The one topic, of course, that Ibrox Noise has not touched upon since yesterday’s Old Firm loss was the chaos at the end. Old Firm Ibrox violence ruined everything. The atmosphere up until 90 minutes was absolutely outstanding. It was the best Old Firm atmosphere in almost 10 years. Obviously, with the return of the normal allocation of away fans, we got the way that an Old Firm should sound.
Outstanding atmosphere ruined.
However, the chaos at the end more than utterly undermined everything that had come before. It is unclear exactly who ‘started this’, to quote unquote, but either way both Rangers and Celtic fans invaded the pitch. It caused absolute chaos.
There was an apparent attempt at an assault on one of the team’s backroom staff. We are not even clear which set of fans tried to do this on whose backroom staff. But it is beyond deplorable. Sadly, it is also the way that the world has become these days.
Trouble on both sides.
Rangers fans are filled, unfortunately, with a disturbing underbelly of unwanted types. Celtic, as we know, most of their fans are like that in the first place. Of course they also have the toxic Green Brigade. That group is responsible for so much mayhem.
Ibrox Noise regulars will know we are not the world’s biggest fans of the Union Bears. But thanks to them, at least Ibrox does have some atmosphere. Otherwise it would often be quite quiet.
While the UB are not exactly our favourite bunch of the year, the Green Brigade are way worse. They are pure poison. They are as close to an authorised terrorist group as Scotland has.
The mess that they left the Broomloan Stand in is beyond compare. We have no words for what we have witnessed and seen. That was the result of them having 7,500 tickets and behaving like absolute animals. The damage and destruction in there left us lost for words.
Pitch invasion disgrace.
But the chaos at the end of the match with the invasion of the pitch was absolutely disgraceful. It was one of the ugliest things that we have ever seen at Ibrox.
And Martin O’Neill was in the dugout. It does not get much uglier than that.
But being serious, he was the only one who actually made any proper comment about it. Our very own ‘proud’ manager Danny Rohl was off up the tunnel Russell Martin-style. He barely made a comment until cornered about it.
The simple fact is that Rangers and Celtic shamed themselves with their fans. It was a diabolical, vitriolic and hateful spectacle. It could easily have seen real violence. The police had to do a major job to stop that escalating into genuine danger.
The future of away fans.
This is why, unfortunately, despite us criticising Dave King for reducing Celtic’s away allocation, he probably did the right thing in hindsight. This was chaotic. This was old football hooliganism at its worst.
We are only glad that hopefully no one was seriously hurt. We have heard no reports suggesting otherwise. We hope that remains the case.
But unfortunately the conduct of both sets of fans has probably killed for good the notion of full away allocations. It may go back to 850 at the absolute most. Or away fans may be banned on both sides for good.
Well done both sides of fans. Or at least the neds on both sides.
They have absolutely ruined the one chance we had to restore a proper Old Firm atmosphere. Sadly it had been a good atmosphere until that toxicity kicked in with Old Firm Ibrox violence.
Well done lads.