I received an email the other day from someone who said they were worried about me. Touching, right? Most people would be touched by that.
Most people who read it would think, “Isn’t that nice? It’s decent. Doesn’t that reaffirm your faith in humanity and the human condition?”
Well… not so much, no. See, this message suggested that I either am receiving psychiatric treatment or that I should seek some. It used a variety of less-than-complimentary words, shall I say? One of which was “obsessed.” I’ll spare you the rest.
Some of the message suggested that I was an apologist for abhorrent criminal behaviour.
There were suggestions about how I could otherwise spend my time, which I appreciated coming from someone who, according to my records, messages this blog and tries to post comments on it so frequently that I wonder if he has time for a life outside of his compulsion to come onto a site whose content he evidently hates to complain about opinions he professes not to care about.
His bone of contention appears to be that I, a Scottish football writer, occasionally write about his particular Scottish football club. There may be a universe where the stuff that goes through the minds of these people makes sense, but this one isn’t it.
There’s a thread on every one of their fan forums solely focused on our club. Did you know that? And you want to see some of the stuff that’s in those threads? Wow.
See, we at least have the luxury of supporting the biggest club in the country. The one that wins everything all the time. The one that swats them aside like the pesky little irritants they are.
They don’t have the luxury of supporting a top club that regularly wins leagues. So, I can understand to a certain extent why their peculiar obsessions are darker; focused on our supporters, on secret conspiracies, on sexual abuse, and on other stuff that really belongs on the margins of what’s acceptable in any forum.
Apparently, they are less than pleased at the way our fan sites cover their club, and they accuse us of not caring what happens inside our own, which, as anyone who reads this blog knows, is not remotely true.
But we do get a kick out of laughing at them, their bizarre pretensions, their crazy supremacist mindset, their warped beliefs, and their crazy paranoias.
Here’s what it really comes down to, though, at least for me:
I grew up with their drum banging all throughout my teens.
Whenever I encountered Ibrox fans in any social setting or circumstance, whenever I picked up a newspaper, whenever I listened to a phone-in, and whenever I heard a game on the radio, it was impossible to escape from the general taunting, laughter, pleasure, and enjoyment they took out of being on top, and it was important to them that we suffered.
And that is what drives me as a blogger. At the heart of everything I’ve written in the past two months about our transfer window, our transfer policy, our management team, and directors, and at the heart of all my complaints and my growing frustration and anger, is my memory of what that was like. It’s my determination, in every fibre of my being, not to let this club backslide now that we have our foot on their throat.
When there was still a Rangers and they were on top, they took an inordinate amount of pleasure in rubbing our faces in it. And in David Murray, they had a braggart who loved nothing more than that. It’s there in every interview he ever gave. It’s there in every public utterance out of their club at the time. “The second biggest institution after the church.” That was how he described them. And unquestionably, they believed that, and they milked it for all it was worth.
A lot of our fans evidently believed it as well, because I remember what it was like 12 years ago having conversations with people when they had entered administration, and the press were telling the world that they would ultimately get a pennies-in-the-pound CVA because they were Rangers, and what other option was there?
Anybody who understood the politics of that moment knew that it was unthinkable that they would get a pennies-in-the-pound CVA.
This wasn’t being handled in some stinking Larkhall backroom.
This was being handled in the Treasury in London, far away from the game here and far away from any concept of what Keith Jackson, or Jim Traynor, or Jim White, or Chick Young thought of it. No one gave a toss down there what the average Rangers fan was going through or what Ally McCoist was demanding should happen. They were going after the big boys of English football after this, and they wanted a hide to hang on the barn door, and nothing was going to make a pennies-in-the-pound CVA hold any appeal for them whatsoever.
Such a thing wasn’t even in policy; HMRC’s own website was explicit about that. They had evidence that Rangers had deliberately withheld tax income, concealed a tax evasion scam, and lied about it when investigators started asking questions. It was crystal clear that they would refuse any offer short of payment in full plus penalties.
And yet, the number of Celtic fans I spoke to at the time believed in their hearts—having been brought up on a diet of “second biggest institution after the church” garbage and assorted other similar rubbish by our media—that someone somewhere would intervene, that strings would be pulled, that favours would be called in, that the establishment would protect its club.
I lost count of the number of those people I met and spoke to at that time who genuinely believed that they would come through. That was the measure of how deeply rooted even in our psyches the idea that they were this enormous unshakeable thing actually was.
Imagine how it must have felt for them! I take joy in that thought every single day, and I’ll freely admit it. I’ve been laughing at them ever since.
And in spite of our own troubles, I have enjoyed their squirming, their suffering, their pain, and their torment all the way through this summer—from the moment they found out that their stadium was closed down, to the way they tried to talk up third-rate signings, to the admission that they have no money for transfers, and through every rambling Clement press conference, to the exit from Europe in front of a half-empty Hampden.
And I’ve news for the guy who sent me that email: He has nothing to worry about when it comes to my state of mind. Because even with this dire transfer window so far, I’m a happy camper. I’m a Celtic fan. And come the end of this week, big signings or not, we’re going to slap his side all over the Parkhead pitch, and when we do, I’m going to take five seconds out of my pleasure at our performance to take pleasure in thinking of his pain. And I will raise a glass to him, and all his suffering this last decade, and the suffering of all the rest of them.
And I promise them: I will never get tired of this. I will never get bored by this. I will never be disillusioned or lose interest in it. I will never be anything other than happy dancing on the grave of Rangers and hoping for the death of Sevco.
So thanks for your concern, but save it for those who need it. Your own supporters.
Yes James, I totally agree, they are a laughing stock, they will continue to be so, and I worship the ground they are going into.
Is the hun poster’s name Thrush by any chance? For he sounds like an irritating cant!
Exquisite article.
Back then I was a regular reader of Phil Mac’s blog. He made it clear, and he wasn’t alone, that HMRC as a matter of policy did not enter into CVA’ s and that the chances of a Pennies in the pound settlement were between Bob Hope and nae hope. A Rangers supporting friend of mine, a very good friend, I might add was not that concern as it was Rangers that we were talking about and they would “get a slap on the wrist”. I remember how he laughed when I said that they would go out of business. I’ll never forget the look on his face when the newspapers, correctly, broke the news of their sad demise. He wasn’t alone. YouTube has video clips of the shareholders leaving the meeting which lasted less than eight minutes on the day that the club was wound up.