It is an enduring disgrace that in 2019 across Europe players of colour are subjected to racist abuse on a regular basis.
Moreover, it seems to be getting worse and Planet Fitba is not without sin in this matter.
In recent years Celtic winger Scott Sinclair has been the target of racist abuse from Aberdeen and Sevco fans.
Of course, apart from that disgusting monkey gesture, the throwing of bananas at players of colour is a very specific and premeditated racist slur.
It reminds me of the shameful incident in the 1980s at Parkhead involving Rangers player Mark Walters.
For a club that emerged from a socially excluded community which was itself suffering from racism and nativist hostility, it wasn’t the finest hour of the home crowd at Paradise.
Thankfully it didn’t take hold within the Celtic support.
Some Hoops fans got actively involved in pointing out why racism should have no place at Parkhead.
It worked.
Not long after the Mark Walters incident Rangers signed a defender called Basile Boli.
He was the sort of player who kicked anything with a heartbeat.
Now, he was naturally detested as an opponent, but his pigmentation didn’t come into it.
For the Hoops supports the big Frenchman was just another Hun.
The fact that John Grieg had to drive him to mass didn’t matter one way or the other.
He played for them and therefore he was a Hun.
In recent years there have been attempts by the klan to re-design the “H” word to have a sectarian connotation.
In that, it refers to people of the Protestant faith.
However, that spin has been as successful as their attempts to convince Planet Fitba that Sevco is the original Rangers!
Any allegation of racist abuse, whether at a football match or anywhere else is hugely serious.
Therefore, it was important breaking news that such an incident had taken place at Pittodrie this week.
It quickly appeared on quintessentially British message boards that a banana had been thrown at Sevco captain James Tavernier.
If true this was very serious indeed…
Except that it wasn’t true.
Those brilliant folks at CSI Pittodrie found out that the banana was, in fact, a pie.
These forensic sleuths should be commended as most of the evidence was quickly spirited away from the touchline area.
Here is a picture of the prime suspect.
For the avoidance of doubt, anyone throwing anything onto the pitch whether it is aimed at a player or not is committing an act of criminal atavism.
Mr Taverneir has the right to be at his work without having anything thrown at him.
However, a banana would have made it a hate crime.
Therefore folk should be very careful before they start spreading the “news”.
Now, some cynics might conclude that the banana story was a squirrel which had a high-level provenance.
That it had been disseminated in order to deflect from the result.
I, of course, couldn’t possibly comment.
In fairness to BBC Scotland, they quickly ascertained that in fact had been thrown at the Sevco captain.
Now that we know it was a pie at Pittodrie then I think we can rule out one suspect right away.
Ribaldry at football is kind of essential.
However, racism never is.
Thankfully the racist abuse of players of colour in Scotland appears to be relatively rare.
Of course, one incident is one incident too many.
One canary down the mine is to look for attempts by far-right elements to attach themselves to the Scottish game.
English fascist Tommy Robinson is already a rock star with a section of the Ibrox klanbase.
It is no surprise what two clubs in Scotland that the EDL leader has targeted.
Sadly, Planet Fitba has yet to address the massive problem of anti-Irish racism amongst the Ibrox klanbase.
Sevco’s customers still lovingly sing about a fascist street gang and their eponymous leader.
Billy Fullerton was the real deal, a self-identifying fascist and member of Ku Klux Klan.
Of course, it was the multi-generational Irish community in Glasgow that was the focus of Fullerton’s hate crimes.
Racism is not necessarily an issue of skin colour which is something that the intellectuals in the press box cannot get their heads around.
Consequently, on Sunday they will fail again as the klan goes through their racist songsheet at Hampden.
Science has long known that some foods boost cognitive ability.
So perhaps then the Stenography Corps should lay off the pies.
Just a suggestion…
Your own forensic sleuthing to provide evidence of your wicked slur against Aberdeen FC is to provide an image taken from a game – a Glasgow bigot fest – in which the Dons were not involved. Very poor. Johnsonesque In the only known and proven instance of racism involving Aberdeen and Celtic it was Shay Logan who was the victim and he continues to suffer vile racist abuse from the Celtic support on every occasion he plays in front of them. The television cameras at Pittodrie on Wednesday caught the Tavernier incident and clearly showed the missile to be a pie, in the Scottish football tradition. Banana chucking remains part of the Celtic tradition only Pit your own house in order and cut out the lies and deception.
Oh dear…
Classic BENNY .
The message then you are mince!
And its okay to sing about a paramilitary who murdered innocent women and children is it. Something you have a selective memory on Phil…
Do not tarnish Aberdeen fans with a racism brush buddy
Actually, there may be minimal downside if Celtic don’t win on Sunday.
OK, no quadruple, treble but the run has to end sometime.
And if you had to choose which silverware to lose first, then the LC would be the obvious choice.
