Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

I got a call yesterday from the office of Peter Lawwell offering me a job and to get down to Hampden right away. Thankfully, I’d taken leave of my hideaway in Ayrshire and was back in my west end flat so it was a short drive to Lawwell’s office so when I got there I could still hear the same whipping noise I’d heard in the background of the telephone call – it was Lawwell administering a sound thrashing to Stewart Regan and Vincent Lunny, both chained to a wall and stripped to the waist. Lawwell saw me, stopped and approached me, blood dripping from his horsewhip as Regan and Lunny sobbed behind him.
‘I have a job for you, squirt,’ said Lawwell. Immediately I began to imagine what the great power in Scottish football had pulled out of a hat for me; could it be a column in the Scotsman? Going back to the Herald? Shoogly Linklater apologising for sacking me and inviting me back to the Times?
‘You’re going to be a Celtic steward at Tynecastle tonight,’ said Lawwell, interrupting my fantasies.

Well this was disappointing, I was thinking as I put on my hi-vis vest and skip cap and gathered with my new colleagues in front of the Celtic fans as they began to fill the Celtic end at Tynecastle with their impressive tribal chanting and lusty praise of a murdering Irish terrorist organisation. We were here on the insistence of Lawwell who is allowed to do anything he likes these days since Celtic annexed the SFA at the beginning of the season and his attitude seems to be having a trickle down effect with the Celtic fans now thinking they can do what they like without fear of reprisals or punishment. You see, with a hand picked mob of Celtic fans as stewards, no Celtic thug in the crowd was going to be reported or identified especially as Lothians and Borders Police in an astonishing demonstration of moral and actual cowardice, refused to take action after their bloody nose at the hands of the children of the Green Brigade the last time. The scene was set then for the biggest display of sectarian, bigoted and offensive chanting of the season and the Celtic fans didn’t let us down; you’ll never hear of it though since it wasn’t Rangers fans so the media aren’t interested.

They didn’t stop with their songs though and it wasn’t long before the Hearts ball boys and girls were removed from their positions in front of the Celtic fans after a constant barrage of missiles had rained down on their tiny heads. I looked around at my colleagues in their official Celtic stewards uniforms and remarkably, they had joined in, one of them chasing after a retreating ball girl and aiming a kick at her arse. My gaze turned to the police in the distance as they waded into the Hearts fans, knocking heads and making arrests because the Hearts support had the temerity to question why the police weren’t doing anything about the visiting fans. Then I strained to see what was going on in my old stomping ground of the press box but my eyes must have been playing tricks as I’m sure I saw every journalist to a man, sitting up there wearing ear muffs and blinkers. On second thoughts, there was nothing unusual about that when Celtic were playing. What was strange was that there were no BBC Scotland staff there at all – they must all have been back at Pacific Quay playing Rangers Rumours Scrabble where the winner gets to make up random lies about Rangers owner Craig Whyte and stick it in Reporting Scotland as the main headline.

Not that I saw much of it as I seemed to be the only Celtic Steward watching the crowd and not the game, but the match ended four nil to Celtic after Willie Collum remembered that the Green Brigade know the names and schools of his children and disallowed a perfectly good Hearts goal, the reasoning being that new SFA advice passed down by Lawwell is that for a goal against Celtic to stand, it must absolutely burst the net and be so far beyond doubt that even Vincent Lunny with a pistol against his temple couldn’t refuse it. Celtic buoyed by this madness then went on to score four goals as their fans laid waste to the Tynecastle seating before assaulting anyone on their trains home who dared ask them not to sing insulting songs about an Irish Republican gang who enjoyed murdering women and children.

So this is what Scottish football has become without me? It makes me so angry to witness this. So angry to witness this without being allowed to be a part of it – who’s to say that I couldn’t cover up the vile behaviour of Lawwell, Celtic and their fans just as well as the donkeys in the press? Just as effectively as the annexed SFA? I must get back into journalism, I must find myself a newspaper, I must make myself relevant again.