Celtic deserved everything they got at Ibrox on Sunday afternoon. There can be no complaints about the football.
Celtic were beaten 3-0 in the Premier Sports Cup quarter-final, with Dan Neil scoring twice and Kevin Kelsy also on target as Rangers booked their place in the last four.
It was a dreadful afternoon for the Hoops and a thoroughly deserved victory for the home side.
That, however, doesn’t excuse what followed.
Journalist Graham Spiers took to X after the match to call out what he heard coming from the Ibrox stands, with Martin O’Neill the target.
“In victory – and thoroughly deserved victory – the Rangers fans shower Martin O’Neill with sectarian abuse.”
It is worth paying attention when Spiers speaks about this subject.
He was a boyhood Rangers supporter himself and has repeatedly called out sectarianism surrounding the Ibrox club over the years, often when doing so has brought him considerable grief from sections of the support.
There is also something particularly grim about the circumstances on Sunday.
Rangers had just enjoyed their best afternoon of the season. They had beaten Celtic comfortably, knocked their biggest rivals out of a cup competition and had a packed Ibrox to themselves with no travelling Celtic support inside the stadium.
Yet O’Neill, a 74-year-old football manager standing in the technical area watching his team being well beaten, was still subjected to sectarian abuse.
You can celebrate a derby victory. You can revel in Celtic being knocked out of the cup. You can give an opposition manager stick. Nobody around Scottish football is asking for these games to become sanitised.
Sectarian abuse is something else entirely.
Spiers also deserves credit for saying it plainly. There is sometimes a rush after these games to qualify or deflect conversations about supporter behaviour depending on which colour of scarf is involved.
There should not be.
Celtic were poor. Rangers were excellent and deserved their place in the semi-final. Both things can be acknowledged without pretending behaviour like this should simply be accepted as part of a Glasgow Derby.
Spiers certainly wasn’t prepared to.
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GS is a personal friend of MON and even as a self confessed rangers fan would have been stung by seeing him having to suffer this and as any decent person would be was raging with a pal being subjected to this and had the balls to call it out.