The Ibrox side have never accepted responsibility for anything in their lives, and tonight’s SFA hearing on the Scottish cup game against Celtic won’t be any different

Tonight, the Ibrox side finally take their seat in front of an SFA disciplinary panel to answer for the scenes at the end of last season’s Scottish Cup final.

Celtic had their hearing eleven days ago.

Theirs was put back because of their Europa League tie with Jagiellonia Bialystok.

So tonight, at long last, it’s their turn.

And thanks to a report in the Scottish Sun, we already know precisely how they intend to play it.

They’ve accepted the notice of complaint.

But they’re going to stand their ground.

Of course they are.

Because in the entire history of that institution, there has never been a single occasion where anybody connected to it has put their hands up and said “that was us, that one’s on us”.

Not once.

Not ever.

There is always a reason, always a context, always somebody else who started it.

And why would tonight be any different?

And this time, that somebody else is us.

Their whole defence rests on one line in a report – that Celtic fans were the “trigger point”

That’s the line they’re going to lean on tonight.

Celtic fans came onto the pitch first, therefore everything that followed is our fault.

Their legal team will lay out a list of mitigating factors, because at Ibrox there is always a list of mitigating factors.

To be fair to them, it’s reported they won’t try to defend their own fans’ actions, having already condemned them in their own statements at the time.

But that’s not the same thing as accepting responsibility, is it?

Condemning your support in a statement costs you nothing. Accepting that they are the reason you’re in front of a panel costs you a punishment, and that is a bill they have never once been willing to pay.

Here is the difference between the two sets of supporters, and a ten-year-old could explain it to you

Let me be clear about something before I go any further.

Celtic fans should not have been on that pitch.

I’ve said that every single time it has happened, and I’ll say it again now.

It shouldn’t have happened, it’s that simple.

But why were they on it?

Because their team had just won the Scottish Cup quarter final against their arch rivals, and the emotion of that moment spilled over.

And what would you call that?

Over-exuberance.

Daft, unthinking, joyous over-exuberance from people who’d waited all season for that moment and couldn’t contain themselves when it arrived.

Not one of those supporters came over that wall with the intention of hurting another human being.

Now compare that to what came from the other three sides of the ground.

Those supporters didn’t come onto the field of play to celebrate anything.

They had nothing whatsoever to celebrate, so what exactly were they running onto that pitch for?

They came on for one reason and one reason only, and that was to get at Celtic supporters and do them serious harm.

That was the intent.

That is what was in their minds when they crossed that line, and the footage from that day tells you so in a way no legal submission ever will.

Celebration on one side.

Violence on the other.

INTENT is the whole of it, and it’s the basis they should be sanctioned on tonight.

The complaint about the Broomloan End tells you everything about how that club expects Scottish football to be run

Here’s the part of this that made me laugh out loud.

They’re also aggrieved, apparently, at having been made to hand over the whole of the Broomloan End to the Celtic support.

Their preference was to give us our usual league allocation.

Two and a half thousand.

In a Scottish cup quarter-final.

That request was rejected by the SFA, and they’re still sore about it five months later.

Can you imagine the neck of it?

Now, the rules on this are not complicated, and they’re not a matter of opinion either.

Cup ties in this country carry an away allocation of up to 20% of the ground.

That’s not something the SFA invented on the morning of the game to spite them.

It’s the rule, it’s written down, and it applies to every club in Scotland including Celtic.

But that’s never how it works with them.

The rules are there to be shaped around whatever suits Ibrox on the day, and when they’re not shaped accordingly, it becomes a grievance to be produced at a hearing months down the line.

Of course, they didn’t want three sides of their ground watching Celtic fans in the Broomloan End.

They didn’t want the noise.

They didn’t want the sight of it either – did they?

And they certainly didn’t want what actually happened, which was a full Broomloan End of Celtic supporters watching their team defeat them in their own back yard.

That’s the real complaint here.

Not safety, not logistics, not stewarding.

They just CANNOT stand us celebrating in their house.

They’ll blame us for the trigger, blame the SFA for the tickets, and walk out having accepted nothing

We won’t know the outcome until Tuesday morning at the earliest.

I’d love to tell you I expect the panel to look at the footage, weigh up the intent on both sides and act accordingly.

But we all know how this tends to go.

Somewhere in Scottish football’s corridors there’s a scale – and it has never once tipped against them when it mattered.

Two clubs were charged for what happened that day.

Only one set of supporters went onto that pitch looking for blood.

The panel know it, the SFA know it, and every single person who watched that game knows it.

Let’s see if any of them have the courage to say so…

Choose Read Celtic as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.