LIKE most other people who have deplored the Old Firm derby over the years, I have really, really missed it.
These 33 months of no Celtic versus Rangers have been a trial. The day of April 29 2012 - the last time any of us witnessed this clash - seems an eternity ago.
If there was contempt and loathing back then between sections of Celtic and Rangers fans, there is venom and bile today. In the near-three years since the two clubs last met, social media platforms and other cyber habitats have greatly advanced and, if you spend so much as five minutes near them, you'll see diehard fans of the two clubs lobbing splenetic bricks back and forth.
The build-up to this game tomorrow, for some very obvious reasons, has been mired in playground name-calling. Whose disgusting chanting is the worst? Which support has the more deplorable reputation? As one media wag put it: "Between Rangers and Celtic fans on Twitter the boast is almost, 'our fans beat up less women than your fans.'" The scene is drenched with kerosene as the insults fly.
It is sometimes quite refreshing to meet older Old Firm fans, men and women of more vintage years, who have no cause nor appetite to spend their lives in cyber space. These people love their clubs - blue or green - and are refreshingly unfamiliar with the online vituperation.
In the past week all this has been heightened by the debate over "old" or "new" Rangers, and the anger this causes. That advert placed by some Celtic fans in the Sunday Herald last weekend seemed a tad eccentric to me, and was just one further haymaker in this slugfest between supporters. On that score, for me, I'll happily use the term "the Old Firm", while being fully mindful of the liquidation of 1872 Rangers three years ago. Let each man to his own.
Tomorrow afternoon at Hampden I doubt the football on the field will in any way divert from this raging bickering. It is good to have the Glasgow derby back, and the on-field spectacle should be exciting, but be in no doubt, whatever the result, they'll all be out again on Sunday night, the angry cyber citizens trading their poison once more. One sincerely hopes this panto is not in any way matched by an increase in A&E patients as a result of the game.
It's a pity it has turned out like this, because there are so many qualities which endure around Rangers and Celtic. Some of the finest people I've met in sport have been at these two football clubs.
I'd go so far as to say I love the Glasgow football scene. It has provided a memorable saga in Scottish football and, whatever its poisoned afflictions these days, some immense and noble figures have served these two clubs. You only need to have met men like the late Sandy Jardine at Rangers, or John Clark at Celtic, to know that football people can also be fine people.
In my own lifetime the Old Firm has also meant figures like Jock Stein and Jock Wallace, two great football managers - and men of their time - who had acute gifts within the game. More recently, when Dick Advocaat was Rangers manager and Martin O'Neill his foe at Celtic, we endured another rich and fascinating chapter.
If you ever fell into conversation with Walter Smith or Neil Lennon, two very different men, you could not help but be impressed by their separate qualities and characters. So the Old Firm has not just been about daft singing and tribal, pantomimic rivalry. It has produced a quality of football man which we have been blessed to have around us.
Admittedly, the scene around the technical area tomorrow at Hampden will seem a bit left-field. Imagine, at some point in the recent past, the Old Firm managerial head-to-head being suggested as a Norwegian guy, Ronny Deila, against the lesser-known Kenny McDowall...it would have seemed a hard call to get your head around. The glamour of past seasons is long gone from this fixture, though of course, with that glamour came an irresponsibility which led to a terrible fall.
I don't care who wins tomorrow at Hampden. But I do want Rangers to become as healthy and strong as possible, for the sake of Rangers, Celtic and the whole of the Scottish game. The infamous complaint of the Rangers bus driver - "a few years back we were pulling up outside the Nou Camp, and now I'm driving into housing estates in Annan" - resonated with quite a few of us. It has been a deplorable event at Ibrox, and it needs recovery as quickly as possible.
To Hampden. Get your hard hats on.
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