Islay
McLeod’s
Scotland
The Big Match
Celtic v Rangers, Parkhead, Sunday 31 August
People are selling the usual memorabilia in the streets – programmes, scarves, magazines, flags. A stale smell of lager and chips hangs in the air. The mass surges through the gates merging with fluorescent coats of security officials, events staff (who are ‘here to assist you’) and police. I’m sickened by the sight of police horses having plastic visors attached to protect their eyes in the event of a riot. The only thing missing seems to be the supporters of the opposition. There isn’t a blue shirt in sight – the Rangers supporters are on the other side of the stadium with surrounding land cordoned off with metal fencing, reinforcing the strict segregation.
Meanwhile, I join Celtic supporters as they sweep through an unnervingly narrow tunnel in both directions, singing and yelling.
My first experience of sectarianism was while visiting a friend at her house in Fife at the age of 14. In the heavily Irish and unsurprisingly Celtic-biased village, a local boy welcomed me with the question: ‘You a hun then?’. Thirteen years later it’s as rife as ever with most songs referring to ‘keeping the huns away’ – or expletive-deleted words to that effect. On the Rangers side, it’s no better with chants of ‘feniun blood’. This is no place for the faint-hearted, the young or the claustrophobic.
The final result: Celtic 2 Rangers 4. Later that day, the Celtic coach Neil Lennon was the victim of a sectarian attack. What you might call injury time.
All photographs Copyright Institute of Contemporary Scotland, 2008