Thursday, 3 March 2011

There's been such an 'uproar' about the Rangers-Celtic match the other night. And quite right too. I love Glasgow but as with a lot of people and their home towns, there's many times I hate it too. Probably why I no longer live there. And when I see the mentality of certain people in regards to football and violence I'm glad I don't live there any more. There's a Glaswegian macho pride in being aggressive and in Glasgow being a violent town. And that same misguided, immature mentality is no where more prevalent when in comes to the rivalry between Rangers and Celtic. A rivalry once based on purely sectarianism is still just the same after a hundred years of violence pretending to be sport. The hate and aggression in the face of Neil Lennon squaring up to Ally McCoist tells you everything you need to know about the Old Firm and the violent side of Glasgow. But that hate reflected in the face of the Celtic manager is also reflected in the hospital casualty wards and the homes where drunken hyped up men come back and take out their pent-up aggression on their wives and family. Of course the very well-paid footballers in their luxury houses and comforted lives don't give a damn about that even if they had the intelligence to understand it in the first place. What I found really offensive today was the attitude afterwards summed up by Jim Jefferies the Hearts manager who said he found the whole thing 'quite tasty'. Alex McLeish had a similar attitude as well as all the ex-players who I seen interviewed. It was pathetic. They all had that same macho pride in thinking they were 'tough'. And that's an attitude many Glaswegian men have. They think they're tough cos they live in a tough town. It's quite sad and immature and a reason I wish Rangers and Celtic were banned altogether from football. But that ain't going to happen. They're not going to change either. Especially if there is money to be made out of violent sectarianism. Which is all Rangers and Celtic is about at the end of the day.

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