Celtic Park crush – Tracing the crush back to its roots

THAT crush in the passageway behind the North stand was scary yesterday and quite rightly, it is getting widespread coverage in the media and online.

Neither Celtic nor Police Scotland have come out of this with any credit whatsoever. In fact both the club and the Police have badly let down the supporters who were caught up in that crush yesterday and their families, who could so easily have lost loved ones had things escalated.

The sobering conclusion looking back on this crush – and I was right in the middle of it and was one of the first to report on it yesterday – see HERE – was that if it was not for the outstanding calm and common sense shown by the Celtic supporters themselves – then we could so easily have had another major football disaster on our hands.

So shame on you Police Scotland. Shame on you Celtic FC. Shame of you SPFL – you lacked the backbone, as Andy Walker pointed out on the television, to stand up to Rangers and put an end to this nonsense of reduced ticket allocations.

Let’s trace this crush back to its roots – and they lead all the way to a Rangers site, Follow Follow, which started a campaign to get the Celtic fans booted out of the Broomloan Road stand at Ibrox because they couldn’t handle the Celtic fans continually celebrating in their ground while they were left making racist gestures at players, invading the pitch to square up to our captain and emptying their stands with 20 minutes to go as Celtic just kept winning.

That campaign was at first resisted by Stewart Robertson at Rangers but the influence of these forums is strong at Ibrox – and they are part and parcel of the Dave King project, providing the much needed funding to him.

So King played to the gallery and announced that the visiting Celtic supporters would be moved to the corner where other visiting fans are housed.

Celtic responded and issued a measured statement which made clear that the Champions do not agree with this new ticket allocation but in meantime cut the Rangers allocation to 800.

Now a word of praise for Police Scotland. It has been my experience in recent years going to Celtic/Rangers games at Celtic Park, Ibrox or Hampden that the Police do a very good job in keeping the fans apart and I would say that it is safe to go along to these games, stick to your own side of the ground, and in or around the stadiums you wouldn’t experience any trouble.

Yesterday was different though. The Police will have their matchday plan for each of the three grounds and simply implement it when the game comes around.

Except that yesterday they had no tried and tested plan for a situation when Rangers have 800 fans in a corner.

Someone – the Match Commander presumably – decided to lock a gate. That resulted in a scary sight from under the tunnel at the back of the North stand trying to get to the first available Upper stand turnstiles. There were thousands of Celtic fans coming behind us from the Jock Stein stand side of the ground and in the other direction from the Lisbon Lions side of the ground thousands more were making their way towards us.

Within a few minutes of being stuck with forward or backward movement impossible, things started to get very uncomfortable. Anyone old enough to have been in that crush when Celtic travelled down to play Nottingham Forrest in the UEFA Cup in the mod 1980s will be shocked to read that the same thing happened at Celtic Park yesterday.

Celtic issued a statement last night. It was ill considered. It was wrong and Celtic should put it right, as soon as possible.

There should be an apology for a start. From the club and from Police Scotland.

I did not see a single police officer anywhere under that passage. Stewards were clueless. One older steward got busy manually operating a turnstile to get people through one at a time – it was something but when we demanded that he open the door that is five yards away he said he had no authority to do that.

The people in this tunnel were all ticket holders.

People were by this time climbing the fence into the cemetery behind the stand. It was an awful situation – all because the Rangers fans couldn’t handle Celtic celebrations at their ground.

Celtic should refuse tickets for Ibrox in my personal opinion and we should say that we will not give them any tickets for the next game at Celtic Park. The ONLY alternative to that should be to restore the ‘tried and tested’ formula that Police Scotland can handle.

Yesterday we all had a lucky escape. Let there be no repeat, Celtic.