Our columnist has his say on what is next for the future of derby day in Glasgow
06:00, 15 Mar 2026
Celtic fans were given the entire Broomloan Stand at an Old Firm game for the first time in 2018(Image: PA Wire/PA Images)
Let’s dispel one myth concerning what looks like the permanent disfigurement of the Old Firm fixture and the future banning of away fans at either team’s ground. For good.
The person arrested inside Ibrox last Sunday for an alleged attack on a member of Celtic ’s coaching staff, as well as one of Martin O’Neill ’s players, was 47-years-old. Another person charged with allegations of serious assault on a rival fan outside the ground was 54-years-old.
And, among the clutch of nine arrests made on the day of the game was another 54-year-old, who was charged with allegedly assaulting a police officer. More arrests will follow, of all ages, once Police Scotland ramp up their inquiries into what will be seen as a watershed moment in Old Firm history.
The events before, during and after Celtic’s Scottish Cup win were not the sole preserve of balaclava-clad gangs roaming across the pitch in a protracted display of delinquency. This is what Old Firm rivalry looks like and always has done.
It is not a case of: “What have we become?” It is a hatred like no other. Then. Now. Always.
Last Sunday was simply the 21st Century manifestation of a diabolical discord that has existed for the 138 years of the derby’s existence. I went to my first Old Firm game 66 years ago as a 10-year-old, unaccompanied schoolboy.
The days when a child of that age could get a “lift over” the turnstile by an adult. It was the ticket-less world of pay-at-the-gate.
My vivid memory is of the away fans spitting on their money before they handed it over to the turnstile attendant and gained admission.
It was the physical demonstration of their pathological detestation of the other lot. Nothing changes, other than the passage of time.
It used to be bottles that were thrown, as in the Scottish Cup final riot in 1980. Now it’s pyrotechnics to the endangerment of life itself.
The truest words spoken after last Sunday’s descent into madness came from Chief Superintendent Emma Croft.
She said: “Does somebody need to be critically injured, or worse, before this behaviour is treated with the seriousness it deserves?”
The answer is ‘Yes, probably’, because sectarianism, the root cause of the trouble, is a lifestyle choice in the West of Scotland.
I have the perfect handle on this subject as a born-and-bred Glaswegian. My brother is a priest and my wife of the last 54 years is not a Catholic.
We happily coexist, like civilised human beings do, and have done since we got married, ironically, on the day of an Old Firm game at Ibrox. People might conceal their identity by use of a balaclava but they can never disguise the darkness of their intent.
Let’s call it for what it is. Rangers’ head coach Danny Rohl would understand it in his native tongue as “Untermensch”. Martin O’Neill would have that translated into English as “sub-humans”.
People who mock the dead and daub malicious messages on a stadium wall to distress the families of those who lost loved ones that day in 1971 known as the Ibrox Disaster are sub-human.
I spoke to my friend, Tom Callaghan junior, whose late father played for Celtic in that game.
He told me his dismay over the actions of the misguided last Sunday had been intensified by the fact the events of that afternoon, six decades ago, had left his dad, emotionally speaking, “Crippled for life”.
People who attack footballers, inflict injury on children and teenage girls and go on a violent rampage through the streets are guilty of sub-human behaviour.
Trouble flared up at Sunday’s Scottish Cup tie between Rangers and Celtic(Image: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
I heard my radio colleague, the Falkirk striker Brian Graham, say he had taken his son to the Cup tie last weekend and wished he had never gone near the place.
The sight, and sound, of children crying around him in the midst of mayhem had convinced Brian he wouldn’t go back to an Old Firm game.
Talk of banning Rangers and Celtic from the Scottish Cup next season is a nonsense. Trouble demands a deterrent that is lasting – and there are four league derbies to be negotiated every season outwith cup games.
The only deterrent able to offer immunity from confrontation and the avoidance of catastrophic mishap inside Celtic Park or Ibrox is exclusion of away fans.
There can’t be a fight if everyone’s on the same side, unless we truly have entered a parallel universe.
I admit it is a clear-cut case of the minority spoiling everything for the majority, but what would you prefer?
The unthinkable in the form of a fatality one day?