What if Scottish football took its opportunity this Sunday? For some months the game has been tarnished with the same kind of sectarian tensions on and off the field that fuelled the Northern Ireland Troubles. It has got to the point where a soccer manager, and other prominent Celtic supporters, being sent firebombs in the post. As a result of sport the Scottish police are tracking a serial killer – or attempted killer – like some Criminal Minds episode. Soccer should never get to here. The whole thing needs nipped in the bud and immediately.
So what if the Glasgow derby on Sunday was used to diffuse the tension. What if the two sets of supporters showed that it is just a game and that Rangers and Celtic supporters are just soccer fans and nothing else lies below the surface. What if Rangers recently accused of sectarian chanting threw a curve ball (sorry to use an image from another sport) at those who would use these major European Clubs to masquerade hatred. What if on Sunday, when the two teams play again, the Rangers supporters waved flags with Neil Lennon’s face on them and NOT IN MY NAME written around it. What if Neil Lennon went to those Rangers fans and recognised their support in the appropriate way.
What if? Why not? Sadly we might find all kinds of reasons why this can’t and won’t happen. It is those reasons that then need to be investigated. We might not be so sectarian that we would send a fire bomb in the post but sectarianism takes many forms. Not everyone in Northern Ireland planted bombs or pulled triggers during the Troubles but vicious sectarianism can still be found in the most respectable places! In the end it needs eradicated by radical approaches. Until we are prepared to do the radical things like turning other cheeks, loving enemies, washing peoples’ feet and sacrificing ourselves for the good of humankind we are not ready for Easter or for the hope of the sectarian free future it points towards. But what if...?
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