The explosive truth of Old Firm madness

SIDELINE CUT:The fact that Neil Lennon is literally laying his life on the line for his club, indicates how the age-old hatred dominates Glasgow, writes KEITH DUGGAN

IS NEIL Lennon the bravest man in all of sport or has the Lurgan man got a Messiah complex? When Celtic visit Rangers at Ibrox tomorrow afternoon, Strathclyde police will stand sentry at Lennon’s dug-out. Security arrangements have, according to Celtic player Kris Common, become “out of control” since the parcels – first bullets and more recently nail bombs – were posted to the Celtic manager’s home.

Lennon has been a tinderbox for the extreme end of sectarian antipathy since his playing days with Celtic. He has been beaten on the street. A Rangers fan tried to ram his car off the road when his daughter was in the car with him. Once, his father Gerry was driving through Banbridge and saw a bonfire with an effigy of his son at the top. He famously retired from the Northern Ireland team after 40 appearances because of death threats. Facebook was forced to remove a page bearing the banner: Let’s get 100,000 people who want to see Neil Lennon shot.

He has become the Salman Rushdie of Scottish football except, unlike the author, Lennon doesn’t bang on interminably about the unofficial, general fatwa placed on his head.

Not so long ago, George Galloway – never a man to sound a temperate note if he can help it – was on Newstalk asserting that the ancient Celtic and Rangers bigotry and loathing was largely a Protestant problem. The picture he painted of Lennon’s daily life sounded bleak. Here is a family living under police protection and under the psychological stress of knowing there are people in Glasgow who want to hurt him, who glory in the idea of his death.

Five years ago, Lennon spoke about his on-going struggle with depression – “worse than playing in an Old Firm game” – and God only knows how the unrelenting pressure of being the figurehead – the most adored and most reviled – of Celtic FC is affecting him privately.

For the public Lennon, the football man, has always approached his devotion to Celtic with a swagger that borders on the confrontational. His recent touchline bust-up with Rangers assistant manager Ally McCoist was the most visible demonstration of just how difficult and weird his life must be at the moment and on Wednesday night, when Celtic won 4-0 away at Kilmarnock, Lennon was close to tears as he applauded the visiting fans in the terraces.

Lennon is smart and well versed in Celtic-Rangers lore to know he is just part of a bitter anthem that knows no end. If he decided to pack up and move to Florida in the morning, Glaswegian football people would soon replace him with a new hero/villain. It is quite clear the football authorities believe themselves perfectly helpless to do anything about the depth of the rivalry.

Michel Platini, the Uefa president, responded to the news that a letter-bomb had been sent to Lennon with the reproach: “We have to keep politics and religion out of football and this is very important.” This is tantamount to a shrug: continental European indifference and bewilderment at this arcane, Irish-Scots football war which defines the old port city.

This is a hatred which is as old as the club. The first Celtic-Rangers match abandonment took place just 10 years after Celtic was founded. In 1905, a 2-0 Rangers victory reportedly caused Celtic fans to chase the referee with iron spikes. In the war years, the clubs used to play “friendlies” together – an excuse to indulge in their mutual hatred. In 1980, with the first rumblings of the hunger strikes in the Maze, a last-minute Danny McGrain goal in the Scottish Cup final led to an on-field riot and mass brawl on the pitch.

Celtic could always claim the high moral ground in the hatred because unlike Rangers, they would sign players of Protestant creed. “We had a bit of choice,” Seán Fallon, an assistant Celtic manager famously said. “We would sight Catholic or Protestant. Even coloured.”

Jock Stein and Kenny Dalglish, two pillars at Celtic, were Protestants. But that doesn’t dilute the fact generations who pledged their faith to Celtic hated Rangers and all it represents just as fervently as Rangers hated them. It doesn’t change the fact that plantation of Ulster prejudices and traditions into the streets and factories and pubs of a tough, sentimental city means the trappings of Republicanism and Orange-ism can now be celebrated much more aggressively and nakedly than could ever be the case in Northern Ireland today.

A recent column by Ian Jack in the Guardian made the bleak point that nobody has more cause to fear Celtic-Rangers games than the wives of its male followers. Incidents of domestic abuse in Glasgow skyrocket by 138 per cent on the Saturdays of Old Firm matches. The emotion, the alcohol, the adrenaline; it all leads to home. The economic demise of west Glasgow where Parkhead – Paradise – stands has been matched by the closure of traditional industries around Ibrox across the city.

Only the football clubs have survived the decline and they continue to bang the same drum that started up when Catholics and Protestants established their enclaves. Nothing has diminished the hatred. It does not matter that Rangers, in enraging Celtic fans by signing their beloved Mo Johnston in 1989, ended their sectarian policy or that the relative calm in Northern Ireland has brought the official representatives of both communities into the same rooms and corridors of power. Celtic and Rangers remains as wild and barely governable as ever.

Tomorrow, everything is set up for an extra special enactment of the old ritual: an Easter Sunday derby and a crucial top-of-the-table clash and a Bank Holiday Monday to recover. One thousand police will be drafted into Ibrox to try to keep something approaching civility through the din and the hate-filled songs and the gloating and the fierce inherited pride that keeps this thing burning.

And Neil Lennon will be the most compelling figure in the theatre of love and hate, the man who is literally laying his life on the line for Celtic. The idea of lethal devices sent in the post sounds so far-fetched it is difficult to believe it has happened. It is difficult to believe anything so dangerous could actually infiltrate the level of protection that surrounds Lennon and his family. But what if it did? What if they actually succeeded and someone was maimed or worse? Because Celtic v Rangers has been at the root of how many beatings, stabbings, fights, the cause – indirect or otherwise – of how many stupid deaths on the streets of Glasgow?

The tradition has always been that the gods of these Glaswegian football days – the players and managers who have passed through both clubs – remain untouchable; that they are secluded from the fear and violence that spreads through the streets afterwards. But what is happening to Lennon is dark. He is the target of on-going, murderous threats and the subject of an unprecedented campaign. The rational thing would be to walk away but that is the one victory Lennon could never grant Rangers fans, whatever the consequences.

When you think about it, Glasgow Rangers versus Glasgow Celtic is truly insane. Deep down, fans on both sides share the common belief they are perpetuating the most famous and fierce sporting rivalry in the world. They share in the glory and notoriety of that.

Mostly, these Old Firms days are policed walks on the wild side and if, every so often some kid, in a hooped or royal blue shirt gets stabbed outside a chippie, well, these things happen in all big cities. But it would be foolish to think that the threats to Neil Lennon won’t materialise into something terrible simply because he is Neil Lennon. It is a risk he continues to take in the name of Celtic.

So tomorrow then, another hurrah for the Old Firm lads and to the victors the oldest bragging right: Glesga belongs to me!