Nobody says that releasing smoke bombs at a football game is right. We all know that sooner or later we’re going to get into bother if we keep setting them off.

In fact, it’s not acceptable. And it’s something I’m sure Celtic will crack down this season big time.

And when you’ve got zealots like The Scotsman who’s reporters are on some remit to stir as much trouble for Celtic Football Club, then we have to be very careful.

The rag from the east did however forget to take the same approach when they reported on the Govan Mob’s friendly at Windsor Park against Linfield yesterday.

They didn’t even have to report from the game, Sky Sports showed enough evidence to question why Rankers, who are supposed to be against sectarianism were party to an Orange Flute Band walking round the park whilst their manager Sneaky McCoist was being interviewed.

Of course Mr Salmond and his cronies can’t legislate in the north of Ireland, but the club could have made a stance and declined to take part in this show of sectarianism.

But once again the Scottish media have washed over the story. The very same media who tried their damnedest to bring Lenny into a row over the stunt in Australia by some of the Scotland’s Shame’s Aussie crew.

All this means for Celtic, Neil Lennon and the support is another season of media bias and bigoted abuse. No surprise there then!

I hate the fact that we get lumped in with the Govan Mob.

Whereas I do agree that sectarianism is a blight on this country and some serious should be done about it, the powers that be are looking in the wrong direction.

Case in point last night’s friendly between a Rankers XI and Stirling Albion.

At half time the stadium announcer had to issue a warning on behalf of the Police to the away support for sectarian chanting. Yip, a second rate friendly and Scotland’s Shame still have to belt out their familiar repetiore of anti Catholic and anti Irish anthems.

But it wasn’t all bad news, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill thought the atmosphere was ‘wonderful’!

The news that Crystal Palace midfielder Neil Danns has chosen to stay in the Championship and ply his trade with Leicester City, rather than sign for Scotland’s Shame brought another wry smile to the faces of the Faithful this morning.

Danns is just the latest in what is now becoming a long line of players who are giving the Govan Mob two fingers in their quest to spend ‘Craig Whyte’s Millions”!

Such is the concern that Snaeky, Smudger and Tim Nice But Dim held an emergency pow-wow at the Bigotdome to find out why nobody wants to play for them….apart from a Larkhall Flute Band!

Surely somebody, somewhere in the Scottish media must be asking questions about the constant snubbing from players, not only in this country, but in Europe too.

Could it be that the man who spent a £1 doesn’t want to spend many more? Was his statement about £5M a year blah, blah just hot air?

Will we ever know?

Probably not, because the hacks are refusing to do their jobs properly by asking the questions they would drool over if the same situation was happening at Celtic Park.

Typical.

They might have a new owner, a new manager (for how long), and a new director of football over at Govan but the blame culture of ‘it wiznae me’ is still alive and kicking!

Carlisle United decision to cancel a friendly with Celtic the night after Scotland’s Shame take on Blackpool for fear of ‘O F’ trouble must make sense to the Cumbria club.

They are obviously concerned  that a number of bluenoses would make their way to Carlisle in search of trouble because Celtic fans will be there.

Whatever gave them that idea?

Surely the Carlisle officials are jumping the gun here. Or have they been influence by the ‘M’ word?

Daft really. The carnage at the UEFA Cup Final in Manchester in 2008 was caused by Chelsea fans disguised as Rankers fans, don’t they know that?

Anyway, new owner bilionairre….self-employed, Craig Whyte says that there are no bigots or sectarian singing at Ipox. And if he say’s it, it must be true.

Would you believe this man…..?

Craig Whyte

While reading the Celtic Hub last night I was astonished with the content of a certain article written by Winner 67, titled “Bigots party to celebrate the death of Catholics”

I know it may seem like we’re going over old ground here but this is something that really has to be addressed by the Scottish Government.

Last week we were told of a new law to stop sectarianism and jail culprits with sentences of up to five years in prison. A kind of ‘get tough’ stance from the powers that be.

