The Importance of Old Firm Football: Sport as a Substitute for War

Over the weekend an amazing thing happened in Glasgow: thousands of people were happy together and celebrating throughout the city. 

I first became aware that something unusual was happening when I heard distant fireworks going off. In these days of gloom and hopelessness, I wondered why?

Logging in to Twitter the reason became obvious. Because after about a decade in the wilderness, Rangers had won the Scottish Premiership!


As described in P M News, Nigeria

"Glasgow Rangers have been crowned Scottish Premiership champions for the first time since 2011 after Celtic were held to a goalless draw at Dundee United...

Rangers were consigned to Scotland’s fourth tier back in 2012 after the financial collapse, but have rebuilt steadily —- and have now denied Celtic a record-breaking 10th consecutive top-flight crown...

Former Liverpool and England midfielder Gerrard took the Rangers helm in 2018 and has now completed a remarkable end to Celtic’s prior dominance.

Rangers fans flouted lockdown rules at Ibrox to celebrate the 55th crown for the second day running."  https://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2021/03/07/victory-at-last-as-rangers-win-scottish-league-title/

I somewhat randomly chose a quotation from  a Nigerian daily newspaper because it illustrates a very important point: Old Firm football is followed all over the world. 

Rangers and Celtic football clubs are truly world famous!

But my first intimation of the source of the fireworks, heard 30 miles from Glasgow, was not the joyous news. Rather it was the news that Nicola Sturgeon had tweeted her condemnation of the celebrations.

As reported in the Guardian,

"Nicola Sturgeon has condemned the “infuriating and disgraceful” celebrations in Glasgow as she urged Rangers FC to ask people to go home.

Thousands of fans have flouted the coronavirus lockdown to gather in the streets and celebrate Rangers winning the Scottish Premiership – their first top-flight title in 10 years. The mass gatherings have been widely condemned, and the first minister warned the celebrations could jeopardise plans to ease coronavirus restrictions."  https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/mar/07/sturgeon-condemns-infuriating-celebrations-rangers-fans-coronavirus

 

And, as if on cue, thereupon followed a torrent of tweets about how dreadful it was that the fans should be celebrating.  

But even worse, hundreds, if not thousands, of tweets followed damning the police for 'allowing' it! 

So I turned on the TV to see what all these folk were complaining about. From the outraged comments on Twitter and also on TV news programmes I was expecting to see scenes like the BLM marches in London with police ‘taking the knee’ and simply standing by watching people smash up property, throw bicycles at police horses etc.

 

But instead what I saw was: police officers doing exactly the right thing. They were SHEPHERDING the excited fans carefully and slowly through the streets of Glasgow. 

 There was no violence and no injuries (as far as I can tell) simply the expression of pure joy of overcoming adversity and succeeding! If the police had used a 'heavy hand' to try to prevent the celebration of an historic victory, that would almost definitely have caused violence to erupt! 

After almost a year of being cooped up in our houses with anxiety over money, work, whether you or your family might fall ill or even die - imagine the explosion that would have happened if the police had acted as these (mostly SNP supporting) armchair crowd control experts were advocating!

Sport is a substitute for war, it is often said, and football in particular plays a role in Glasgow and in Scotland as a 'pressure valve' especially for young men.

I might suggest that having such strong outlets in Celtic and Rangers may well have helped save Scotland from going down the Ulster route!

Let them celebrate!  There has to be more to life than living in fear of a virus!


Comments

  1. Unknown9 March 2021 at 22:59

    True people need an outlet, iam a mountaineer one or two people on a mountain side and then coming down and getting prosecuted where is the common sense in that.

    ReplyDelete

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