Following the way of Old Firm rivals

The five guys sitting in the row behind us last Saturday were from Meath. You could tell from that nonchalant way they dropped casual references to going to Croke Park and winning All-Irelands. Beside them was a group of Fermanagh men wrestling with last night's hangovers. And behind them again was the usual huge contingent from supporters clubs in west and north Belfast. At the end of a week here that was both momentous and downright astounding, Celtic Park on a freezing cold Glasgow afternoon was a suitably surreal place to be.

At the end of days of frenetic activity where concepts of identity and belonging were never far from the surface, we were at a football ground which, in some strange way, was able to tell us a lot about where we had been and where we had been going. This notion of "Irishness" and everything that this may or may not mean has always been bound up closely with the Celtic experience. For those here who threw their lot in with the club it offered, in the not too distant past, a means of self-expression not always available in their own culture.

The value of that in much more difficult times cannot be overvalued. It represented a less lethal way of letting off steam. But over time it became much more complicated than that. There was inevitable political baggage and Celtic Football Club was in real danger of being cut adrift from its non-sectarian roots. That Celtic, in some quarters, became a by-word for Irish nationalism and even republicanism was no fault of the club. But it had to realise that in what has passed for politics here for a generation, perception was everything.

The situation probably reached its apotheosis in the early part of the 1980s as the hunger strikes and the associated violence on both sides pushed Northern Ireland into mainstream British culture. Celtic Park and Ibrox became two the focal points of the general discontent. The Old Firm games with Rangers had never been sedate affairs but now the temperature levels were pushed up a few more notches. The Scottish game limped into the 1990s and increased media coverage added fuel to the fire as the encounters between the sides became hateful, spite-filled affairs. At a time of chronic economic depression here, there were times when the sectarianism of those games in Glasgow seemed like the only thing we were exporting.

But as the players began to replicate the crowd violence on the pitch and one game after another degenerated into a series of unseemly confrontations, the clubs themselves realised something had to be done. Rangers ended their de facto ban on signing Catholics around 1990 and the change of administration at Celtic that saw Fergus McCann take control also ushered in a new era. An uncompromising and often ruthless businessman, McCann also brought a tremendous amount of foresight to his new job. Realising Celtic could not continue in its present state if it was to have any prospect of figuring in the emerging European football order, McCann set about re-orienting the club. In his estimation, if this meant divesting Celtic of some of the elements that had attached themselves to it, then so be it. Along the way there has been condemnation for this new direction. But as change hurtles on, the now retired McCann might be forgiven for feeling more than a little vindicated.

It would be stretching the point to say that what was happening at Rangers and Celtic was itself part of the wider political process. But the changes at Scotland's two biggest clubs were undoubtedly reflecting subtle shifts in their respective Irish fan-bases. There may have been no grand plan at the heart of this change but its impetus was the slow dawning that modern football clubs could not remain mired in the past without losing both credibility and commercial clout.

The transformation at both Glasgow clubs has been startling and represents a stunning vindication of the tangible benefits of leaving the old baggage of the past behind. They are fast outgrowing the confines of the Scottish League and should be major players in whatever way European football shakes down over the next decade.

That is why they should be role models and trend-setters for sporting bodies and organisations of all hues here. They have shown how it is possible to first escape the confines of that natural support base and then pull it with you towards the future. Sectarianism has been confronted and forced out into the open.

Celtic's "Bhoys Against Bigotry" campaign - another initiative fostered and promoted by Fergus McCann - focused on problems in schools on the west coast of Scotland and has provoked debate and action about a subject that embarrassment and lack of political will had shunted to one side for generations. Many of the issues the ongoing campaign addressed are replicated and even amplified in schools throughout the north and it should provide a blueprint for a similar scheme here.

What has unfolded in Scotland over the past decade should also go a long way to silencing critics who believe that moving away from the old sectarian strictures of the past necessarily entails a dilution of tradition and identity. Celtic's Irish support have already been down this road during the McCann years but despite much gnashing of teeth they have come out the other side with precious little changed. There were concerns that the club was trying to distance itself from its Irish past and roots but they have been more than met by Celtic's charitable work, most notably its involvement in raising money for the Omagh bomb fund appeal.

But as with so much else here, the road has only been half-travelled. Celtic-Rangers games are still fairly rabid affairs and as last year's sectarian murder of a young Celtic fan near Celtic Park showed they still have a long way to go to. Amidst all of this, the hope would be that as the new political structures bed down here and the first semblances of normality start to appear then the Northern Irish-generated heat will be taken out of the Old Firm games.

That is for the future. For now we should be confident enough to celebrate what has already been achieved. The atmosphere at Celtic Park last Saturday was unrecognisable from what used to prevail a decade ago. As Celtic romped to a 40 win over Hibs last weekend, there was a half-hearted attempt high in the Celtic Park stands to start a rendition of the The Boys of the Old Brigade. But nobody in the seats around us was singing.