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No Defence…

Date: 19th January 2025

No Defence…

Football is often defined by the rivalry that exists between two football clubs. I come from a part of Scotland where rivalry is often unhealthy and now reside in a place where the rivalry that I have attempted to escape from most of my life is both on my doorstep and a short walk along the canal bank.

When it is healthy and people enjoy the rivalry between perhaps two clubs that sit adjacent or close to each other like Dundee and Dundee United, and it can have an exhilarating effect upon the experience of going to see your team play.

When the tragedy visited Liverpool fans at Hillsborough, the unity between Everton and Liverpool, the Blues and the Reds, was something to behold.

In fact, it was a beacon for every single person who picks up a scarf and wanders through a turnstile to see just exactly what it meant when bigger things were at play. The image that is always in my mind is of the two young children, one in a full Everton strip, the other in a full Liverpool strip, on the pitch at Anfield holding hands. It showed unity in the face of the greatest tragedy that ever befell English fans.

The rivalry of my childhood was of course that between Ayr and Kilmarnock. Once an adult I was challenged with this when as a director of the Ayr United Football Academy, as I have written many times in the past, we had the former chief executive of Kilmarnock Football Club put forward as a potential chairman. There is little doubt that many of us of the black and white persuasion struggled a little to contemplate the idea of the chair or chief executive of our greatest rivals becoming the head of what was supposed to be a vital part of our future. It cannot be underestimated the strides that were taken under the leadership of Ian Welsh. It reminded me, in fact it informed and educated me that the desire for a greater good amongst the common weal of our communities was an ideal worth following and to eschew the rivalries bitter or otherwise of my own football club.

It would have been utter folly had we decided simply on the allegiance that Ian had towards his own football club to turn down the offer that had been made. Folly because the development of the football academy alongside Ayr United Football Club was immense.

And so, as I sit as an adult in the shadow of St Ninian’s Academy, where Celtic Football Club place all their young players for their education, and along the road from the largest Rangers supporters club in the area, in Kirkintilloch, I muse at times when there is a big game on as to whether or not there will be running clashes along the streets of Kirkintilloch, with the good people hiding in shop doorways, trying to get away from the anger, fury and upset that either side of this old rivalry would provide.

To date, having lived here for nearly 11 years, I’ve never seen it.

 

In fact, the disruption and the violence in the centre of Glasgow has not seeped out into the good burghs of East Dunbartonshire, at least, whilst I have been resident here.

It is a tinderbox that always requires just a little match thrown into it, and I am well aware just exactly how bad rivalry can be.

After all, I spent 7 years working in Cumnock. There, the rivalry between Cumnock Juniors and Auchinleck Talbot was one that often was spoken about in hushed tones, especially due to the fact that, as far as I am aware, it is the only football game in Scotland where panda cars invaded the pitch in order to sort out major disruption.

Fife too has a number of junior clubs has built on the backs of men and communities who have a similar kind of rivalry, but none have managed the media-style heights of the two clubs in Ayrshire.

Of course, Fife have their own senior club rivalry, which has included Dunfermline Athletic and Raith Rovers over many years.

And it was with heads hung in shame, two Fife supporters appeared in court in the last week here rivalry spilled over into violence of the most shameful nature. Appearing at Dunfermline Sheriff Court, in the aftermath of a game between the two clubs, one young fan at the age of 18 was beaten by a mob, with two of his attackers charged. They did themselves some credit by pleading guilty to assault to injury.

They were spared jail but have both a community payback order and a restriction of liberty order for eight months which means that they will be electronically tagged. Of course, both were given football banning orders which means that they are prohibited from going to see their beloved team for three years.

The assault was filmed and put on social media with the thugs clearly identified due to the stupidity of people taking images and placing it in a public place. The victim has been left with severe trauma. The fact he was disabled, and they smashed his hearing aids on the ground is texture to our outrage.

However, the punishment that was given to these two young men is insufficient to register the appalling nature of the crime not because I think they should have got a wider or bigger punishment but because it was unfortunate that only two of them are standing in the dock. There was a mob and that means more than these two young men. They are guilty of an offence of which many others were guilty.

When rivalries spill from friendly into the type of mob violence that was seen in the centre of Glasgow after Auld Firm encounters, we are guilty and, in the dock, at least of public opinion. If we do not take collective responsibility for when those rivalries spill from being part of the fabric of the friendliness of football into community disorder we have no right to condemn those two young men. They paid the price for being thugs, but they also have paid the price on behalf of many others. They could have turned around and pointed the finger at the rest of the people who were there. Perhaps they knew them, perhaps they didn’t, but ultimately as they stood with their head bowed it was more than just them that was on trial.

The future of rivalry should be promoted as something to be indulged in 90 minutes (more if extra time and penalties, of course) of fierce and intense emotion followed by bragging rights over what happened on a pitch and not over what happens on the way home.


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