SCOTLAND’S SHAME AND THE ART OF PERFORMATIVE OUTRAGE
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 4m
- 3 min read
Well, it’s only day 3 into the latest meltdown over on Planet EBT, and already, Scotland’s Shame have reverted to their old ways.
Another statement, once again worth less than the crayons that scribbled it, has emerged from the Stadium that John Brown Played For.
Scotland’s Shame Just Do Not Know When to Shut Up
As with any kind of dispute in the workplace, there’s a time to speak up, and there’s a time to keep quiet, take your medicine and get on with it.
Despite one humiliating climbdown after another in the wake of their various angry “statements” over the years, Rangers still don’t seem to have learned this, the most basic of lessons.
Unfortunately, despite my hopes that, with new, supposedly progressive, owners at the helm, Scottish Football might have turned a corner in this regard, the SPFL’s newest club insist on continuing to make our league a laughing stock with their childish acts of petulance.
Rangers released a statement today saying that they, much like the romantic partners of most of their fans, “remain unsatisfied”.
Apparently, the fact that the SFA have dismissed their perfectly reasonable request that Auston Trusty be served with an immediate 6-month ban, and charged with GBH for having the audacity to point his foot in the general direction of goalkeeper Jack Butland, hasn’t gone down too well over at Ibrox.
Still, I guess I should give Butland some credit here. The guy must have regenerative healing powers up there with comic book heroes like Deadpool and Wolverine. Because somehow, miraculously, mere seconds after this brutal, savage attempted homicide from Trusty, the Englishman was back on his feet and the vicious head wounds had all, amazingly, completely healed.
Or maybe, just maybe, our dear friends over at Snake Mountain were being a tad hyperbolic in their faux outrage at Trusty. Afterall, they are “the people”, they can’t just lose a football match to a better team. There must be some other insidious reason that the mighty Rangers didn’t emerge with the win that they obviously should have.
I expect the spider diagram implicating, Peter Lawwell, Nicola Sturgeon, His Holiness Pope Leo and Martin O’Neill in this grand conspiracy to “stifle the staunch” to appear online any second now.
Rangers new owners have clearly realized that performative actions are the way forward when you need to buy yourselves a bit of breathing space after yet another failure on the football pitch.
Whether it’s the faux patriotism of their “Armed Forces Day”, (Celtic meanwhile just quietly give veterans charities a hefty cheque, with no need for any public pantomime), or this, the latest in a long line of angry, threatening but ultimately impotent and pointless statements demanding that they get their way, it’s performance over substance all the way for Scotland’s Shame.
Meanwhile, not a word on the racist chanting from the Rangers end at Hampden for much of Sunday's match. Chanting that was hailed by some TV pundits as “a brilliant, raucous atmosphere”.
Nor any word about the indiscipline of their own players (one red card was given and at least one more should have been added), or the fact that Celtic had a perfectly good goal ruled out for offside thanks to the inadequate framerate of Scottish VAR and the cowardice of those operating it.
And don’t even get me started on “the penalty”.
As far as refereeing decisions go, that was almost as dodgy as Andy Mountbatten’s hard drive.
Ultimately, Rangers lost the match. They are out of the League Cup, on the verge of elimination from Europe, and trailing badly in the league.
No number of tantrums, performative or justified, will change that. The only thing that can change any of the above is winning football matches.
But simply shutting up and playing the game just doesn’t seem to be The Rangers way at the moment.
I say let it continue for as long as they like. Celtic, as usual, will do our talking on the pitch.
Just like we did on Sunday.
