Away from the robbery committed by VAR on Celtic at Ibrox today, I want to revisit the comments Ally McCoist made about today’s Glasgow Derby this week.
The former Rangers striker gleefully confessed that he, alongside 48,000 other Rangers supporters will break the Scottish Government’s new Hate Crime Bill today.
As it turned out, only 48,000 Rangers fans actually broke in on three separate occasions as The Billy Boys belted out whenever the Ibrox outfit scored their goals against Celtic.
McCoist himself wasn’t at the game because as the furore of his comments continued to create headlines (well on social media at least as the Scottish media were too cowardly to deal with it) what Graham Spiers said about the comments will really surprise the Celtic supporters.
Via Phil Mac Giolla Bhain‘s latest blog, Spiers said, “My take on this is Ally misspoke. He was just totally clumsy.
“I have listened back to the tape and he just doesn’t get the tone right. He doesn’t get his words in the right order.”
Now the reason why this will surprise the Celtic support is that Spiers has been a breath of fresh air when it has come to calling out sectarianism at Ibrox.
Famously castigated by the Ibrox support, Spiers found his voice when he left Scottish journalism and has actively tackled Rangers fans when he addresses the issue.
But him excusing McCoist’s comments as ‘clumsy’ is, well, clumsy of Spiers. Clumsy is someone from outside the Glasgow bubble mistakenly using a sectarian term without realising the extent or meaning behind it.
McCoist has been entrenched in the Glasgow hatred for decades and knows better. Or at least he should. Instead of excusing the ex-Rangers hero, Spiers should have used his independent voice and called out McCoist as well.
But by choosing this path he has gone down in mines and other Celtic fans’ estimation.
