Just for once, Scotland has a really exciting football season. And so it was probably inevitable that Rangers and Celtic would play a Scottish Cup quarter final and put on one of the worst displays of "football" ever (though not even their worst game this season...). But far worse than that was the pitch invasion and the disgraceful scenes that followed the merciful end of the game.
It is probably the case that there are some lessons to be learned about the crowd allocation and the stewarding of the match. If so, those lessons should be investigated and learned. It's also probably the case that one side started it, and that one side was the worse offender (and not necessarily the same side either way).
But all of that is largely irrelevant. The bottom line is that this is not the first time something like this has happened, and while all the talking heads are lining up to express their disgust, almost nobody is truly surprised by any of this. That it happened is a mark of shame, but perhaps a bigger shame is that it seems to just be a feature of our game.
So.
There needs to be a sanction applied to these two clubs. And that cannot be a fine: if the penalty for breaking a rule is a fine, that rule becomes optional for the very rich. And stamping this out cannot be optional.
So the penalty should take the nature of a footballing sanction.
Two other things:
- Any sanction applied should be applied equally to both sides. So extreme is the hatred between the extremists of both sides, we cannot rule out the possibility of false flag actions to bring trouble down on the other side.
- Any sanction of lost points or removal from competitions should also apply to the next season. Again, I wouldn't put it past either side to seek some sort of advantage by deliberately bringing down the sanction when they lose.
At this point, I'm inclined to ban both Rangers and Celtic from the Scottish Cup next season. They caused this blight in a Scottish Cup match, so eject them from that competition next year.
But if that's not enough to stop this happening again, then in future I think we need to stop holding the Old Firm matches - when those fixtures are scheduled, simply rest the teams and assign both a 3-0 defeat.
And there comes a point, very soon indeed, when we should consider declaring both these teams ineligible for European competition, as happened to English teams in the 80s. That's probably the most effective sanction, but should probably be considered a nuclear option - it means both these clubs losing a huge amount of money, it means they become hugely unappealing to any calibre of player... but perhaps that's what we need to do.
But none of that will happen, of course. We'll have a couple of token arrests, some sort of slap on the wrist, and "lessons have been learned".
In the meantime, I'm very much hoping that Hearts win the league and Falkirk, St Mirren, or even Dunfermline win the Scottish Cup.
Shame on them both.
