Rangers: Crime, Punishment & Consequence
An excerpt from: Two Hundred Percent, July 13, 2012
Last Sunday’s website statement from the Hibernian Supporters Club (“Hibs Club”) and the Rangers Supporters Trust response to it exposed a chasm in thinking on Scottish football’s current problems. Supporters appear split down the middle between those who see Rangers as persecuted victims (Rangers fans) and those who see them as having taken Scottish football to the brink through their own poor financial management over the last 20 years (everyone else). Club statements have almost become passé in Scotland in recent days. No sooner had SPL clubs finished explaining why they didn’t want Charles Green’s currently league-less new club than SFL clubs were, mostly, doing likewise.
The intricacies of today’s SFL SGM, at which its clubs are due to vote on Green’s club’s membership application, were dealt with in impressive detail by Gavin Saxton on this site earlier this week. Meanwhile, Rangers fan groups and sites have punted their line with impressive consistency and, as various decisions on their fate draw nearer, with increasing passion. The line is that their financial misdemeanours were the fault of individuals no longer at the club, not the club itself; and that all calls for “further” punishment are fuelled by revenge, jealousy, bigotry and, (...)