SCOTLAND’S SHAME
THERE is trouble at Ibrox again and the club will face an SPFL probe for both racist and sectarian singing during the game against Raith Rovers last night.
The Championship match from Stark’s Park was beamed live by BT Sport and the vile chants were heard by horrified viewers.
Tom Purdie, the governing body’s match delegate in Kirkcaldy, WILL mention the sustained sectarian chanting by Gers fans in his report. It isn’t clear if he will focus only on the sectarian nature of the chanting or will also tackle the racist chants which were made in the same week that Chelsea fans disgraced English football on the Paris Metro.
Purdie’s action is likely to land the club which was formed in 2012 from the ashes of the liquidated Rangers FC, in further serious bother, especially after controversy surrounding the lack of any punishment following the 2-0 League Cup semi-final defeat from Celtic earlier this month. With 25,000 singing the vile famine song and of being up to their knees in fenian blood, the only punishment dished out that day was to Leigh Griffiths who put his hands to his ears to indicate that he had shut up the bigots by scoring the opening goal. Griffiths got a yellow card.
Former Liverpool and England star Stan Collymore, a BT pundit, was missing from Stark’s Park after recent comments about sectarian singing from a section of the Ibrox support.
Collymore insisted the team should be booted off the TV screens if their fans indulge in such obscene chants. Of course BT were actually PAID by the Scottish football authorities to broadcast the Ibrox club’s matches in recent years as they have made their way from humble beginnings in the old Third Division up to also rans in the race for the Championship, Scotland’s current second division.
Throughout the 90 minutes in Kirkcaldy, Collymore was the target for a group of fans who David Murray labelled the ‘FTP Brigade’ while in charge of the previous club.
A defiant Collymore tweeted during the live broadcast: “That feeling of being so right, it’s life enhancing.
“The whole sectarian hymn book came out within 10 minutes. Well done, BT!”
It is somewhat ironic that the latest example from “Scotland’s Shame’ – the label that other supporters use to describe the Ibrox fans – should happen at Raith Rovers’ Starks Park. In 2012 these same fans threatened to burn down this stadium in the aftermath of the Raith Chairman Turnbull Hutton sitting on an SFA panel concerning the scandalous group of clubs.
Here is a Channel 4 news clip from the time:
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