Articles

As Celtic Refuses Ibrox Tickets On Safety Grounds, UEFA Has Its Own Issue With Them.

|
Image for As Celtic Refuses Ibrox Tickets On Safety Grounds, UEFA Has Its Own Issue With Them.

As most of you doubtless now know, at Ibrox last night their fans unveiled a tifo before the game which was as nakedly sectarian as you are ever likely to see. That’s the long and short of it. Emblazoned with the image of notorious American street thug William Poole and the slogan “Surrender or you’ll die”, it is a loathsome sentiment.

Two things would have happened had The Green Brigade done something like that, not that they ever would because their own political views and those of the Ibrox gutter element are so diametrically opposed it’s unreal. The left doesn’t have people like this. These kinds of sentiments have no place in left wing or liberal discourse.

The first thing that would have happened would have been that the media and our chattering classes would have lost their minds over it. The second is that UEFA would have stepped up to the mark and opened an immediate investigation.

I do expect one of those two things to happen, because how can it not?

Those words alone invite questions. And even if you were unfamiliar with the genesis of those words, and even in the unlikely scenario where nobody made you aware of where they are from, you would certainly have your interest piqued when someone from Ibrox was forced to explain, “Yeah, that’s a line from a song.”

And your next question would be, “Oh right. What’s the song?”

Which is where the serious, and more probing, questions would arise.

Their best defence is that it’s from “The Cry Was No Surrender.” And of course, that brings it into the realm of the political banner. For which they will get sanctioned.

But see, the image … that’s the problem with trying to explain those words away as something other than what they so obviously are, words from another song, Ibrox’s anthem to ethnic cleansing, the one that has the line in it about being up to their knees in fenian blood.

William Poole is essentially the anti-Irish, anti-immigrant bigot portrayed by Daniel Day Lewis in the Scorsese movie The Gangs Of New York. Now you tell me … an anti-Catholic, razor carrying street gang boss who ran his local community rackets and spread fear amongst immigrants all across the city. Does that sound like somebody else or is it just me?

It’s not even a nod and a wink to that song. It’s Billy Fullerton except they pulled what I always call a Terry George bait and switch; Terry George is the co-writer and director of Some Mother’s Son. He freely admits it’s a film about Bobby Sands, but they might have found it difficult to get that made, and so they created Aidan Gillen’s character, Gerard Quigley, and made his mother the bridge to the audience. It’s just a coincidence he shared Bobby Sand’s cell.

UEFA are going to do their own digging, and when they identify that guy and they asked FARE, who know this issue inside out, to join the dots they won’t need help from Bletchley Park to make the connection. So that banner is a big problem.

Let’s start with the obvious thing UEFA will want to know about that anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant far right banner; “They had to get into the ground to set that up. And nobody in your stewarding operation or at a higher level asked what that was before they did it? Or did you guys know and thus knowingly allow that in your stadium?”

I think that begs a second question and it will be the one that decides the level of the sanction, “With those words and that image having been allowed, do you expect us to believe that you’ve done all you can as a club to keep that sort of sentiment at bay?”

To be honest, I don’t know how they’re supposed to answer those questions, because all UEFA has to do is get hold of even one clip of footage from one SPFL game in the last few years, and especially away from home, and they’ll hear those words lustily belted out before they’re ten minutes into the broadcast. It gets sung every single week and not one word is uttered about it except by a handful of people in the media who long ago realised they are banging their heads on the wall.

If UEFA wants further context, they should be observing goings on right here in Scotland, where our own club has refused to accept tickets for their ground because our fans are not safe there and they have not satisfied us that they intend to make it so.

Hey when your fans are putting such a horrific statement on a tifo, that spells it out better than any Celtic press statement ever would.

The club tolerates the behaviour of its rancid element. That’s the fact of it. The idea that they would ever make serious attempts to weed these people out is ridiculous and we know it is. They make no effort to get them under control, instead offering Celtic mitigation measures so they are unable to physically harm our fans.

