Scotland's ultras finally have their say on public image

The National

14 hours ago

But is the image of Scotland's Ultras groups and the wider movement – for the various Ultras factions are now collaborating, communicating with one another and coalescing around a common cause – a fair one? And who moulds it?
Towards the tail end of the season, members of 14 Ultras groups from around the country simultaneously unfurled banners demanding a 'Fairer Deal for Fans', the slogan of a campaign to draw attention not only to issues affecting them, such as their view that they are being characterised unfairly by the media and the authorities, but issues affecting all supporters, such as the ever-increasing cost of attending matches.
The stunt on the day garnered a few headlines, and a joint statement that followed was reproduced in a few articles. Compare and contrast though the coverage and furore that was sparked by the unveiling of the controversial banner featuring Graeme Souness at the recent Old Firm derby at Ibrox, for example, and you may at least begin to understand where the feeling of imbalance in portrayals of the Ultras groups is coming from.
From their perspective, it seems like the many stakeholders in the game – the clubs, the governing bodies, the police, the government, the media – are having their say on the groups, while the only ones that aren't being platformed are the Ultras themselves.
With that in mind, Herald Sport sought to redress the balance by speaking directly to current and past members of Ultras groups, affording them an opportunity to air their views, their grievances, and their side of a story that is largely being written about them without their input.
'What we are looking for is just a fair crack of the whip,' said Paul Quigley, who was long associated with Celtic Ultras groups and was a spokesman for the Fans Against Criminalisation (FAC) campaign, which successfully lobbied for the repeal of the controversial Offensive Behaviour at Football Act.
'We don't expect any journalists to be taking our perspective verbatim and writing opinion pieces advocating on our behalf, but I do think that we don't really get a fair hearing, and I don't think that the fan organisations that purport to represent us do a very good job of that.'
(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group) Ross, a current member of Celtic Ultras group Bhoys Celtic, agreed that the imbalance in coverage allows those opposed to UItras groups to control the narrative around them, with a particularly egregious recent example the way that the groups themselves were blamed for the hike in ticket prices on the day Celtic travelled to Tannadice to clinch the league title.
Extra policing costs due to the conduct of the Ultras was cited as the driving factor behind the £42 ticket price, rather than the opportunistic exploitation of rank-and-file fans.
'It's a simple case of the clubs cashing in,' he said.
'That's what it is, and they're using the groups as a scapegoat to justify every increased cost.'
Quigley added: 'I think there's a concerted effort to pin the blame of everything on the Ultras groups.
'The media use a lot of really emotive language about Ultras. There was an article recently for instance where three examples were used as evidence for this sort of culture change that is a threat to Scottish football.
'The three examples used were pyro thrown on the pitch at Aston Villa [in Celtic's Champions League tie], Arne Engels being hit by an object at Ibrox and the apparent abuse of the Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell when he was in that role.
'All of those three things, whatever you think about those specific issues, none of them had any relevance to the Ultras groups. None of the Ultras groups or Ultras sections had anything to do with any of those three events.
'I think that encapsulates the problem here, that anytime any football fan inside or outside the stadium does anything at this point, the Ultras groups are very easy to place it on.
'When Ultras groups contribute meaningfully to Scottish football, either with the noise in the stadium or with tifos and banners that they've spent weeks and months preparing and paying thousands of pounds for, when they've overseen initiatives around things like mental health or one of the biggest fan actions in the world over the last year, the 'Show Israel the Red Card' action that started at Celtic, it's had almost no press, which is incredible really to me.
'So, I think there's a disconnect there between the reality of what the Ultras groups bring, which is completely dismissed and never really discussed, and then there's the fact that every time someone farts in any football stadium it's the groups that are to blame.
'I think that's the sort of perception element that needs to be shifted.'
It isn't only in the media where the Ultras feel underrepresented though, but also when internal discussions are taking place that concern them, but which do not involve them.
