrox is bad enough. Hearts have no more concern for our fans safety than they do, and Aberdeen won’t even provide the minimum level of comfort far less physical security.
It makes you wonder what we have governing bodies for if not to govern, if not to guarantee the rights of fans and the representation of club’s supporters.
This can’t continue, or this game is done for.
All involved know it.
Some are even prepared to admit it.
But nobody seems willing – not yet – to stop it.
In the meantime, Ibrox fans are wailing just as loudly as we are, but with one big difference; they brought it on themselves. Are you happy now, you arrogant goons?