The BBC Has Lied About Celtic’s Stance On The Women’s Ticket Fiasco At Ibrox.

Today a BBC touchline reporter said that the reason no away fans were allowed at the women’s game at Ibrox was due to a joint decision by the clubs over “risk fans.”

This is manifestly untrue as everyone knows full well.

Celtic’s statement does not mention any such thing.

Celtic are furious about this decision. Celtic acknowledged that Ibrox might have issues relating to segregation at the game, but at no time did we accept that characterisation or agree with the decision. In fact, we suggested alternatives and the Ibrox club refused to consider them.

Why has the BBC lied about this?

Of all Ibrox’s most recent PR stunts, this one might be the worst, the very worst of them all.

When I wrote yesterday about the refusal to give us our tickets for the game I thought initially it was The Green Brigade their statement was referring to; in fact, its The Bhoys, who released an excoriating statement to match the slightly more diplomatic one from the club.

Both have raised an excellent point though; at a time when we should be trying to encourage football attendance, and at the women’s game in particular, this decision stinks to high heavens and as The Bhoys statement makes plain the “governing bodies” and the clubs themselves continue to take a completely wrong-headed view of this whole thing.

It does nobody any good whatsoever for a media outlet to deliberately mislead people on this. The BBC has a reputation now for being filled with pro-Ibrox lackies, but this is unacceptable.

We can look at the Ibrox club in disgust at their gutter-ball tactics, but that’s their club to a T and it’s exactly what you would expect from them. We expect better from the national broadcaster.

But there’s a much bigger issue here, of course, and as long as the BBC wants to mess about the real issues will never be discussed.

Several clubs have taken selfish decisions about away fan attendance in the last couple of years, and all whilst the governing bodies have essentially watched as it happened.

The need for a minimum away guarantee has been obvious for years. The media should be united in wanting to see one, but they would rather focus on the soap opera instead and are even willing to misrepresent our club instead of focussing on what the real issues are.

This is another situation where those who run the game here prefer to leave a grey area where there should have been robust regulations and the governing bodies still won’t press for it now even when it’s obvious that restricting away fan allocations have a strangling effect on the game. Is that not a story the BBC and other outlets should be focussed on?

For all that, Ibrox’s behaviour is still brazenly self-serving and contemptuous of Celtic and the principles of both sportsmanship and even reasonable behaviour. They continue to behave like a renegade outlaw club.

That they chose to frame this around safety concerns is transparently mocking for two reasons; first for the utter disregard they have shown for the safety of our fans at their ground and secondly because the most aggressive and violent act ever committed at one of these fixtures since the women’s game got its current prominence was launched against our former manager by one of their own members of staff … and he’s still in his job.

The BBC could focus on that. Why won’t they?

There are times in our game which require nuance and others which require bluntness and plain and simple action, and where pretending there’s some complexity simply clouds what’s a relatively straightforward issue and this is one of those times.

As The Bhoys statement makes plain, those tickets were sold to our fans without restrictions and there was no reasonable basis on which to cancel them. The truth of this is spread across social media and the clear statements of both clubs.

The BBC owes Celtic a clarification and an apology for blatantly lying about our position. The Ibrox club itself should be ridiculed and scorned for their own selfish behaviour.

If there were safety concerns, they could and should have been dealt with reasonably and in a timely fashion and certainly compromises which could have been found.

To cancel the tickets in this manner, the day before the game, and to attempt to blame Celtic for it, and on grounds which betray their intentions and motivations in such an obvious manner is an act of spite which deserves to be called exactly that, the BBC could have pointed that out too.

Their touchline reporter should be hauled over the coals for what he just did. We’ll see if his employers even bother to correct his statement and tell the truth about what really happened.