Down in England ‘Show Racism The Red Card’ and ‘Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football’ have been successful campaigns for a few years now and the abuse of minority players is most definitely unacceptable and long may that continue.
As usual, in Scotland things tend to move a bit slower when it comes to dealing with issues that the rest of the civilised world deem taboo. It’s not so long ago that a representative of Partick Thistle made a racial slur on a group of Asian businessmen who were attempting to buy the Firhill club and the Scottish Football Association deemed there was no racism problem in the country.
So, it should come as no surprise that the antics of the Rangers fans on Sunday during the 3-3 draw at Celtic Park should go largely unreported.
The Neanderthal behaviour of a sizable section of the way support every time Momo Sylla or Bobo Balde went near the ball was disturbing, but not all together surprising. These racist chants have been common place among Rangers fans for some time now, and no one appears to give a damn. How sad.
It would be naive to suggest there are no racist fans at our club - in any large gathering of people there will always be some lunatics - but thankfully this level of abuse does not exist and it would not be tolerated.
I remember the shameful scenes when Mark Walters made his Rangers debut at Celtic Park in 1987 and he was abused throughout the match by some thugs who totally embarrassed our club.
However, I also remember the reaction to this episode when decent Celtic supporters responded to make sure these idiots got the message, and thankfully the problem has not surfaced again.
Let’s hope that the abuse of minority players will now stop in Scotland or at least let’s hope that the problem is at least recognised to start with.