A recent example of these fans being excluded from such conversations was around the game between Celtic and Rangers at Celtic Park in March, when the club publicly trumpeted that they were discussing the fallout of the police approach on that day with all stakeholders, but were not consulting with the fans' groups themselves.
'The crux of the matter is meaningful engagement,' Ross said.
'In my experience, a club's view of Ultras groups tends to be, 'those guys are f*****g idiots', but they wouldn't be able to organise and manage the things they do if they were full of the 16-year-old wee d***s that are high. It wouldn't be possible.
(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group) 'But if you were able to develop a relationship in which there was a bit of give and take, then if there were specific issues, we could discuss them.
'Nobody's asking for Scottish football to do a 360 and be letting stadiums be set on fire with pyro every week, that's not what we're asking for here. We're asking for engagement with the clubs to build something that covers every demographic.
'You've got your family stands and areas where older people are welcome, you've got different ticket initiatives around everybody else, the one demographic that seems to be missed by everyone is the majority demographic that goes to football, which is predominantly younger working-class males.
'It seems to be that everybody's catered for, except for that demographic, and that's probably one of the most important demographics in the game.
'Every time we hear that a club is talking to stakeholders, they aren't talking to us. A good example is the Trongate issue with Celtic. There were all these reports of discussions with various stakeholders, but in that instance that would be the police and the council. The one main stakeholder that was missing was supporters or fan groups.
'I think that's a trend that we see across the board here. It doesn't matter what the issue is, it seems to be the biggest stakeholder, or the most important stakeholder in my eyes, that are the people that are missing.
'They're ignored, or they're not engaged with. They're spoken to after the fact rather than before the fact, when we're actually an integral part of the game and should be viewed as such.'
There are other clubs though where Ultras have been warmly embraced, like Falkirk. Will Adam, who is involved in their 'Ultras 1876' group, thinks that the boards of other clubs should be following the example of his own.
'We're quite lucky at Falkirk, our club and our fans really embrace our group,' Adam said. 'All we get is positive feedback.
'We had a fundraiser recently because we had to raise money for next season and we had £10,000 within 24 hours, but we're just lucky in the sense that our community at Falkirk recognise the group as a positive thing.
(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group) 'My old man [Stuart Adam]'s on the board at Falkirk, and also Jamie Swinney, the CEO, he's a really good guy, he's always going out of his way to help the fans.
'So, everybody's kind of got the same objective here, and I think what it really takes to make a difference, is having executives and those that are running Scottish football understanding the positives to this.
'These groups, they're not full of wee dafties. It's old enough guys and smart enough guys that can pull something like this campaign together and start having logical discussions about it.
'The way that we're portrayed is kind of as hooligans and scumbags that go out of their way to ruin the experience for other fans, and I think that is out of order.'
At Partick Thistle too, as Manpreet Singh explains, there is a thriving Ultras scene, and it has a far wider age demographic than is often portrayed.
'This isn't 12, 13, 14-year-old boys running about,' Singh said.
'There is structure behind it, there's grown men with families and kids working jobs that are behind everything, because all I see in the media is it's just all these daft wee boys, all these school children, but it's not, it's the complete opposite.'
Not that they wish to paint their own false narrative of being saints to a man, either. Rather, the prevailing theme of the conversation is that these are just ordinary guys – teachers, social workers, students – who in these groups have discovered meaning and belonging they struggle to find in other areas of their lives, and who argue that going to the football is a far healthier outlet to fulfil such yearnings than the alternatives on offer to them.
'In the Scottish context, the things that used to give young working-class men a sense of identity, a sense of agency, have all been on the decline,' said Quigley.
'So, if you look at the decline of heavy industry, the decline of the trade union movement, the decline of things like working men's clubs, even the decline of things like religion. All these different things that built up a community have been absolutely cast aside by neoliberalism from '79 onwards.
'You've now got a situation whereby a lot of young men are feeling incredibly isolated. It's fuelling a lot of really dark pathways for people who are becoming isolated and then following a political trajectory down towards the far right.
