If There Are Hate Crime Reports About Ibrox On Sunday, Celtic Fans Won’t Be To Blame.

The media really makes me sick. Right now, I am angrier with their coverage of Scottish football than I have been for years, in part because of their reaction – their non-reaction rather – to the McCoist thing, and in part because they refuse to take seriously the need for SFA reform.

But they find a reason to piss me off every day now.

Yesterday was no exception. A handful of them really got under my skin. They were all writing a variation on the same story, after some lawyer chipped in at their request and suggested that there will be an inundation of Celtic fans calling The Hate Line (that’s my name for it, I’m calling it that all the way from here on in) and grassing up the Ibrox supporters.

And what made me angry, and still does, is the inference that this will be some childish exploitation of the law, that it will be a bit of one-upmanship.

But let’s get this straight; if that happens it will not be the fault of the Celtic fans. None of us will be there in the ground. If the hate is so loud and audible than we can hear it through our televisions then, yes, perhaps a lot of people will feel that they should report that. But that will be the fault of the only one group … those in the stadium singing the bile.

This law might be a piece of junk, but why should any us feel bad for some bigoted toe-rag who gets a pull for being up to his knees in fenian blood?

I’ll shed no tears for a single one of them; let them all share a cell as far as I’m concerned. Better yet, build jails for these people, I’ll pay the extra tax to save us having to run up a deficit.

The lawyer pointed out that some of this stuff was already criminal, but this law is a much sharper instrument for dealing with it. As Scottish society has given us nothing else to work with, some of us are going to use whatever we have at our disposal.

Had civic Scotland gotten its act together sooner this problem might have largely been eradicated. If this is an opportunity to do so why should some people not think that’s worth pursuing?

I refuse to accept the premise of their argument, that this will be nothing more than a bit of local football rivalry taken too far.

As I said in the first piece on McCoist, if you think your behaviour puts you at risk of being charged under this then you’re already way over the line and you deserve everything you get.

I do expect there to be a flood of reports to The Hate Line, of course there will. It’ll be because there will be plenty of hate to highlight to those in charge of it. If the police have to work double-overtime in the aftermath and if the courts have to work on 18-hour shifts that might be a price worth paying if in the initial effort we break the back of this thing.

But you know what? I don’t believe for one minute that any of that will happen. The response to this will be absolutely pathetic.

The media response to it is the surest sign of that, they’ve already turned this into an “Old Firm” thing … and no doubt if there is a rash of reports and even arrests, they’ll do what they are most famous for at times like these; asking “when will you go after Celtic?”

We better start getting our own house in order.

As I said last night, we have a different sort of problem but there is a tiny minority amongst our support who might very easily find themselves on the wrong side of this law.

They better wise up fast.