Yet only a week after their proposal hit the headlines they are making a mockery of the law by allowing a ‘Boyne Victory Party’ to be held in Glasgow’s East End.

Now, call me paranoid if you like but does such an event not come under the term Sectarian, Religious or Race Hate?.

Would they allow a neo-Nazi organisation a rally to celebrate the Holocaust, where six million Jews were murdered?

I doubt it very much, so why allow these cretins to celebrate the killing of Catholics? Or is the new law only applicable to one side of the divide?

If Alex Salmond is at all interested in stopping sectarianism, we all know where he should start…..but will he?

Now that the SFA have finally come to their senses, well sort of, and the Govan Mob have a new Messiah, albeit a very dodgy one, will we all be starting next season like wee playful lambs?

Add to the joviality and good feeling the fact that the new Rankers manager is non other than that cheekiest of cheeky chaps,  Alistair McCoist, then I’m sure next season will full of hope, good spirits and outward expressions of joy.

All will be forgotten about that horrible season 2010/11.

There will be no more letter bombs or bullets, striking referees, lying officials or an administration that doesn”t know it’s arse from it’s elbow. I can just see it now….

Then, Celtic win at the Bigotdome and all hell breaks loose again. You see, no matter how different the outside looks on the SFA or the Govan mob, the inside stays the same.

Bitter to the core.

Nothing changes for us, we will continue to back Lenny and the Bhoys like we always do, but we won’t forget the bile and the intimidation suffered over the last year in particular.

Forgiveness? I doubt it.

Looking over some of the Sunday rags, I came across what can only be described as the start of the ‘Ally McCoist love in’ from the Scottish media.

Yip, we’ve hardly go rid of Walter, although there’s still another 32 episodes of ‘Walter – The Football Years’ to go, and we’re blasted with a McCoist special.

The main culprits were The News of the Screws who managed to dig up some exclusives from when the man the Faithful call ‘The Sneak’ was a columnist to reveal how good an eye he has for picking out strikers ‘in the raw’.

The NOTS picked out EIGHT greats from McCoist’s time as an apprentice hack.

Football’s longest serving managerial apprentice was instrumental in identifying the following players. (Please don’t laugh out loud when you read some of the names!)

• Dean Ashton, while playing for Crewe, Ally ‘urged’ the Govan Mob to buy the striker in 2002. They didnae listen and he went on to play at Norwich and West ham before injury cut short his career.
• Bobby Zamora, another who played for the Hammers, and now plying his trade at Fulham. The Sneak apparently spotted him at Brighton probably on the beach.

Those two you can say were no bad, decent players who did a job. Neither were, or are, world beaters. Let’s continue….

• Dwight Yorke, yip Jordan’s former lover was ‘spotted’ at age 30 by the bold Ally! Could have been in a nightclub. Felt his close relationship with Russell Lapaty would benefit the Govan Mob, not to mention Victorias!
• Marcus Stewart, now you know they’re struggling to get names. Stewart was an Ipswich player who ‘could have scored 35 goals a season for Rankers’ although he didn’t score as many in three years at Sunderland!
• Massimo Maccarone, at this point they’re really scraping the barrel to try and justify McCoist’s player spotting talents. Maccarone did eventually play for Middlesboro. Wow!
• Wesley Sonck, some Belgian who played in Holland and Germany. Well known? Maybe to the Polis!
• Moumouni Belidagano, there’s little chance The Sneak would be able to say his name never mind get his signature! Another nobody.
• Malcolm Christie, was the man that Ally wanted Big Eck to ‘pull out all the stops to get’. Another who plied his trade at Boro, before injury cut short his career.

So, there you have it, EIGHT greats. Such is the media craving to have McCoist in their papers, they fill it with that junk, trying to convince us that Scotland’s Shame have some sort of ‘super scout’ as manager.

And it’s only gonna get worse….

It’s funny how all of a sudden the ‘manager with no surname’ is some sort of footballing genius? Papers, TV programmes, radio programmes….

The bottom line is, Celtic gifted him a farewell SPL title but he still can’t go without having a dig at the club.

