A NEW report from the SFA has described the shameful scenes and violence seen at a Scottish cup quarter-final tie between Rangers and Celtic earlier this year.
The review was commissioned after the Old Firm match on March 8, which saw chaos erupt on the pitch as supporters clashed and threw fireworks.
Undertaken by sports event consultant Mark Blackbourne, it found that "life-threatening violence was possible" for a period on the day, with police officers left "petrified" of policing another game at Ibrox.
But whilst the report largely blamed ultras groups on both sides for the violence, it also singled out pre-match planning failures by the clubs and Police Scotland.
Key issues highlighted included a lack of proper risk assessments, saying that the March 1 fixture used for the safety plan was hugely flawed given there was, for example, a much larger away team allocation and that the key leads at Rangers and the police didn’t have the experience to police such a crowd.
“The jeopardy of extra time and penalties, the scale of the away allocation, and the historical resonance of the occasion combined to produce a risk profile that bore no meaningful resemblance to the March 1 league fixture against which it was planned,” the review stated.
“It must be designated and planned as a match of national significance in future, with all the additional resource, oversight, and contingency planning that designation demands.”
It went on: “Neither Rangers FC nor Police Scotland had key leads on the ground with experience of managing an away allocation of 8000 Celtic supporters at Ibrox.
“The last comparable allocation was in 2018 – eight years prior. In the intervening period, away allocations ranged between 2000 and 2500, with a two-year period of no away fans at all.
“The institutional knowledge of what 8000 away supporters requires – in terms of search-lane capacity, flow-rate calculations, stewarding numbers, police deployment and contingency planning – had not been maintained.”
The review also said that Police Scotland raised “no concerns” about the 8042-away allocation and that this was a “surprise”.
It went on to recommend: “[The] Scottish FA and SPFL must align to ‘appropriate, workable, safe to operate’, with safe to operate as a primary consideration for elevated-risk fixtures; home clubs to express and evidence Safety & Security risks.
“No plan existed for ticketless fans attempting entry by doubling-up, forgery or forcing gates. This must be a standing element of contingency planning for high risk matches and an integral part of the Safety Officer’s match risk assessment.”
