Yoghurt Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 Pathetic wrangles on pathetic issues from pathetic people many years ago. Still doesn't justify bombs and sectarian shit from people who are less than worthless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benbobjr Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 Was it ever really there? I know in Manchester, United were supposedly Catholic and City were Protestant, and the same in Liverpool for Everton and LFC respectively, but even back in the old days, surely it never played much of a factor in the rivalries? I can't remember any British rivalries being particularly nasty on such a long-term basis, outside Millwall and anyone else they're feuding with. Â I was under the impression most areas where there were two football teams that usually the one who played in red one were the catholic team and the team in usually in blue were the protestant team. Maybe it's just an urban myth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted April 20, 2011 Paid Members Share Posted April 20, 2011 The reason why I wonder about whether it's really a sectarian thing, rather than sectarianism being used as a pretext to continue an inexplicably venomous rivalry in football, is because of the Edinburgh clubs. As I understand it, Hibs are Catholic and Hearts are Protestant, right? Can someone in the know elucidate as to why the Edinburgh rivalry doesn't seem to be anywhere near as hateful?  Celtic and Rangers are usually competing over the prizes? Anyone who's read some Irvine Welsh knows there is definitely tension there.  But surely that further validates my point? If it were truly about sectarianism, wouldn't the Edinburgh rivalry be equally vicious, regardless of whether or not they're challenging for the silverware?  Not really. If Man City were the only realistic challengers to Man Utd and the league had been fairly evenly split between them for 100 years, don't you think the rivalry there would be pretty vicious too?  Well, no - Spain's pretty much had that with Real and Barca, and it doesn't seem to be as nasty as the Glasgow rivalry.  Also, to my knowledge, Hearts never had an explicitly anti-Catholic signing policy that still rankles with the other side. Also, Hibs made a decision pretty early on in their existence to distance the club from its Irish Catholic roots specifically because they felt they needed to be less conspicuous in order to get ahead.Catholic club they actually had difficulty getting other clubs to play them.  Fair enough, this clarifies things a lot more. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny McBride Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 Barca and Madrid are pretty far apart. I mentioned Utd and City because they're the two clubs in the city. Actually, if Barca and Madrid were closer it'd probably be worse. The explicit politics of Spanish clubs is intense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patiirc Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Barca and Madrid are pretty far apart. I mentioned Utd and City because they're the two clubs in the city. Actually, if Barca and Madrid were closer it'd probably be worse. The explicit politics of Spanish clubs is intense.  The Barca Madrid rivalry is so intense because of the Civil War in the 1930's Madrid were significant of Franco's team and the establishment, where as Barcelona was the team of rebellion and freedom because of the Catalan heritage. Real has always been the establishment side Real Madrid meaning Royal Madrid iirc and thus an eternal divide between the two teams has always been there, ideologically, politically and so on. Madrid dropped the royal bit after Franco's declaration of the 2nd republic iirc playing as Madrid FC for a bit , but the association was still there and it nearly killed the club  Afaik the rivalry came to a head when Sunyol (Barce President at the time) was arrested and killed by Franco in 1936 because of the dissident nature of the club in an attempt to pacify Barce's influence but it served only exacerbated the situation  A better football rivalry that is politically motivated and has elements of Nationalism and so forth is between the Delije and Blue Bad Boys.. A good place to start is the 1990 riots that plagued Dynamo Zagreb vs Red Star Belgrade. Elements of both sets of fans would later become Army and Political Leaders in the ensuing war and is a flash point that first started the long road to the split up of the old Yugoslavia.  I keep wheeling the above out but over time they make the Rangers/Celtic thing look like what it is, relatively small fry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yoghurt Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Why should it be made to look small fry. These useless wasters should be exposed, shown up and belittled by every other fan of either club and by society as a whole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nothing to see here! Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 In my view in life there are scumbags who will latch on to anything that can offer any sort of semblance of justification to acting in an represible way and it doesn't really matter if they have particularly strong views o the subject or not. Whether it be in the past racism, anti-semitism or homophobia which hasn't completely gone away but there's been enough of an education beat down that the utterance of a nigger, yid, queer would shame even the dullest of dullards if they were caught saying it. But the interminable theological debate of whether a god does or doesn't exist makes it very difficult to completely undermine any religious based tomfoolery so it's hard to extricate the scumbags from their bastardized ideas of religious morality. I also feel that it doesn't help that a great deal of Old Firm fans who aren't what you'd call the ultimate scumbags that we're talking about still indulge in bigotry based baiting of one another because whether it be on a latent or subconcious level know that the size of the clubs they love have a sybiotic relationship with the Troubles along with all things related. And a complete parting of the ways could lead to the breaking down of the hugeness of the two clubs, because without it there's really not a lot of reason for them to be bigger than a Hearts or Hibs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 That's why it was so disappointing to hear some chap on the BBC news last night playing the Kenny McBride game of making it out to be an issue of Catholic bigotry rather than a straight issue of criminality and violence. Â As long as prominent people are trying to blame one side more than the other, this sort of thing will continue. That attitude just perpetuates the excuses that the violent minority use to excuse their actions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patiirc Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Why should it be made to look small fry. These useless wasters should be exposed, shown up and belittled by every other fan of either club and by society as a whole.   It is small fry in terms of football rivalries causing stuff, yes Liquid bombs and what not arent pleasant, but even the Italian Ultras of recent times and their mass battles and the Turkish rivalries between Fenerbahce and Galatasaray ( One on the Asian Side of Istanbul one on the European side of Istanbul) ditto with Besiktas vs Fenerbahce (same again) are more intense Fenerbahces firm are called Kill For You and Galatasaray's Ultraslan has bailed the club out of debt before now. Despite having enough members to out sell the club shop interms of shirts sold. There is even a rule for fighting that condones knife use as long as it is below the gut and thus supposedly non life threatening.  