‘We are not half of anything, not our problem’. Celtic FC’s usually mundane Twitter account appeared to briefly take the gloves off on Monday night in response to Rangers, in a complaint letter sent to the Scottish government, referencing the club as ‘the other half of the Old Firm’.
In a divergence from the usual birthday greetings to ex-Celts like Stuart Slater and Lee Martin, the Hoops were angry at being dragged into the Covid row surrounding Rangers’ title celebrations and the throngs of Gers fans who congregated outside Ibrox and in Glasgow city centre.
There appears to have been a push in recent years among the Hoops faithful to smash the ‘Old Firm’ dynamic - a tag which was actually a slur labelled on both clubs by opponents in Scotland who seen the burgeoning strength of the two Glasgow giants as a mere pantomime built on mutual ‘hatred’ which was ultimately superficial and detrimental to the game as a whole.
In the smoking ashes of Rangers’ liquidation in 2012, Celtic CEO Peter Lawwell insisted the club had its own, separate strategy and didn’t depend on events at other clubs to determine policy.
He also admitted, though, that their bitter rivals’ disappearance from the top flight would cost the club at least £10m per annum.
Season tickets tailed off at 15k lower than their peak, the club downsized its wage bill and despite the facts trophies were still being bagged - interest had waned with huge flags covering vast swathes of the upper stands.
As Glasgow comedian and Celtic fan Kevin Bridges noted, Scottish football was no longer a two horse race and had become show jumping.
Rangers ultimately started life again in the Third Division and began the arduous ‘journey’ back to the Premiership in what would be labelled the ‘banter years’.
Celtic fans took great satisfaction in their rivals’ plight - payback, perhaps, for the sufferance of the late 80s and early 90s when Rangers lorded it over Celtic who stumbled from one dismal failure to another.
When the Govan club finally re-emerged back in the top division in 2017, Celtic had recruited Brendan Rodgers and season books were sold out again.
Would the Hoops have had the money to pay for the Rodgers project but for the re-ignition of Scottish football’s major selling point, would the Carnlough man even have been interested?
It may be a painful truth for the fan bases of both clubs but the tribal soap opera which engulfs the Old Firm is a major attraction for those who choose to ply their trade in Scotland. Would Laudrup, Gascoigne, Di Canio, Larsson and many others have chosen to tread the same path without it?
Embarrassingly for Celtic, in the hours after their tweet, it was pointed out that the club had recently moved to renew its copyright of the ‘Old Firm’ label - 50 per cent of which is owned by Rangers.
The Hoops board’s forked tongue on the matter points to a problem - a thin line which has to be skated by the powers that be that recognises the benefits, as well as the pitfalls, of such a heated rivalry.
In 2012, Celtic’s majority shareholder Dermot Desmond caused a stir when he described Rangers as ‘one of Great Britain’s greatest clubs’ and expressed his disappointment that they were no longer in the top tier.
The truth is Desmond was probably just stating the obvious - that part of being a fan of either club is in the joy that comes from watching your bitter rivals fall flat on their face.
Had Rangers not re-emerged in some form or another it is difficult to see how Scottish football would have survived beyond becoming a complete footballing backwater - even with the Old Firm interest it is struggling to keep warm in the huge shadow cast by the riches of the Premier League south of the border.
Tribalism, of course, is not isolated to Scotland - it is what fuels support for football all over the world. Be it Manchester United v Liverpool, Lazio v Roma or Boca v River Plate - hatred sells and in Glasgow’s cauldron of religious and political division, it is a commodity that is never in short supply.