All this was conveniently forgotten when he had one last bitter dig at Celtic.

“The season got off to a bad start, in that respect, when Celtic put up a challenge to referees and to everybody else. That got the season off to a bad start and it went downhill after that.” he proclaims.

“And I hope Celtic realise that, if their team is good enough, they will win. If they’re not good enough, they’ll not win.
“They can’t look at anybody else, whether it’s referees or any other influence.

“I don’t say that in a smug way. (?) I just felt that the challenge Celtic put up to referees set the tone for what has been a poor season for our country, in terms of publicity overall.”

Is this the same season spent by Smith bleating on about the bank owning Rankers and not co-operating with him? Although he did spend over £6m in the summer!

Of course that was his sympathy trick in case they didn’t win anything, poor Walter. But he needn’t have worried. With the SFA hellbent on causing as much damage to Celtic as possible, the way was paved for Smith and his cronies to get on with it.

He also conveniently forgets that Neil Lennon as Celtic manager, was lied to by referee Dougie McDonald, that the SFA tried to ban him when it was clearly against their own rules, and the bad publicity mainly comes from his club when their support are banned from Europe for sectarian singing and go one step further and by trying to intimidate the Celtic management and players with bullets and letter bombs.

Obviously his age must be a contributing factor to his loss of memory but let’s remind him that the same support he professes to love also wanted him sacked after losing to FC Kaunus in the Champions League qualifiers not so long ago.

The same support that shamed the country with their repertoire of bigotry at the Co-operative Cup Final.. or the weekend smashing of the Celtic shop in Argyle Street.  And that’s when they win!(Where’s the media coverage of that?)

Instead of having a dig at Celtic he should be looking within his own club.

At the end of the day, the man so revered by the media, who brought anti-football to Scotland really hasn’t changed….he’s just  a a bit older but now twice as bitter!

Here is the typical response you would expect from the Police.

Les Gray chief of The Police Federation put the blame fairly and squarley at the door of Neil Lennon for being the victim of a malicious attack.

Speaking to Nicky Campbell on Five Live he summed up the event last night like this:

• There is nothing the police could have done about the attack.
• Neil Lennon has a responsibility to behave
• Despite Neil Lennon’s “antics”, he should not have been attacked
• Hearts are not a sectarian club
• This was not a sectarian attack
• I know many Hearts fans who are Catholics
• Things used to be a lot worse on Scottish football because Police used to get pelted with beer cans.

It beggars belief that people like him get into such a high office. Might be something to do with the ‘society’ he belongs to.

Thanks Kev at Pride of  Erin for the article.

Tell us what you think?

The news that UEFA have finally had enough of the sectarian bile that comes from Scotland’s Shame is hardly a surprise….to us.

But to the rank and file of the Govan mob, it’s not their fault!

When Radio Clyde broke the news of Rankers’ away match fan-ban and fine of £71,000 for their singing of sectarian and racists songs at the recent PSV Eindhoven matches, you could almost feel the phones go into meltdown.

The fact that Rankers were fined an equal amount for both offences and handed a suspended ban on fans attending a second away game, plus the knowledge they will play a home match behind closed doors if fans repeat the offence within three years, didn’t matter.

They still blame everyone else!

Two callers in the first half hour of the Super Scoreboard show were incensed that they were found guilty. The first caller basically telling the listeners that they should be allowed to sing what they want, when they want, even if it causes offence, because that’s what they’ve always done! (Comical!)

It gets better….

A caller named Robert entered the fray with the assumption that Rankers were being picked on by UEFA. The reason? Well UEFA, the organisation employs 85% Catholics!

Yip, this knuckle dragger reckons UEFA have got it in for them because they are a ‘Protestant Club’.

It was as comical as it was farcical.

And there’s no doubt these two represent a large ‘minority’ when it comes to dragging themselves into the present day. Furthermore, because these people exist, Scotland’s Shame WILL be playing behind closed doors in the next three year. Guaranteed.

P.S. Even the club themselves point the finger at somebody else. It’s all FARE’s fault. They just don’t get it, do they?