CELTIC REVEAL THEY ARE BEHIND SPL-SFA VENDETTA AGAINST RANGERS
WHEN former Scottish football Association chief executive Gordon Smith appeared on television on Thursday night and said it was time to find out who was behind the headlong rush to strip Rangers of their titles, it was the sanest comment from a period when blind bigotry and hatred of Rangers were the order of the day.
To be honest, at the time I didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in Hell of those who had kicked off the witch hunt against Rangers ever being exposed.
I was wrong!
For it did not take even twenty four hours for the snarling ugly face of the powerbrokers who had relentlessly pursued those fairly won titles in an act of naked hatred, hitherto unmatched in sporting history, to be revealed.
Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell as good as admitted his club’s guilt by issuing an official statement to the effect that Celtic were disappointed at the not guilty verdict.
That’s right, the not guilty verdict. For Lord Nimmo Smith and his two eminent QC colleagues unanimously cleared Rangers of cheating. The five titles in question had, according to those three fine and fair minds, been won without any unfair sporting advantage. Just by better players, better teams and better managers.
Let us be clear about one other thing behind the unprecedented statement from Peter Lawwell. Although it was unsigned there can be no doubt that it came from him. Nothing of that magnitude comes out of Parkhead without Lawwell’s say-so. The fact that he didn’t put his name to it may, to some, be seen as an act of cowardice.
Of course Celtic will continue to live in on in their own wee warped world where they are never fairly defeated and where they are always cheated. Where every refereeing decision which goes against them, even when given by a religious instruction teacher in a Roman Catholic school, or by a man from Spain, is part of some sort of huge Masonic conspiracy against them.
Celtic manager Neil Lennon, not content with the official Celtic statement, further reduced Celtic’s esteem in the eyes of the sporting world, by using his Friday press conference to unleash a rant which bordered on hatred against Lord Nimmo Smith, his two eminent QC colleagues, plus all things Rangers.
Lennon, in somewhat sinister style, added that he would have more to say on the subject at a later date. That sounded like a threat and also kind of gave the game away leading a few shrewd observers to speculate on what further bloodlust Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell and his Hampden boardroom pals, Neil Doncaster and Stewart Regan may be hatching.
However, if reporters were expecting a similar ranting retort from Rangers manager Alistair McCoist when he faced the press at Ibrox on Saturday, they were disappointed.
The question which was put to McCoist was along the lines of whether or not he was disappointed or surprised at what Peter Lawwell and Neil Lennon had said twenty four hours earlier.
The way McCoist dealt with it was masterful. I watched him closely and neither the expression on his face or his body language gave any hint of being at odds with his dignified dismissal of Celtic’s reaction and Lennon’s warring words.
No, said Alistair McCoist, he was neither surprised, nor was he disappointed. Which succinctly told everyone just what Rangers think of the way Celtic have behaved.
Dignity need not always be of the silent variety.
Celtic, by their official Peter Lawwell approved reaction to the Lord Nimmo Smith verdict and by the intemperate language used by their manager, now stand condemned by their own words and threats as the people who were behind the witch hunt which spilled into the bloodlust of a vendetta against Rangers, something which paid scant heed to the sporting integrity which Peter Lawwell would have us believe lies at the heart of his existence and at the core of his club.
We now see as clearly as it is possible to see, that what appears to be at the heart of Peter Lawwell’s existence and at the core of Celtic, is something very far removed from sporting integrity.
And as for Neil Doncaster and the Scottish Premier League? We see a man and an organisation so squeezed by the vice like grip in which it is held by Celtic, that it employed Harper Macleod, Celtic’s lawyers, to hound and prosecute Rangers at what they seemed to believe was the Ibrox club’s moment of great vulnerability.
But they lost. Harper Macleod lost and, according to Lord Nimmo Smith’s judgement, it seems as though he and his two eminent QC colleagues did not think much of Rod McKenzie, the man handpicked by Celtic’s lawyers to be the SPL’s attack dog.
On Thursday, Gordon Smith asked the question and by Friday afternoon Celtic and their manager Neil Lennon had answered it. But the last word was left to around 2.30 on Saturday afternoon when Alistair McCoist entered the Ibrox media room and delivered a short and damning response to all of Peter Lawwell and Neil Lennon’s rants.
What McCoist said and the way he said it, was more damning and more hurtful to the Celtic cause than any of the many goals he so often consigned them to defeat with.
For what he said was simply this. Why would anyone be disappointed or surprised at any of the of the low life language which springs from inside Celtic? It is just what many have come to expect.
.....
AND.....
I believe my promised lamentable list of those sports writers and pundits who have behaved with a lack of proper professionalism in the wake of the Lord Nimmo Smith verdict, has caused a stir on some editorial floors.
It will appear tomorrow.
.....FINALLY
A wee question. Why was ESPN’s Liverpudlian anchorman Say Stubbs not at Ibrox on Saturday? I think we should be told.
posted by leggoland @ 07:40
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