Martin O’Neill spoke to Jim Whyte and Simon Jordan on TalkSport this afternoon as discussed the post-match trouble at Ibrox on Sunday after Celtic’s penalty shoot-out victory over the Rangers in the Scottish Cup quarter-final…
And the interim Celtic manager fears that the full away allocation at Glasgow Derby matches in not going to return following the scenes at the weekend.
“The result has been overshadowed, no question about it. And I accept that there have been no statements put out from the clubs at this moment. I think sometimes, and I’ve been guilty of this myself in the past, you make a hasty remark and come to regret it.
“I’m not the official mouthpiece but from my own view, it was a great result. But then the scenes at the end, which I thought were scenes of joy and happiness, yes I know the crowd spilled over and obviously there is great potential then for serious harm to be done.
“In all honesty, I was the manager there 25 years ago and we played Rangers twice a season at least for five years and we had the full allocation of tickets, 7,000-odd tickets there and we both won and lost, and I don’t think there was any trouble.
“I was a big advocate of, without the full allocation of away fans, the Old Firm fixture had lost some of its lustre.
“I thought the noise on Sunday, and the Sunday before where we only had two and a half thousand people there was not something I’ve heard in a long time.
“So, there is something magical about it and I am obviously quite saddened by the events.
“It’s a shame because I think the things that I was hoping would happen which hadn’t happened for a long time won’t happen again with the full allocations at Ibrox and Celtic Park perhaps being taken away,” Martin O’Neill said.
As the inquest gets underway neither club has yet released a statement outlining in their take on events but there is no doubt that the fall-out and the consequences will be felt for a long time to come as far as this fixture goes.
“There is obviously going to be a lot of toing and froing here about what happened. It’s not for me to go into proper analysis about it but I’m not pushing it to the side.
“It really was amazing on both Sundays and to replicate it at Celtic Park with a full crowd of Rangers fans, I think something will be lost from the Old Firm fixture if that atmosphere throughout the game is anything to go by.”
Before leaving the pitch himself after acknowledging the Celtic fans in the Free Broomloan, he stopped for some selfies just as the chaos started to unfold with the pitch invasion with aggressive intent from the Rangers supporters.
“It shows you what an old man is actually thinking about when you have got some 15-year-old lads asking you for a selfie at Ibrox,” Martin said.
“My usual thing is to acknowledge the away fans for a few seconds and then getting back in again. A couple of lads asked for a selfie and I was thinking ‘This is crazy, and old man getting a selfie is just ridiculous’.”
Next up for Celtic is the home match against Motherwell this Saturday and Martin O’Neill described the Fir Park team as a very fine side. The Celtic manager also confirmed that he will find out tomorrow when the players return after a couple of week deserved days off, how things are looking on the injury front.
Here’s the full exchange, entertaining as it is, between Martin and his former TalkSport colleagues.
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