Some more 'stories' of Turkish fans here   I strongly suspect that the current wave of Liquid bombs etc isn't actually linked to fans and is an offshoot in the recent rise in bombs being set off and found in NI as opposed to something purely football related, all in the name of destabliising the peace process, or messing up the Scottish Elections rather than just being about, you know football. Targeting the manager, a politician and a QC, whilst all have links to Celtic, are also far wider reaching targets especially with the Scots Parliament coming up for re-election If it was some one going ' Gil Renard' on the team, then surely other players would have also been targeted and not just the manager and some superficial cast off's in the grand scheme because ultimately if some one was wronging the team on the pitch then they would be more of a legitimate target? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny McBride Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 That's why it was so disappointing to hear some chap on the BBC news last night playing the Kenny McBride game of making it out to be an issue of Catholic bigotry rather than a straight issue of criminality and violence. As long as prominent people are trying to blame one side more than the other, this sort of thing will continue. That attitude just perpetuates the excuses that the violent minority use to excuse their actions.  They're connecting the Lennon/McBride/Godman issue to a direct threat to the Pope via Cardinal O'Brien. But yeah, it's all about football. The fact that the majority of anti-Catholic violence is not regarded by the police as "football related" should probably just be ignored, because you know better and I'm just a paranoid nutter.  For the record, I'm not saying that football doesn't play a part in it. I've said before that I think the songs at Ibrox play a part in making anti-Catholic bigotry acceptable, not least because everyone paints it as "two sides of the same coin" and "they're both as bad as each other". The facts show that anti-Catholic bigotry is significantly more of a problem than anti-Protestant or even pro-Republican/IRA attitudes. Just listening to the crowds show that the worst some Celtic fans do is sing rebel songs - not very nice, I'll grant you - while Rangers fans (and yes, I know it's not all of them, but it's not a tiny minority either) sing about killing Catholics and driving Catholicism out of Scotland. There IS a difference, and one side IS worse than the other. I won't argue that Celtic (and the Catholic community as a whole) don't have a role to play in wiping this bullshit out, but this "blame the victim" game that some people try to play is the most appalling form of bigotry imaginable. No-one would tell a woman who gets beaten by her husband "well no, he shouldn't have hit you, but you didn't have his dinner on the table on time so it's not all his fault." But that's how a good number of people seem to treat the issue of anti-Catholic violence in Scotland.  Just because you choose to accept and tacitly support anti-Catholic bigotry (you're from the intellectual "they're evil, so it's OK to perpetrate hate against them" school, which provides a lovely balance to the knuckle-draggers) doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If a Scottish imam was receiving bullets in the post, I'm quite sure you'd be up in arms at the vile bigotry stirred up by the wicked, racist media.  By the way, are you Scottish or living in Scotland? I'm curious as to what your actual perspective is on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yoghurt Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Tacitly dodging the religious issue. Kudos. You are a paranoid idiot condoning violence though. Â I fail to see what living in Scotland has to do with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny McBride Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Tacitly dodging the religious issue. Kudos. You are a paranoid idiot condoning violence though. I fail to see what living in Scotland has to do with it.  The fuck? I have no idea what your first line even means.  The second point regards what your actual perspective on things is. If you live in England, you only get what's in the news. You don't actually see the low-level shit and you don't have any real personal experience. You don't hear the stories of friends and family. You don't hear about the stuff that doesn't get in the papers (which itself, as I'm sure you can understand, is coloured by the agenda of the journalists concerned and the mandatory PC line - only crossed by Graham Spiers - that both sides are absolutely equally responsible). I think even people outside Glasgow (or at least the west of Scotland) probably don't see anything like the whole picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted April 21, 2011 Paid Members Share Posted April 21, 2011 Tacitly dodging the religious issue. Kudos. You are a paranoid idiot condoning violence though. I fail to see what living in Scotland has to do with it.  How did he condone violence? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 There IS a difference, and one side IS worse than the other. Your equivalent Rangers fans would agree with you on that. Proper humans won't, though. Â Fucksake, Kenny. Do you not even see why people find it funny that you think it's an objective fact that the religion, paramilitary-sympathising community and football gangs you were born and raised in all just so happen to be the morally justified, put-upon, righteous good guy in every conflict? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Just because you choose to accept and tacitly support anti-Catholic bigotry (you're from the intellectual "they're evil, so it's OK to perpetrate hate against them" school) Â Get fucked, I've never said anything of the sort. In fact, my ENTIRE POINT is that BOTH sides in a long-running dispute like this share equal blame. Â By the way, are you Scottish or living in Scotland? I'm curious as to what your actual perspective is on this. Â I'm neither Scottish nor religious, which give me a good perspective outside of all this. Â It seems to me that, much like the situation in Northern Ireland a few years ago (and still to some extent) both Protestant and Catholics point at the other side and claim that they are worse, and that the actions of the other side therefore explain/excuse the action of their side. Ultimately such conflicts are only defused when both sides admit to having to deal with their own internal extremists as an action independent from whatever the other side happens to be doing. Â You are, unfortunately, just one of those people who perpetuate such conflicts through moral equivalence. Well, our villains are not quite as evil as their villains. Your religious fervour blinds you to this just as the Israelis and Palestinians are blind to the cyclical and self-perpetuating nature of their conflict. Both sides will be able to point to events or actions in the history of the conflict which they feel are responsible for its continuation, and simultaneously downplay similar actions by their own side. Â Let's just hope that cooler, more rational heads than yours can move the situation forward, as happened in Northern Ireland. Not that this is anyway near as serious, but it has many similarities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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