Column - An ‘Old Firm’ Problem?

Lewis has his say on recent crowd trouble.

By: Lewis Murray

I’ll be honest, for some selfish reasons I felt quite sad after watching those ugly scenes that followed Celtic’s penalty shootout win on Sunday.

I have never been to Ibrox to support Celtic and have always wanted to go and experience an away win there. I was incredibly jealous of those in the Celtic end who had the chance to experience that joy in the stadium.

After everything that unfolded, it is likely that we once again see a ban on away fans in this fixture, so I may now never get the chance either.

And unfortunately it’s the same group of people at fault who are the reason I’ve also never had a drink at a Scottish football game: Rangers fans.

There have been, and there will be lots of attempts in the coming days and weeks to make this an “Old Firm” issue, or a “Glasgow” issue, or some other prevarication that avoids dealing with a problem that has been allowed to fester and rot in Scotland. We’re already seeing it, such as a major Scottish news outlet referring to Celtic fans damaging an advertising hoarding ahead of mentioning a Celtic staff member being assaulted, STV News screening images of damage to seats in the Rangers end and claiming it was damage in the away end.

There is one team whose fans consistently get involved in this kind of nonsense.

Hampden 1980. Manchester 2008. Hampden again in 2016. Now this.

All games in which one team lost and their fans attempted to start a riot. All games in which the team that lost was…Rangers.

‘But but but, Celtic started it.’

Aside from this being an excuse you wouldn’t accept from a five year old, are we going to act like spontaneous pitch invasions after huge late wins are some kind of new thing? Aberdeen fans invaded the pitch after their equaliser against Celtic in the 2025 Scottish Cup final. Celtic and Motherwell fans traded pitch invasions in the crazy 2-1 win for the Hoops at Fir Park in which Celtic opened the scoring in the 87th minute, conceded an equaliser in the 95th, and scored a winner in the 97th. It’s daft and I won’t condone it - leave the pitch to the players and officials - but it understandably happens all over the place.

I could find you five or six examples of Rangers fans invading the pitch after a late goal within an hour. Pretty much every team does it at some point - perhaps Celtic more than most thanks to the sheer volume of late winners the Bhoys score.

So it’s hardly out of the ordinary or beyond the realms of imagination that Celtic fans might spill onto the pitch after a penalty shootout win against their biggest rivals in a game they had been under the cosh in. Conversely, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that fans of the losing side be able to respond like grown adults and manage their anger without deciding to run onto the pitch in response and try to start a riot.

It was the same response we saw from Rangers fans when Hibs defeated them to win their first Scottish Cup in over 100 years in 2016, and it wasn’t nipped in the bud then either.

For whatever reason, a blind eye is turned all the time with this club. This was the third derby at Ibrox in recent memory in which a member of Celtic’s coaching staff was assaulted by home supporters. One derby there saw Joe Hart picking bits of a broken Buckfast bottle out of his own penalty area after it was launched on by a home fan, and a Celtic physio have his head split open by another thrown bottle. Has there been even a whisper of a fine, points deduction or partial stadium closure after any of those incidents? Nope, and so the behaviour is allowed to get worse and worse.

Rangers’ most well known ultras, the Union Bears, were up until recently led by an internationally wanted criminal. They have displayed banners full of racist dogwhistles. It was fans from their section, with their ridiculous blue balaclavas, that were seen rushing across the pitch and throwing a lit flare into the Celtic end at the weekend. You might think they are some kind of rogue element, but a few weeks ago Rangers FC’s own social media channel posted a donation link to encourage Rangers fans to fund the Union Bears’ pre-match displays.

This is a stadium where a flag has been repeatedly pictured featuring the SS Death’s Head insignia, with no one making any attempt to remove it or challenge the fan flying it. This is a stadium where sectarian songs are simply par for the course and quite clearly sung loud and proud by a significant proportion of those in attendance.

This environment has been allowed to fester to the point in which Celtic’s players, staff and fans are not safe at Ibrox, and yet nothing at all has been done about it. UEFA have at least fined Rangers before - there has been no such response from the SFA.

Again, I need to stress: this is not an ‘Old Firm’ problem. Rangers have come to Celtic Park and won twice in a row now. At neither game did Celtic fans run on the pitch to riot. At neither game was any Celtic fan such a bad loser that they resorted to trying to assault a member of Rangers’ coaching staff. This is a Rangers problem, again and again, and it’s time those in positions of power and influence recognised that and acted accordingly.

It would of course be disingenuous to act like all Celtic fans are perfect saints. There was footage of away fans, likely without tickets, rushing an entrance at Ibrox at the weekend. As has become the norm for this fixture, away fans trashed their end of the ground with stickers, graffiti and general damage. It’s all daft, childish and unnecessary - tit for tat criminal damage at both Celtic Park and Ibrox caused by away fans.

And I must add that if you are one of the fans that think it’s hilarious to use the Ibrox disaster for point scoring then you are, frankly, an utter cretin, and you don’t get to clutch your pearls when Rangers fans point score just as disgustingly about child abuse. You also don’t get to complain when the media take such a neutral, “Old Firm” based slant on fan behaviour. Rangers’ recent statement after the game rightly made mention of the horrid Ibrox disaster graffiti, although it pointedly did not mention the club’s decision to play the full version of The Best prior to kick off - something it doesn’t normally do - in order to allow the “tens of thousands of people” in the Rangers end who were there to “support their team with pride” to add their own offensive messages to the song.

Perhaps the deeper issue is that of policing. Neither Rangers nor Celtic in their recent statements in response to the chaos directly addressed the criminal actions that took place on the pitch - physical assault of stewards and a Celtic staff member - due to the ongoing investigation into the end of the game. Celtic, however, did specifically mention how Celtic fans were put through a dangerously poorly organised entry process to get into Ibrox. Testimony of fans who went to the game described chaotic scenes in which 7500 fans were funnelled through one small area designed for a far smaller allocation. Together with the likely overcrowding in the away end caused by ticketless fans gaining entry and the failure of police and security to protect a Celtic staff member from being assaulted, a picture develops of a failure of policing that is far from new in Scottish football.

The Police themselves blamed the increased away allocation for the disorder at the game, despite decades of experience of Celtic and Rangers having large allocations at each other’s stadiums up until Rangers ended that in 2018. Even since then, they have been able to successfully police 50-50 stadium splits at Hampden with little issue.

Inconsistent and poorly organised policing has been an issue with Celtic fans on a number of occasions, including at the crush that took place under the north stand prior to a derby in 2018, and I worry that, if lessons aren’t appropriately learned, Scottish football could encounter its very own Hillsborough or Heysel style disaster.

All in all, it was an ugly end to a great day for Celtic and the ramifications of it all remain unclear for now.

What I certainly won’t be expecting is for Rangers or the Scottish football authorities to recognise and begin to deal with their rot of far right ultras, sectarian chanting and a culture that responds to defeat with anarchy. That still seems a long way off.