No-one cares that the intent is very much there, no-one cares that the kind of people who make netting necessary are the issue and they shouldn’t be near a football ground. Nor that the Ibrox board, which by virtue of the season ticket system has the names and numbers of every person who sits in those seats and has equal information for all the away tickets they sell and somehow they haven’t removed these people yet.

UEFA will not be as coy as the SFA and the SPFL have been.

There are actually regulations which our governing bodies refuse to use.

There are already rules in place for our governing bodies to tackle songs like The Billy Boys. They will not do it. The SPFL has the regulations in hand to sanction the Ibrox club if its supporters threaten the safety of ours, and the fact that our club has had to take unilateral action, and is threatening more, tells you how seriously the SPFL takes those.

What’s the wording, do you think, in those regulations? I’ve read them and it’s as vague as the regulations on away fan ticket allocations, and that’s quite deliberate because it gives them the wiggle room to do nothing at all.

As long as clubs can show they are taking a “pro-active role” in addressing these sorts of incidents the governing bodies leave them to it.

But what happens if a club can tick all the boxes on their wee checklist but the problem continues and grows and finally turns into a much larger problem? What happens if the club, say, issues orange jerseys? Slaps a supremacist slogan on the walls?

Allows tifos preaching ethnic cleansing?

Football governance in Scotland is a joke.

The governing body in Nyon will not be so lenient. I will be astonished if they don’t seek answers and then sanction Ibrox harshly based in no small part on the answers they get. Maybe they will force action which our governing bodies lamentably will not.

Share this article

45 comments

  • MALCOLM MORRISON says:

    AT THE END OF THE DAY WE FANS KNOW THE FOOTBALL “AUTHORITIES” ARE IN THRALL TO THE BLUE SIDE. THE GREY MEN AT THE TOP OF OUR CLUB SHOULD BE OUT THERE FIGHTING FOR THE CAUSE, NONE OF THE WISHY WASHY STUFF THEY PUMP OUT TO KEEP US QUIET!

  • Jackson says:

    IF our board do not give Brendan the funds he wants…..this week…then I wonder what TIFO the green brigade will have up!
    HH

  • Wee Gerry says:

    Nothing will( happen, a small token fine at best.

    They get away with everything all the time.

    • Terence Nova says:

      My sentiments exactly….Although I’ll continue to hope that they’ll get shut down…Providing that the Committee isn’t full of Masons.

      • Wee Gerry says:

        They were shut down for good 11 years ago yet their dead still walk among us so I think it’s not only one committee that’s full of Masons but the whole game worldwide or the corpse of old Rangers would have been left in its grave where it belongs.

  • John Copeland says:

    They will be saying to themselves inside Ibrox in downtown Govan , ‘ we can handle a medium sized fine ‘ no problem …. Payable in installments is all the better !

  • Joseph Mcaleer says:

    I wonder what some of their players think if the said players are of a certain religious persuasion.

  • john mc guire says:

    James ever ask yourself a question why is Billy Fullerton lying in an unmarked grave over in Riddrie park cemetery , because when they found the Bastard lying deed on the shite house he was staying in they [the clan] found out that the little bastard was a baptized Catholic and no money came from the clan to give him a big glorified headstone its a dirty subject that gets swept under the carpet from those who knew the family and the Bridgeton orange order ,and another tramp i work with when i asked him about tiffo last night i was told its part of there culture .

    • Wee Gerry says:

      Billy Fullerton was a baptised Catholic?

      Has that been verified as I’ve never heard that one before, though I have heard often, and from Huns at that, that his lifelong problem was that his manhood was insufficient for coitus.

  • Mick m says:

    You said the ibrox club “tolerate” the bigots. I would say that they both encourage them and require them to stay afloat.

  • BhilltheTim says:

    “The club tolerates the behaviour of its rancid element. ”

    Tolerates? Since Charlie Green dragged The Rangers out of their grave the Ibrox Board has actively cultivated and pandered to the worst elements of their support.