'What my argument would be is that the Ultras groups, what they offer more than anything else is a sense of identity and community. It is a sense of actually having some form of agency.'
Ross added: 'At its very core, people want a sense of belonging, they want comradeship, particularly young men, they want excitement.
(Image: Paul Byars - SNS Group) 'If you look at any other aspects of people's lives, you look at their work, you look at their ability to own their own home etc, they don't have the same sort of power and agency that past generations had.
'But one way that they do actually get to have that, whilst being part of a community, whilst making mates, whilst getting to have that excitement, comes through football. And I think when you're looking at it from that perspective rather than just looking at it as a 'shower of wee d***s' running about mad, it makes a lot more sense.
'These things, they don't have to be a negative thing, but for whatever reason, the authorities and whoever else fear young working-class men and women getting together and organising in any capacity.'
That is partly the reason why, they argue, they are unfairly vilified and smeared, with the rise in drug use at football being pinned on the Ultras groups a particular sore point given the work that most of these groups are doing to help those with drug addictions in their communities, as well as the many mental health initiatives they are responsible for.
Derek Watson, who is involved with Motherwell Ultras group, Block E, said: 'I think it's a real slap in the face that they even use football as an example there, because drug use is up across the board in Scotland, it's a societal issue.
'I'm not here to stick up for Rangers and Celtic fans but I think also it's similar when you talk about sectarianism. I think there's so many societal issues that they love to pin on football fans because that means they don't need to address the core issues where the actual problem lies.
(Image: Ewan Bootman - SNS Group) 'The one thing I would say in a Motherwell respect, we've done a lot of work around drug issues. We've had cocaine awareness nights, we've done a lot of stuff around suicide prevention, and that's probably because so many people have taken their own life with addiction issues, and we don't want that to happen again.
'I strongly believe that there's people that have come to the football with us that could have gone down a much darker path if they weren't involved with these Ultra groups.'
'We're the same,' added Ross, referring to the Celtic Ultras.
'We've got people that run CA [Cocaine Anonymous] groups, we run our own boxing night, our own boxing club, to give people opportunities to train.
'We've got running clubs and it's possibly expanded outwith the group now, but it all started within the group. There are different outlets that come through this, and healthier outlets, 100 percent.
'Drug taking at football is rife, but I would argue it's more rife in the lounges and in the various other bits of the stadium.
'People in the Ultras groups and the Ultra sections have got a job to do, they've got structure, they've got different roles to play, and you can't do that if you're mad with it. The whole thing would come down like a deck of cards.'
Not only does the existence of Ultras groups offer something to the members themselves, though, but also an opportunity for clubs to exploit their appeal to attract a new generation of supporters, in Ross's view. Particularly the smaller clubs, who through harnessing the pull of their Ultras, could even pry away younger fans from the lure of the Old Firm.
'I know this anecdotally, there's boys in our group at Celtic whose younger brothers now go to support Partick Thistle because they can't all go to Celtic together or they can't afford it, they can't get tickets together,' he said.
'But they see what's happening at Thistle and they want to be a part of it.
'They're not going there because they've been brought up on the history of Thistle. They're going there because they see people standing, they see people singing and all that.
'I'll say this as well as somebody that hates pyro, I don't like it and have never liked it, but that's what younger boys see, they see that excitement and that rush. They're not going there for any other reason.
'Now, they might get into it later on and they might get into the club, and they might end up supporting these clubs, which is a great thing, but that's not the actual attraction, and it's definitely not the football.
'It's what's happening in the stands.'
As the subject of pyro is raised, which remains illegal, whatever your view on it, is it not self-defeating for the Ultras to continue to use it, no matter the fines their clubs receive or the damage to their own reputations? In footballing parlance, aren't they setting their critics up for a tap-in by sparking flares?
'We've got a group chat with all the various different clubs involved in this,' Ross replied.
'We've also got a smaller chat with a steering group, and we've had these conversations.
