Quite right too, the ignorant barrel o'shite.
I love the comment about intending to "take comments from Rangers fans in a subsequent article". Any Scottish football blogger knows that articles about either half of the Old Firm lead to the kind of comments that require a medical encyclopaedia and a dictionary to understand.
It's a pity then that the original article was pulled from the site; I'd have love to have read the flak Mr Stokes (good name by the way for such an inflammatory and factually incorrect article) received.
The comments in the original article regarding the "Ibrox Disaster" were illfounded, and completely wrong; and it is a real shame that the author didn't investigate them further, because the rest of the article made some excellent points.
ReplyDeleteI do not think its entirely fair to bring up the long forgotten past of football clubs in regards to fans and behavior. Fans, and society on the whole, has changed and moved on from the days of Rangers' fans celebrating winning a European Trophy by burning down churches in Barcelona. By the exact same token, i do no believe it fair to judge the English teams on the basis of hooliganism which was widespread in the 80s. In both of these examples, European footballing bans were imposed, which combined with other factors, have helped clean up/push out these (hopefully) minority(?) of fans that caused trouble.
At some stage in life, you have to stop using mistakes from generations ago as a yardstick for modern clubs. Its my opinion that the author (Mr.Stokes) in the original article was far too happy wittering away about all the times in which Rangers fans have riot/caused trouble; and if I'm honest, it came across as a rant for sensationalism rather than an honest critique. Again, that took away from some of the excellent points he made.
That said, I would like to think that I was not the only footballing fan who was shocked and appaulled by the trouble and violence caused by the Rangers' fans before/during/after the UEFA Cup Final in Manchester just 2 years ago.
Forgetting that I support a rival team, I was more saddended by its reflection on Scotland, Scottish Footbal, and heck Football on the whole. I truly would have felt the same if it was Aberdeen, Queen of the South or Celtic. I did not, and do no, feel high and mighty because it was fans of Rangers that rioted once again. I just feel gutted that it can happen.
In the same way that England fans riotting in Euro2004 put the focus squarely on them, so too did Ranger's fans rioting in their thousands in Manchester in 2008.
At some stage, as football truly starts to penetrate all global markets, and the US is the Holy Grail; we're all going to have to bite the bullet, and accept that these sort of articles are going to appear. Because we, as fans of all clubs, and of fans under the respective Football Associations haven't done enough to weed out the trouble makers.
I don't believe its fair to condem people made by others from generations ago; but sadly if the same mistakes are perpetrated time and time again acorss generations then it won't be difficult for people to generalise against all fans of that specific club/country/sport. And in the end, that makes us all poorer.