Gerry Mcnee; Let us pray. (2024)

After numbing events of recent days is it naive to hope thattoday's Ibrox tribal gathering will temper itself?

PROBABLY.

A match which will be beamed beyond our borders will further placeScotland in the glare of publicity.

Is it imaginable that, from a country in mourning, hatred will riseto a satellite in space then rain back to earth like a Chernobyl cloud?

PROBABLY.

Worrying about our global reputation is hardly a priority when somuch grief already hangs in the air.

But what will others think if any insensitivity is shown by fans,players or anyone else connected with this afternoon?

Then there are the battles which will break out all over the cityfor hours afterwards.

Hospital casualty staff will have to deal with the broken heads ofbigotry when genuine patients may need them.

I remember the late Hugh Taylor making an appeal in the DailyRecord on the morning of an Old Firm match back in 1968.

Britain and much of the world was reeling from the cruel invasionof Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact.

Horrific TV pictures the previous evening showed people and freedombeing crushed under tanks.

Hugh's appeal was well-intentioned. Perhaps the naive bit camewhen he called for a chant of "Dubcek" in solidarity with theCzech leader.

Well, the Pope got a chant or two. So did the Queen and King Billy.Dubcek? Not a cheep.

These were events thousands of miles away but this week we have anunparalleled tragedy in our own midst.

Not even the awful Ibrox Disaster, which brought a short truce,caused so many tears.

I'm not asking for a special chant to be made. Rather for manyto be stopped.

I'm asking the 45,000 people heading for Ibrox today to pausefor a moment and raise their heads above the level of such occasions -the gutter.

REALISE THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE.

Matters are not helped when the club leaders publicly encourage thesinging of songs which have nothing to do with football.

I found this sad and depressing.

Why will these men not let go the baggage of history. Are seasonticket sales their god?

With the clubs neck-and-neck in the title race and the temperaturerising, David Murray, Fergus McCann and their directors must lead byclear example.

Murray, apart from his ridiculous remark about"tremendous" singing, has failed to control his vice-chairman.

No one doubts the ability of Donald Findlay QC in a courtroom.

But I found it appalling that in the week he was defending aRangers fan who brutally killed a young Celtic fan he should be quotedin a Herald interview.

Findlay said if Celtic never won another match he'd bedelighted and that while he was born on St. Patrick's Day heregarded his birthday as July 12.

Even allowing the benefit of tongue-in-cheek the timing wasshocking and he should not have done it.

Findlay was involved in a high-profile trial and, in my opinion, heshould have avoided making these comments because of his Ibrox position.

What else was lost apart from the life of an innocent and theliberty of another young man poisoned by his sectarian upbringing?

HOPE FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE, THAT'S WHAT.

It's the young who suffer because the old refuse to change.

And the vicious cycle continues.

Even in this saddest of all weekends which highlights theunimportance of sport and other things, is it naive to hope for just achink of decency this afternoon in Glasgow?

PROBABLY.

OOPS! Sky TV have put their boot in it with an advert for theRangers- Celtic encounter.

Buy a dish for the `Auld Firm' they say. The Sassenach ad manwho wrote this obviously can't tell his Auld Enemy from his OldFirm.

Sky really must become more Scottish than Scotch.

Now that our friends from the SFA have returned from Rio and keptus waiting 48 hours till Bill Dickie could make the Scottish Cup draw,could someone ask at the next Council meeting what happens to the manyair miles gained.

Presumably, these are ploughed back into official SFA junkets andare not for personal use.

It is, after all, football's money.

SOMEONE should set up a society to save Dundee United fromthemselves.

Why the surprise when Celtic gave them the last-gasp one-two?

Remember the 1985 and '88 Scottish Cup Finals and many otheroccasions when United flopped in Glasgow.

The faces of Maurice Malpas, Billy Kirkwood and Jim McLeanportrayed years of gloom.

Meanwhile, Hampden hero Ivan Golac smells the roses.

AS I watched Ryan Giggs running at Southampton's defence inmidweek, I thought of George Best's similar style. In a tougherera, he had a courage they could not tame. I wonder how Giggs would havehandled Don Revie's Leeds.