What if a Catholic player heard sectarian singing aimed at him inside Ibrox and wanted to walk off the pitch in protest?
Remember Steve Clarke in February, 2019 when he got the full “Sad Fenian b******” treatment during a Scottish Cup tie while he was the manager of Kilmarnock?
Emotionally charged in his press conference afterwards he said the experience had made him glad that his family hadn’t been brought up in the West of Scotland.
What if the now Scotland boss had walked up the tunnel in disgust and his players had followed him in a show of unity?
If it was a Rangers player enduring that kind of human degradation then Steven Gerrard would surely put a consolatory arm around his shoulder while demonstrating understanding for the victim’s distress.
As the manager did, justifiably so, when Glen Kamara was racially abused in the Europa League tie against Slavia Prague.
The player said, in retrospect, he would have walked off if he’d been thinking clearly at the time.
It’s the same thing, isn’t it?
A reprehensible attack on a man’s dignity and background. An unacceptable affront to decency.
There was a school of thought among Rangers fans, and others, that Slavia Prague should have been kicked out of the competition.
It would be the ultimate deterrent for those misguided enough to think sub-human behaviour was acceptable in a civilised society.
If the SFA president Rod Petrie can publicly say last weekend’s shameful scenes in Glasgow’s George Square after Rangers received the Premiership trophy “served only to depict our game in the poorest light” and if the SPFL’s post-pandemonium statement said the disgraceful behaviour of fans was “the last thing that Scottish football needs” then the ball’s shifted from the political domain to the game’s governing bodies.
Or it better had before the Scottish government imposes legislation on the game that the game won’t like.
After all, what’s the difference between racism and sectarianism if the offence caused is felt on an equal level?
It would surely be the ultimate hypocrisy to stand up to the former while denying the latter was worthy of the same sense of outrage. I know the script.
In the West of Scotland culture anti-Catholic abuse is seen by some as banter. Just a joke. No need to take any offence.
Really?
I’ve heard it all of my life, seven decades’ worth of this disingenuous baloney now being called out at parliamentary level after George Square. I have the whole kit and caboodle for this topic.
Born Catholic. Grandparents who came here from Ireland and settled in a part of Govan near Ibrox, coincidentally.
Brother a priest. Wife of 50 years a Protestant.
And the thing is, after 71 years of it, the banter’s sell-by date has expired.
Enough is enough.
The date of its expiry fell on the day the riot police had to visit a Glasgow landmark for the second time in six weeks.
If the game can unite in disgust over racist attacks on innocent players and ask for sanctions to be imposed on the perpetrators and the clubs who employ them then it has to do the same against those who practise religious intolerance.
It stands to reason, doesn’t it?
And Rangers need to address the issue as part of what we’re trying to make a progressive 21st Century Scotland.
George Square can’t become the equivalent of a militarised zone every time Rangers win a competition.
Paramedics trying to help the injured in the midst of mayhem can’t be targeted because their uniforms are green, as an eyewitness account described to me on radio.
And there can’t be a sense of relief that Rangers weren’t in yesterday’s Scottish Cup Final at Hampden because it avoided another outbreak of civil disobedience.
The general release of Sir Alex Ferguson’s film, Never Give In, this week will see him express regret that he didn’t do more to stand up for his wife, a Catholic, when he was quizzed about their wedding by a Rangers director during his time as an Ibrox player.
And, to be fair, that questionable culture was subsequently addressed by the signing of Catholic players and the appointment of a Catholic manager in Paul Le Guen.
Now they need to deal with anti-social behaviour among the support which contains “so- called fans,” to use the club’s description of them.
“No one likes us, we don’t care” isn’t a suitable slogan to be associated with a modern-day club about to enter the Champions League.
