Disgraceful Scenes At Murrayfield Are Exactly Why Hampden Residents Are Concerned.

It is fair to say that the residents who live around the National Stadium are not exactly thrilled that their area is playing host to the Ibrox fan-base for an unspecified period of time. As someone living in the surrounding area, I can tell you right now that there is a lot of trepidation and even more anger at the lack of consultation here, and the utter contempt with which the residents are being treated.

This is not as simple as people peeing in gardens, which is how the head of one Ibrox fan forum recently chose to characterise it. The Ibrox fans are not the nicest people for neutrals to be around at the best of times. There is a yobbish element to some of them which will be in no way welcomed with open arms by local pubs and businesses.

Yesterday, that element was out in full at Murrayfield, and the owners of that ground must be highly relieved that Hampden came in here with its bail-out offer for the Ibrox club, or they would be hosting them a lot more and for a lot longer.

Oh, we don’t know the full details of what the SRU wanted for the use of their stadium, or what sort of timeframe it would have been available for – it is entirely possible that Hampden would have been needed at some stage anyway – but still, there will be a certain amount of relief amongst the staff there and the owners that no deal has in fact been struck.

Yesterday, the Ibrox club was there playing Manchester Utd as part of their “apology tour” of games following the cancelled Australian tour debacle. This was one of the matches they were required to play on the organiser’s behalf in the settlement which stopped that from becoming yet another court case. The price of tickets was high. A lot of Ibrox fans paid them anyway and saw their team be beaten by what ended up a Utd C team.

But it was events peripheral to the game which made the news.

Because there was quite a serious incident at Murrayfield yesterday in which a cricket match was “interrupted” and thus cancelled by “football fans” – apparently of both visiting clubs – which involved, amongst other things, racist, sexist and homophobic abuse.

There was even talk that there were a number of physical assaults on players and members of cricket club staff.

The whole thing is laid out in a staggering article which has appeared this morning in The Scotsman, and which details not only the terrible behaviour of those involved but which also lays out Police Scotland’s utter failure to act on any of it, which again calls them into serious question and makes many of us wonder exactly what it is we pay our taxes for.

Murrayfield DAFS Cricket Club posted the following on Twitter.
“Very upset that our 4th team had to abandon their game today due to a combination of sexist, homophobic and racist abuse at Roseburn Park outside Murrayfield Stadium today against Stewart’s Melville Cricket Club. Not only that, there were two instances of physical assault that were perpetrated on players. The perpetrators of said abuse were fans of football clubs playing a friendly at Murrayfield Stadium – and police were standing 50 yards away.”

The organisers at Murrayfield have thus been given a glimpse of what the mood around their stadium would have been like on a semi-regular basis had the Ibrox fans found themselves watching their “home games” there, and I bet they are relieved not to have to cater to that element. Hampden’s resident’s are not so lucky, and they are right to be concerned, especially when you see the response The Scotsman piece got on Ibrox fan social media sites.

One post, bleeding with victimhood, said the following; “Obviously none of us condone physical or verbal abuse or general bad behaviour, but we have and always will be judged to a different standard from other football fans. So sadly, I can see more complaints from various organisations for as long as we are playing at Hampden even when other fans would not be criticised. But we need to try and not give our haters any ammunition.”

Held to a different standard. That’s the start of it right there.

Whatever trouble they cause for the people who live in the Hampden area will be the fault of the residents, of course, and people who are intolerant of their club.

It’s such nonsense. If they think they are judged by a “different standard” it might be because their behaviour is at times so far outside the norm that they set that standard themselves, and then criticise others for responding to it.

I am glad I live far enough outside the Hampden umbrella for this not to affect me too much, but I feel for every one of my friends who aren’t so fortunate. This will be a little slice of Hell for them and many others, and I can’t even offer them the comfort of saying it’ll be over soon because I don’t think it will be and nobody else does either.