Aidan Smith: Save Rangers and Celtic - support your local team

ONE of the benefits of having non-Scots in our daft wee league is that they view oor fitba with fresh eyes, the good stuff and the bad, and can usually be relied upon to highlight things we’d missed or forgotten about or got fed up mentioning because it didn’t seem that anyone was listening or cared any more.

So well done Kenny Shiels for this: “The people from Kilmarnock who support Kilmarnock, the people from Perth who support St Johnstone, the people from Motherwell who support Motherwell – these are the real football fans.”

The Killie boss was praising those who follow their hometown teams and having a dig at the “glory-hunters” – specifically, we must presume, the Kilmarnock-domiciled who hang around street-corners being all shifty until they’re whisked away by bus to wherever Celtic and Rangers happen to be diddy-bashing, though his remarks came just after his team had dramatically beaten the Gers.

What an outpouring Shiels provoked. On Killie websites they wanted “The people from Kilmarnock etc” printed on T-shirts, to be worn with pride. In Old Firm chatrooms they were more than miffed – don’t they outlaw foul and abusive language as happens on my team’s sites? – and many puffed out their chests and tallied up all the miles travelled from Buckie and beyond and wondered why that effort didn’t make them any less “real”.

It’s a highly-emotive subject, who you support and why. There are anomalies everywhere you look. Not all of those heading away from Rugby Park will be Kilmarnock-born and bred and more will have legitimate family allegiances to the Old Firm. And, as Celtic and Rangers fans would argue, what are those among a 30,000-strong Killie support on cup final day if not glory hunters when only a quarter of that figure turns out normally?

OK, but what sticks in my craw is when the Old Firm trot out the line about it being a “free world” with people entitled to support who they like. Scottish football is not a democracy or a utopia or even Brigadoon, where we all dance to the same tune. When we’re required to kick off a season ridiculously early it’s to “help our Euro hopefuls” who are always Celtic and Rangers. As long as every SPL club is made to play each other four times simply to guarantee a quartet of Old Firm fixtures for TV, we can never be called “free”.

At the very least, Shiels has sparked a debate which reminds us of how football works its strange magic, and in these grim times that’s a consolation. Scan the web on this issue and you’ll find funny, heartening stories of unswerving allegiance, perverse callings, happy accidents, names-in-blood commitment, tenuous connections, exasperated cries of “Why the bloody hell did it have to be Airdrie?” – and the amazing tale of a bluenose born within a mile of Ibrox who supported Rangers for “none-in-a-row then nine-in-a-row” but moved house and with it club and these days cheers on Stenhousemuir, sponsors a Warrior and even does a bit of scouting for his new best team. He can’t quite believe how his life has changed but loves that it has.

What’s the opposite of glory-hunter? Is this guy now a glaur-hunter? [Technically, no. Stenny play on a synthetic surface. Trust you with your fancy big-city fandom not to know that – Sports Ed]. Well, I applaud him, but he’s obviously in the minority. Many more board buses leaving a’ the airts for Ibrox and Parkhead. Some are lured by success but also the way Celtic and Rangers have marketed themselves as causes, living history projects and worldwide concerns.

As we’ve seen recently, though, Old Firm successes are relative – very relative. TV has bestowed glamour on Celtic and Rangers but there’s a greater glamour to Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid. In a futureshock scenario for football, we could all become Catalans or Reds, glory-hunting from our sofas in front of subscription-only matches, having given up not just on the home-town clubs but Scotland’s surpremacists as well.

There’s only one thing for it: support your local team. Globalisation has robbed many wee places of their identities but, if your high street’s all homogenous or, worse, boarded up, then don’t let them take away the football as well. As for those bus stops for Ibrox and Parkhead-bound charabancs, I think we’re stuck with them.