Tam McManus sounds like a clown talking about fairness after supporting a Celtic allocation cut.

Today, Tam McManus is loudly beating the drum on behalf of Hibs fans, lamenting how disenfranchised they feel, not knowing whether or not they’ll have tickets for the weekend’s SPFL game at Ibrox. Let me say this outright: the behaviour of the Ibrox club here is a disgrace. No two ways about it; that’s a fact.

The upper tier of the Copland Road Stand might still be closed, and a few thousand seats could be unavailable. So what? That’s their self-inflicted wound, and they should still be required to offer at least some seats to visiting Hibs supporters. If, as I suspect, they get away with providing none, then it’s clear we don’t have governing bodies anymore. We have anarchy, where clubs just do as they please. Some will argue, “But Celtic did that to them.” Yet, we all know there’s a lot more nuance to that situation, don’t we?

For a while now, it’s been obvious Scottish football lacks leadership, and this is yet another glaring example of it. If a club can behave as the Ibrox club seems poised to, what’s stopping others from doing the same? Why should any club bother giving away fans an allocation if the so-called governing bodies simply shrug and say, “Sort it out amongst yourselves”?

This creates an immediate and obvious problem.

But there’s another issue to address here: McManus himself. I’m not a fan of Tam McManus. He pops up now and again to give his opinion, and almost always, he’s talking nonsense. I can’t remember the last time I agreed with anything he said. I’ve had a few online spats with his fan club over the years, and this take on away fan allocations is as laughable as it is hypocritical.

Earlier in the season, he publicly supported Hibs cutting Celtic’s allocation at Easter Road. In doing so, he made it abundantly clear that he has no issue with clubs prioritising their own fans over the rights of away supporters. He didn’t care if it was unfair or unreasonable. He didn’t care if there were empty seats while fans willing to pay couldn’t get tickets.

If you take that position, you should stick to it, and it should haunt you every time this issue arises for the rest of your career as a pundit.

Taking such a backward stance on away fans’ rights is appalling. By defending it, McManus now sounds like a hypocrite when he suddenly starts beating the drum for the Hibs fans who want to attend Ibrox. He has already shown contempt for fans and isn’t alone in this. Plenty of media figures and football people have done the same, thinking it won’t affect their clubs. But here we are, and this situation is the direct result of that thinking.

Away allocations in Scottish football used to be in the thousands. Now, for some clubs, they’re in the hundreds. Celtic has already banned another club’s fans from Parkhead. Yes, it’s a complex situation, involving safety concerns and the Ibrox club’s failure to treat those concerns responsibly. Celtic was wholly within its rights to act, given the lack of intervention from the governing body.

Ibrox responded in kind, and as a result, there were no away fans at Celtic Park, nor will there be any when we next visit across the city. I fully supported our decision—it was the right call, and our reasoning was sound. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see the dire position Scottish football is in because of the governing bodies’ failure to step in.

Now, we’re facing another escalation. The possibility that Hibs fans may be told they’re getting no allocation at Ibrox simply because that club has botched its seating arrangements is absurd. If the SPFL allows this to slide, we’re further down the dark path we’ve been on for years. And people like McManus are part of the reason we’re here.

It takes a special kind of stupid to cheerlead Hibs’ decision to cut our allocation in the manner he did. It takes a special kind of stupid not to see how that kind of talk could blow up in your own face at some point. If you protect one set of fans, you protect all fans, and taking a small-minded, parochial view only puts everyone at risk.

For years, the debate raged about whether clubs should limit the number of Celtic and Ibrox fans in their grounds. Some fans from those clubs even clamoured for it, but almost no club took it seriously until the Ibrox club slashed our allocation from 7,000 to 700.

Some of the same voices in the media, who now cry for both clubs to “get around the table,” supported that decision. In fact, some even suggested it.

It set us on a dangerous path, and other clubs quickly followed suit. Now, Celtic’s away allocations are smaller than ever, with the Ibrox club’s fans receiving a similar reduction. And I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for them, given they started this madness.

I feel for the Hibs fans who don’t know if they’ll get to watch their team this weekend. I really do. And that’s not just lip service. I feel for any fan denied the chance to support their side, with one exception: the Ibrox fans, whose behaviour made it impossible to bring even 700 of our fans to their ground safely. Their conduct, both at their ground and ours, has been appalling.

This isn’t a dig at Hibs fans. Their issue was with the Ibrox support, whose sectarian bile and abuse of stewards made them want to reduce their allocation. It was the Hibs board who twisted their open letter to that effect into an excuse to cut ours as well.

But I feel no sympathy for Hibs as a club in this situation.

They made their bed when they took their fans’ legitimate grievance and used it as a tool to attack us. Now they find themselves on the receiving end of the same treatment, thanks to people like McManus, who, instead of standing up for ordinary supporters, took a chickenshit, parochial stance without thinking through the consequences.

Well, here we are, and those consequences are laid bare. How foolish does McManus sound today, talking about fairness?

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