Thursday 20 September 2012

Don't Dare Call The Rangers "Zombies."




I had hoped to write a blog about Celtic's UEFA Champions League match with Benfica today, but work commitments meant I didn't even get to watch it.

I can say I'm encouraged by what was by all accounts a good performance and a point from a match where I personally feared the worst, but that's about it.

No matter, I soon found some material to write about after reading with a sense of incredulity that the SFA has served a notice of complaint against Celtic for a banner displayed at the pre-season friendly against Norwich City on July 24.

Yes, almost two months ago.

The first question that springs to mind is - why now?

Why not in the days and weeks after the match?

It's not as if there wasn't any manufactured outrage over the banner at the time.

Have a look at this piece of nonsense from @cyberted72, who has clearly been drinking the koolaid.

It appears though that the SFA are indulging the The Rangers fans in their squeals of outrage over the banner.

The charges against Celtic amount to allowing fans to enter the ground with an, "offensive," banner, and not removing said banner from said fans once it was displayed.

Before I go on - remind me. Did the SFA ever charge Rangers over this banner:


 
 
 


I may be wrong, but I don't think they did.

In light of that, it really does beggar belief that the SFA consider the zombie banner to be offensive.

It depicts the death of Rangers and the re-animation of its corpse as The Rangers.

The depiction of The Rangers as zombies is perfectly apt. It is exactly what the tribute act is - a re-animated corpse.

In recent years, zombies have gone mainstream.

The Walking Dead has achieved the highest ever viewing figures for a series on a basic cable channel in the US.

Brad Pitt will shortly be appearing in World War Z which is expected to be a smash hit at the box office.

Zombies are now an established part of popular culture.

Anyone seeing the banner would be fully aware of the point being made and that the banner does not actually advocate shooting anyone.

Only the most anally-retentive, looking-to-be-offended cretin could think otherwise.

There is something deeper going on here though.

What we are seeing is the bowing down to the demands of the most spoiled, indulged, humorless fans in world soccer.

For starters, fans of The Rangers are reduced to making loud complaints about every little thing that winds them up because they lack the wit to make an adequate response.

So their tactic (and a very successful one it is too) in these situations is to loudly denounce whatever is thrown in their direction as, "sectarian." The great no-no in Scotland today.

For decades, Rangers fans were called, "Huns," by fans of every other club in Scotland.

You can't call them that now. The very word is banned from most message boards because it is, apparently, a derogatory word for Protestants.

That's what they are doing now - try to mock The Rangers in any way, and you are being anti-Protestant, therefore sectarian.

"Zombie," will soon be declared officially sectarian because the courts, the SFA etc will shortly agree that it is a derogatory reference to Protestants.

The The Rangers fans simply can't take being the butt of a joke.

As a collective, they have never attained the level of maturity demonstrated by pre-adolescent schoolchildren in coping with the normal type of banter you encounter between rival soccer fans the world over.

The SFA has spent so long pandering to the club in blue who play out of Ibrox that even beyond the grave, the Zombie Rangers are the great Untouchables of Scottish soccer.

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