Violence, Death Threats and Media Blackout: The Celtic Derby Tradition.

Last updated : 06 October 2009 By FF.com
In October 2007 Celtic had nine different players cautioned in a derby match at Ibrox.

No punishment was dished out by the governing body.

In October 2009 Celtic had two different players cautioned for simulation in a derby match at Ibrox. Considering the recent furore over the issue of diving, it will of course be a matter of urgency for the governing body to stamp out this cheating and for the media to highlight further this cancer on the game.

It's often claimed that the impressionable are quick to copy the actions of their idols; ready and willing to make haste in their impressions of the deeds of their heroes.

So who can blame the Celtic fans for thinking they can get away with anything?

Take Sunday just as an example.

Setting off controlled explosions. Flying flags of proscribed organisations.

Throwing bricks and objects through the windows of a moving vehicle.

Attacking Rangers fans with bottles and baseball bats and threatening others - including a pensioner, her female relative and another woman - while they sat in their car merely attempting to make their way home.

Continuing their habit of causing damage to property held by Rangers employees - this time it was Kyle Lafferty, but it will be someone else soon - and threatening others.

And, in the darkest, deepest dungeons of despair and depravity, their most unreconstructed of followers resort to posting vile threats to the person of said Rangers player and the match referee, Craig Thomson.

You may ask what the Scottish media have to say on any of this?

You may wonder why they don't report it or follow up on the facts?

You may even be puzzled that the same journos who spend much of their working day camped on FF harvesting the site for stories and jokes can never seem to click on the threads where the details of this campaign of sectarian venom and illegal activity are presented.

By all means treat a cartoon of Neil Lennon on the gallows as the single most important story since the last visit of the Holy Father, but don't dare to print the truth when it hurts, or where it doesn't suit. The hypocritical writers whose own existence are defined by their obsession with sectarianism and the "Old Firm baggage" are condemned by their own silence.

Shame on them: for in this their shame is the greater. The demented and diabolic among the Celtic support can do no other; their sanguinary instincts and behaviour are simply the result of years of getting away with anything they please and a lack of anything approaching decency.

Scum is as scum does, but there is no excuse for those so quick to lecture us, and to adopt the role of moral guardians. How do they sleep at night?