  • SSMPM says:

    Trying not to keep knocking the board all the time and for everything but they have continually failed to represent us and our club on this issue. I know and they know it happens every week and that must be monotonous to deal with but they’re not dealing with it, as inaction evidences, and as with the SFA and SPFL they seem to be happy to take the bystander stance.
    If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
    It’s the basic anti discriminatory and anti oppressive rhetoric you find in any manual of the topic.
    So they should at least be complaining to the SFA and SPFL trying to hold the rankers and their hoard of terrorists to account and if Scotland’s governing bodies will not do anything after repeat requests to look into it then Celtic FC should be reporting them to EUFA with evidence of requests and inaction.
    Final point, soz. If our board aren’t and won’t do that then, and this is a serious point, that surely means that the Celtic FC board are by their inaction also a discriminatory and oppressive board of the same ilk with regard to Catholics and immigrants.
    We need to hold our board to account as well. HH

  • Bob (original) says:

    Bisgrove the marketing guru needs to tweak the message:

    “Everyone, Anyone – Except…”

  • Scud Missile says:

    £3.4 million quid a year salary for the biscuit tin man,so tell us FATMAN LIEWELL what was it that attracted you to job again.

  • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

    If The Green Brigade put up a banner… “Lawwell – Surrender or you’ll kick the bucket” – I wonder what the percentage of Hoops fans that’d be up in arms about it would be !

  • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

    I think they had a section of their ground closed for this type of sectarian behaviour a few seasons back, so they might be harder hit this time…

    Hoops fans with clout – any forum bloggers out there – could contact UEFA as the Scottish mainstream media certainly won’t do it ever in a month of Sunday’s !

    That said – Bloody Hell, we’ve had a helluva lot (possibly even more than Sevco) and that’s saying something if indeed it is truly the case –

    However The Scottish Football Media certainly and gleefully played a major part in these fines for Celtic with exacerbated reporting and official reporting directly to UEFA no doubt and any Celtic fan that supports them financially in any way is a DISGRACEFUL one in my humble opinion !!!

  • Bryan Coyle says:

    Last night when they scored their 2nd goal the whole stadium was giving it the bouncy bouncy which celebrates the murder of a Catholic by stamping on his head.Meanwhile Rory Hamilton in the TNT commentary box was praising “the world famous Ibrox atmosphere “.What the hell is it with the cowards and morons in the press and the media in this bigoted wee country??

  • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

    **paragraph three** We’ve had a helluva lot more Fines than Sevco it should have read –
    Just a wee typo error there James and would be very grateful if your able to edit and slip in more Fines just before the brackets !

    Cheers,
    Clachnacuddin and the Hoops…

  • John S says:

    There needs to be a form of trans-national (EUFA/FIFA) organisational ‘whistle-blowing’ protocol for clubs at odds with corrupted national governing bodies.

  • Jackson says:

    A further comment James on your previous
    articles on the debacle unfolding with transfers etc
    John Kennedy stayed when he could have gone to Spurs and became a wealthy man,
    If BR looks weak (and he does) then you have to feel for John…. he must be kicking himself in not following Ange
    Have followed Celtic for over 60 years and shocking it is to have this board shafting our fans again
    HH

  • John Jones says:

    As a follower of the Rangers I was shocked and disgusted by the banner last night. The high heid yins have a lot of explaining to do as it couldn’t have happened without their approval. A shameful day for Scottish football.

    • James Forrest says:

      Wish there were more like you buddy. One days guys like you are gonna seize the reigns over there and then we’ll have a proper rivalry.

      I do look forward to it.

  • Marion Christie says:

    Great article and so true let’s hope uefa do something about it as the sfa certainly won’t.

  • Jacqueline says:

    I think your faith in Eufa is misplaced. I doubt any action will be taken.

Comments are closed.

×