Plus, the benefit would be a kick up the backside for Lennon, the squad – and Lawwell.
A loss on Sunday could simply reinforce the focus on Celtic winning 9IAR, and the SC.
If TRFC wins on Sunday, we all know how overboard the celebrations will be at Ibrox – and right across the SMSM.
Ultimately though, it would just be a dirty old bandaid temporarily covering up all the financial woes which still very much exist at Ibrox.
And the unintended consequence?
A bit of silverware – any sort of silverware – could see Gerrard disappear back down south in a matter of mere weeks.
He can leave Ibrox as a ‘trophy winning manager’.
Job done.
If Celtic avoid complacency on Sunday they should win – easily.
The Hamilton fright might have helped to remove that risk?
Racism is a foul and rancid condition and should not be supported in any form.
Should the pie have been thrown; No. Should our manager be subjected to Racist Chants; No. Should there be bananas or monkey chants directed towards any person for anything in any walk of life. No
This Sunday, there will be a facist, racist, proclamation of the carcass of demagogue Billy Fullerton………
and it will be glazed over as a “minority” in the MSM PR, they are not ready to address the cancer, let alone, their new Klub. Anti Irish Racism will be in full swing. Their online content is a good barometer to the frenzy they are already building. In defeat or victory their triumphalism will be imperious….Regardless, we must not overplay our position, the 29th of December is all too bigger prize.
Celtic must meet this attack head on….with, intelligence, humour, colour, defiance and above all silverware.
Let he is without sin , cast the first pie
The treatment of mark Walters that day was truly a dark day at paradise but that is only the tip of the iceberg of the racist abuse that Neil Lennon has suffered in this country for the last twenty years. Can’t see anything changing soon, sad.
At the time when the sevconian captain was being hit by the projectile I’m sure his supporters were singing “The pie was no surrender” or it could have been ” The pie was not so tender”
I too was at that game it was a shameful and shaming experience. It was gift to the hun supporting press in Scotland. Thankfully those days are long past at Celtic Park, the sectarian and racist abuse spewed out at every game that sevco take part in is routinely
ignored by most of the print media and all TV BBC Sky STV they consider this to be acceptable however I would describe it as “institutional racism”where have we heard that phrase before.
HH
At the time when the sevconian was hit by the projectile I’m sure I heard his supporters singing that ” The pie was no surrender” or could have been “The pie was not so tender”
Or in the words of Rev. I.M. Jolly, ”Many are cauld but some are frozen”. Hope it was a hot pie. HH
What a waste of a pie !!! Tavs is getting verbal pelters all season from the Klan.
If it had been Superally on the pitch, that pie wouldn’t have lasted long.
Not so quick!
McCoist would have picked up the offending pie, looked up at crowd, and demanded in a very loud voice;
“Who are these people?!
…who throw pies at me on the pitch?”
And then he may, or may not, have scoffed the pie.
I would never dream of fat shaming McCoist.
But, I’ll definitely call him out at every single opportunity for letting his ‘Cheeky Chappie’ mask slip,
…which resulted in a completely innocent family seek Police protection at their own home.
If Super Ally was on the pitch, I can guarantee that none of that pie would have touched the ground! 😆
Interesting on Mark Walters, I to was at that game and was disgusted. I was able to speak to him last year while he was promoting his book on Radio. I rang in and apologised and shared my disgust at what seems to rearing its ugly head again. I did ask him one question though and said how does he square the circle to me and a number of others, while he was ready to condemn the moron who threw the bananas at Parkhead as a racist, yet HE was filmed with his Rangers teammates signing along about being up to his knees in fenian blood…….could he tell me the difference?
I will give his and the Interviewers replies later today
Walters might not have understood the connotations of what he was singing, so I’d grudgingly offer him the benefit of the doubt. If, however, it was similar to the Paul Gascoigne / James Galway impression – the first time he played the imaginary flute, I’m, again grudgingly, prepared to offer Gazza the benefit of the doubt, because somebody (McCoist, I think) put him up to it for a “laugh”. The 2nd time Gascoigne done it, it was highly dubious. 3rd time, there was absolutely no doubt that Paul the Pillock knew exactly what he was doing!
Well said remember both incidents look forward to your answer
I actually laughed the first time Gazza done it. You could tell by the glaikit look on his face that it was his innocuous response to a “dare”. His second time was rather dubious, but his third time of doing it, I was in no doubt whatsoever that he had been indoctrinated to the ways of bigotry. If memory serves me correctly, it was also around this time that he was diagnosed as suffering from alcoholism, and wife-beating. From that day on, anybody with a modicum of decency would have realised that, as fine a footballer as he was, he was a sad, pathetic little man. He has done absolutely nothing since then that will convince me that I’m wrong, and I make no apologies for saying so.