WELL I NEVER, the High Heid Yins in the Scottish Professional Football League have condemned the throwing-on of pyrotechnics by Rangers' fans at Dundee on Wednesday night. Just as well the game was in Dundee – that condemnation is the equivalent of Maw Broon saying: “Michty Me – whit a stooshie.”
There is, naturally, no public outburst of dismay or censure at the actions of the away support. After all, the flamethrowers are the fifth or sixth generation of fans of that club, brought up to believe: “Wearrapeepel” and screech that from the roof-tops at every opportunity. The action by the SPFL High Heid Yins is, if you like, their way of saying: “There is nothing we can do, but, we've noted the incident.”
The news might not yet have filtered through to the rarified air of Hampden's Sixth Floor corridor – the supposed epicentre of football thought and management in Scotland, but, back in June, the possession of fireworks and flares at a Scottish football match became a criminal offence.
Well, here's an idea – why don't football's High Heid Yins tell the Scottish Government, everybody who sells such items to the general public is anti diversity and doesn't recognise gender self-identification – the sale of such items would be banned by midday that day.
Otherwise, be prepared for a long wait for action – and, in any case, keeping fireworks and flares out of football grounds is perhaps more a case for government, local and national, than for the football authorities.
That said, No SPFL club has ever been sanctioned for its fans throwing fireworks and flares.
There is something they (Scottish Football's High Heid Yins) could do – they could make the clubs responsible for the behaviour of official fans. Look at it this way – if Celtic and Rangers can be taken to task by UEFA for their fans' misbehaviour in Europe – a move which has, in part, led to Celtic taking steps to reign-in the behaviour of their Green Brigade, then the League can surely do likewise domestically, and the other clubs can do likewise to their lunatic fringe.
Every club has its share of quarter and half-wits – and here I will give you a wee example:
Many years ago, while covering a home game at Ayr United, the West Sound reporter at the game reported, having been in-touch with the studio, that there was trouble at the Junior game between Lugar Boswell Thistle and Dalry Thistle.
Back then, and I would suggest, still today – at that fixture, if there was a good old-fashioned Scottish “break-in”- you would, in terms of fitness and numbers, back the players and officials to win the fight. So, this was a strange one.
At full-time I was discussing the alleged bother at Lugar with one of the Ayr backroom staff, like me a man whose love of the game was nurtured by Alex Rowan MA, our Headmaster at Lugar Primary School.
We agreed, whatever had happened, “Peachey” a stalwart supporter and committee member of “The Jaggy Bunnets” as Lugar are known, was almost sure to be involved.
On the Monday, in Cumnock, I met the Ayr backroom boy again. He had learned no more about Saturday's incident at Lugar, however, as luck would have it, at that moment one of the Lugar players came round the corner, so we questioned him about the incident.
He began his reply: “Well, Peachey.....” He needed say no more.
Peachey perhaps made-up at a reasonable estimate, between five and ten percent of the crowd at that game. If we extrapolate what I might call “The Peachey Effect” upwards into Senior game, it might give us an idea of the percentage of bams in the support of any given club. By and large, when these bams are connected to an official Supporters Club or group, or travelling on an organised bus, it is reasonable to expect that the guys running the club, group, or bus party, have a means of keeping them in check.
Rangers (and Celtic) each have upwards of 40,000 season ticket holders. Not all of these regular fans will wish to travel to every away game, but, a sufficiently high enough percentage do, so, when it comes to providing tickets for away fans, it is reasonable to suspect – the two clubs know which fans, and which branches of their Supporters Clubs, are getting the precious briefs.
So, already, football's rulers are some way down the road of identifying the throwers of pyrotechnics. It is not rocket science to work out, if the missile was thrown from (for example) Section C of whatever stand; then it was likely to have been thrown by somebody from a limited number of Supporters Club branches.
Simply tell these branches – we suspect one of your members threw a pyrotechnic, so you are on notice, if it happens again and your seat allocation is in the area from which it was thrown, then your members will not get tickets for any more away games.
I suspect, in very-short order, the bams would be booted out.
The unwillingness of the clubs to be held responsible for their fans' behaviour, while in-part understandable, puzzles me. If you are to be held responsible for fan behaviour, then it stands to reason, you might want to register them. This of course would cost money, in terms of administering the membership, issuing membership cards etc. But, the club would have a captive audience, with whom they could better interact; they could use membership as a means of selling more official merchandise and of helping the club's sponsors with their businesses.
Yes, there would still need to be a means whereby unaligned genuine football fans – who prefer to pick and choose their games rather than following one club – could attend games, but, surely working-out how to cater for these neutrals is not beyond the ken of the game's great brains.
Instead of, as has been the case for generations, of football saying: “Here we are, come and support us – if you want” the game ought to be better marketing and promoting itself, because, right now, Scottish Football comes across as a pretty dire product, badly in need of a serious revamp.
The way the game is organised and managed up here more and more convinces me, Scottish Fitba is a serious basket case – I despair.
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