Glasgow club involved in controversy over Union flags and fake songs.

26 April 2011 14:56
Potentially disturbing turn of events. Sunday’s game passes without major incident and thus the story half-prepared has to be altered. So how do you go about ensuring those nasty Rangers and their fans are shown up for what they are? Well, let’s consider the following tactics: 1. Complain about the flag of the country in which we live and play football. 2. Invent a song and attempt to convince people it was sung at a game. Now, this wouldn’t be quite so bad if it was just the demented assembled mass of the online Celtic support. Literally nothing is beyond or beneath them. You could even, at a charitable push, dismiss the words of the Chief Sports Correspondent of The Times, whose exposure to Glasgow derbies is as limited as his knowledge of flag nomenclature and whose attitude toward the Union flag seems at odds with his own paper’s front page. In short: the Union flag is going nowhere and the idea that we should avoid it because some Irish republican supporters and sympathisers don’t like it is not worth another sentence. However, when there are growing indications that Celtic football club may be involved in complaining about (1) and in aiding (2) then we have a problem. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem if the Scottish press were possessed of a collective spine – for the most recent example of the cosy relationship and cowardice please see Lennon, Neil instructing them all on the tone of any coverage of his pitch invasion on Sunday. It has been suggested that Celtic have privately contacted Rangers to alert the club to their misgivings over the provocative Union flag display. One can only imagine the response. And it is further claimed that CFC has today been pushing the line to interested journalists that an imaginary song (origin Facebook and some particularly challenged followers of Glasgow’s second club) was directed toward poor, misunderstood Mr. Lennon while he innocently saluted his followers this past weekend. The fact that this is not true – that “what’s it like to live in fear?” was not part of the post-match choral tributes - does not seem to be of any real concern but one would hope that any media men and woman may take the time to check out the veracity, rather than simply repeating the Gallowgate whisper as a story. Perhaps when they do they can ask Nacho Novo how he felt. Or perhaps that bullet from the IRA has been reassigned to another Real innocent in Northern Ireland.

Source: FOOTYMAD