The cheating from Lafferty, coupled with the dangerous lunge from Bougherra, shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Dons fans this weekend. It’s what we should expect. Earlier this season we watched in horror as Kenny Miller assaulted Langfield and the little nyaff didn’t even get a yellow. These assaults normally go unpunished so Bougherra can feel unfortunate with his red. Indeed, when Walter Smith said post-match “I just find it absolutely incredible that they’ve sent the player off”, he wasn’t the only one - hadn’t Dougal remembered convention?
Rangers regularly utilise this tactic; McCoist certainly did when he smashed the cheek of Snelders 20 years ago. The “cheeky chappy“, or “c*nt” to anyone outwith the Rangers family, clearly knew what he was doing, as did Rod Wallace when he shattered Leighton’s jaw in the third minute of the Scottish Cup Final in 2000. Needless to say, the abrupt end to Jim’s illustrious career wasn’t even acknowledged with a booking for the England B International, better known for being the brother of Danny.
Moreover, last season we watched McCulloch sent off for an off-the-ball incident. Chris Clark, had finally lost his patience with the disgraceful Hun brutality and acted accordingly. He picked up a booking for his scything tackle on Hutton but this wasn’t enough for “Big” Lee, who took it upon himself to charge into our captain, Scott Severin, on route to further enflaming the situation.
Seve, unfortunately, followed the recent trend of dismissing these acts of stupidity as nothing to be concerned about. This has become a disappointingly common response for our senior players and management. Instead of condemning these all too common little outbursts our official response has been to play them down.
This isn’t because they aren’t worthy of comment but because our club are so aware of the media attention of all things Aberdeen/Rangers, where inevitability our fans and one of our greatest players become the target of some out of proportion vitriol. Rangers ability to shift blame is incredible, their complete and total control of the media makes any attempt to hold them accountable for their actions seem almost futile.
Another recent incident saw Fernando Ricksen see red, albeit several years after his kung-fu assault on Darren Young. Ricksen unquestionably brought the game into disrepute when he stated that his assault on Young was premeditated and that he had taken it on himself to “straighten him [Young] out“. Funnily enough, the Rangers support saw little wrong with Ricksen’s indiscretion, though he was later vilified for his reckless tackle on Chris Burke when he returned for a friendly with Zenit years later.
It’s not just Rangers' players who have perpetrated on-field violence in recent years. The Rangers support have managed to do that too. In 2002 Robbie Winters was struck with a coin thrown from the unwashed hordes. Staggeringly, this lead to the prototype deflection that served RFC so well in 2008 when it was decreed that the good people of Govan were blameless and that “BBC Scotland has been told by reliable football sources that there were English fans within the Rangers section of the crowd” and that these were the real culprits.
The distasteful scenes from Manchester this time last year were so unsurprising, they were widely predicted. The numerous examples of video footage and the overwhelming evidence to support the rest of Scottish footballs view of Rangers and their support has been spun beyond belief. We are asked to believe that the destruction was all caused by fans of English clubs and that the “people” where actually assisting the police whenever possible. David Edgar and his cronies should be in demand in Westminster at the moment as I’m sure their media influence, at least in Scotland, could have us feeling sorry for the overworked and underpaid members of parliament.
The Rangers support can’t even be trusted to sing together without breeching common decency. However often they try to deflect it, however often they claim to not be the only ones causing offence, it’s perfectly clear that they are the reason every SPL match begins with a request for order and some common sense. Not that that stopped their “who’s the fenian in the black” chants to Dougal following Bougherra’s dismissal this weekend.
The antics of Scotland’s Shame rarely fails to live up to our expectations, each and every season we can rely on them to provide the nastiest, most unpleasant moments on and off the park which is why next Sunday it’s so distasteful for us to require them to win the SPL title in order for us to progress into Europe. The fact that if our benchmark for success is met and we do qualify we’ll require the filth to do the double to help aid our transition to the cash and prestige of the group stage is particularly galling.
Football really is a funny old game.
thestooge
