Among the more impressive acts at Hampden on Saturday as mayhem evoked memories of Scottish football’s ugliest days was Andy Halliday’s re-emergence from the Hampden dressing rooms to bravely and intelligently praise Rangers supporters for their relative restraint.
In doing so he doubtless ensured that many who were tempted by the goading they were receiving stayed in their seats, realising that on this occasion, by doing so, they were also occupying the moral high ground.
Thousands of Hibs supporters were still on the field as the midfielder did what he could to take the heat out of the situation and what made that all the more commendable was that he must, by then, have known that some of his team-mates had been assaulted as they sought sanctuary immediately after the final whistle was blown.
To claim that Rangers supporters were wholly innocent of all misdeeds on the day would be to misrepresent the situation since flares set off at their end of the ground during the match, while by no means all of them managed to resist the provocation to the extent that at one point it looked as if this might turn into a full scale battle as physical altercations took place on the pitch while others squared up to one another and.
However given the burden of responsibility Glasgow’s most famous clubs have had to accept for the embarrassment that has been heaped upon Scottish sport for the past forty years or so, it was an inescapable truth that this time the blame for the real trouble lay in its entirety with Hibs supporters.
The unprecedented ban from taking up the place their management and players have earned in European competition that was being mooted over the weekend would be disproportionately unfair on the vast majority of those who either stayed in the stands or merely took to the field to celebrate rather than deliberately looking for trouble. However the club must be punished heavily after Wembley 1977 was revisited as the pitch was dug up and supporters hung from a bending and breaking crossbar while, worse still, the sight of horses on Hampden took us back to the riot of 1980 which followed the notorious Old Firm ‘shame game’.
Given the show of strength offered by police and stewards as half-time approached the length of time that those who were most determined to rub rival noses in a dramatic defeat were allowed to do so was both surprising and disappointing, the cavalry arriving in the shape of that mounted police unit only once the retreat back into the Hibs half of the field was well and truly underway.
That was perhaps tactical on the basis that policemen and stewards engaging with the rioters might only have exacerbated the situation, but with fencing now out of the question for all too obvious reasons in the context of the attention that has rightly and belatedly returned to the horrors of Hillsborough these past few weeks, much consideration must be given to if and how this can be prevented in future.
What is beyond doubt is that those who have sought to claim that the dark days are in the past and that the time has come to revisit the law when it comes to permitting football supporters to buy alcohol at grounds have been made to look ignorant and foolish.
Far from doing so there is now a case for much stricter assessment of the condition of those entering stadiums because to imagine that alcohol was not a factor in such a release of inhibition would seem idiotic.
As the pictures from Hampden were beamed around the world it took much of the shine off what should have been a wonderful day for Hibs and their supporters as ‘the national game’ once again let Scotland down.
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