Barmy Ibrox Fan Sites Blame Celtic Fans For SFA Women’s Game Decision.

Today, the SFA has announced that the EURO’s game between the Scotland women and the Israeli women’s side will be played behind closed doors due to “security issues.” This is not in the least bit surprising. The only surprising thing is that anyone agrees to play Israel at all at the moment.

The “security issue” is clearly about the certainty of pro-Palestinian protests.

Israeli sportspeople are going to have to get used to this, especially as their head of state and his defence minister are about to be indicted by the ICC. That story has a way to run, but it’s hard to imagine how either of them can ever set foot in a nation outside of Israel without risking immediate arrest and extradition to The Hague.

Their sportspeople will continue to see protests and banners and Palestinian flags wherever they go.

It might not be fair, but the same treatment has been meted out to Russians for a long time now, and it’s right that these nations should continue to face global opprobrium for the things they do.

The SFA is walking a fine line here.

Playing the game behind closed doors disenfranchises our women’s team and the fans … this would not have been easy decision to make.

The strange thing here is where the most vocal protests about this decision have come from; not from the Scotland fans as a whole but from those of the club from Ibrox, whose forums are furiously raging at this news, seeing it as a sop … to The Green Brigade.

The moon-howling over this over on one of those forums is borderline insane.

They perhaps don’t realise that the Israeli national men’s team has had to play closed door matches abroad because of concerns over protests. Maybe the Green Brigade was involved in that too? But if so, those boys really do get around a bit.

Maybe it’s the Unseen Fenian Hand in general, reaching out to smite the Israeli nation. Honestly, our rivals are deranged.

As I said, these protests are going to greet their teams everywhere they go, and for a long time to come, as long as Gaza remains under the cosh. But over on the crazy forums in La La Land this is about antisemitism and we’re at the centre of it.

The SNP are getting it in the neck, including Nicola Sturgeon who has been out of office now for a sufficiently long time that I’m fairly sure she had no part in it. To read some of their comments you would think they had all been planning to attend the game.

If they were, would they have been cheering on Scotland?

See, this is where the reek of hypocrisy melds with the reek of the madness.

Most of them don’t give a toss about Scotland and freely admit it.

Indeed, many of them are expressing the hope that Israel gives our women’s team a proper doing.

Not a one of them had intended to go to the game, and certainly not to cheer on Scotland.

Most of them had probably not even realised the game was taking place; I actually didn’t know myself until I was sent some of their rabid yammering, or I’d have penned a piece wondering about whether or not the SFA should be willing to actually play the fixture.

There is nothing in this story which involves them in any way; it’s simply an opening into which to pour hatred.

Hatred of Celtic. Hatred of Scotland. Hatred of the SFA.

It’s mind-bending how much hatred they carry around with them on any given day.

And it’s amazing how completely we exist in their minds as the big, bad bogeyman responsible for everything they don’t like.