'Pyro's not a hill that my group in particular are prepared to die on. We can't ever see it becoming legalised, we can't ever see everybody liking it and it getting universal support, so it's not something we're prepared to argue.
(Image: Paul Devlin - SNS Group) 'As far as we're concerned, it's illegal. It's a great spectacle but it's certainly not a hill we're going to die on. Since our tickets have been threatened at Celtic, we have not done it, it's very simple.
'So, you could argue that the authorities have won, but our argument is that we're showing a much more mature approach to this, and we're prepared to have the discussion on when it can be used and everything else.
'That applies to our supporters as well. As much as we're talking about meaningful engagement with the clubs, you also need meaningful engagement with our other supporters, and in an ideal world this collective will help bring a bit of respectability to the scene, if that makes sense?
'The issue for me is more the lack of trust, if we're talking about the relationships with clubs. At Celtic we've tried our best and there have been times when it looks to have been getting better and it could be things like a nod and a wink so for example. The club would almost say to you, if you didn't have pyro at one game, they would turn a blind eye to another game.
'There would be that compromise in that discussion on certain issues, and you think, we've actually cracked it here, we're getting somewhere where we can build up a level of trust.
'For whatever reason, and I don't know where it comes from, it just stopped, the contact stopped. It's almost like a running joke at Celtic, we'll have this cycle that repeats every few years, you'll go to war with the club, you'll have meetings and it will get sorted out, stuff will improve and then boom, back to square one.'
For Quigley, though, if it wasn't pyro being used as a stick to beat the Ultras with, it would simply be something else.
'I think there's two distinct things,' he said.
'I think firstly, the demonisation of working-class football fans, now it manifests through Ultras, but it's nothing new. It's existed for decades. This idea that football fans were seen as sort of slum people in the 60s and 70s.
'We get to the 1980s, when Thatcher was talking about the enemy within, she meant the trade union movement and football supporters. Then when we get to the 1990s and the burst out of CCTV, the first people that that was used on in Britain were football fans to track their movements and try and control how they physically moved towards and inside the football stadiums.
'And then when we get to the 2010s, it's the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act attempting to control how we think and express ourselves. None of this is new.
'I take Ross's point on board, I'm not a massive pyro guy either, but what I would say is that even if it disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't mean that the detractors of the Ultras scene would all of a sudden change their outlook.
'Pyro and Ultras in general are just the latest squirrel, that's what it is, they're just fighting something else basically.'
Could there be a day though where this new Ultras collective instructed their groups not to use pyro at matches?
'I don't think that would change anything materially,' Quigley said.
'But I don't think that even the people in this chat or involved in the groups, even if we wanted to put the cap back on the bottle, we can't. It's out now, it's now part of footballing culture in Scotland.
'In my experience of being around it, the biggest danger is presented when young guys are worried that they're going to be targeted by the police, that's when they panic, that's when they throw it, that's when there is actually an increased danger.
'The one time the club had total control of when there was going to be pyro was because they engaged. We can get the word out a lot quicker than the club can about what you can and can't do, and that was the one time I would argue that we achieved our aim by engaging.
'I do think doubling down on punitive measures, trying to come down as hard and as quickly on fans and make examples of people, I think that's a cultural thing as well in Scotland. Banning that is a very Scottish approach to any so-called problem.
'They keep going on about it in the media, and the clubs keep banging the drum too in saying that it's illegal and it's dangerous, but that makes younger guys who want to push the boundaries do it more.
'You can see that there is a lack of understanding of the psyche of young guys.'
Watson added: 'I feel that these groups are actually being the adults in the room. We're the ones that are coming to the football clubs, coming to the governing bodies and saying we want to have these conversations.
'If you don't like pyrotechnics, how can we have a chat about pyrotechnics? Now, everybody around this table knows that's not going to happen, but at least we're putting our alternative forward.
'The perfect example of that would be the League Cup semi-finals. All four teams that were in there - Rangers, Celtic, Aberdeen and Motherwell - they all asked the SPFL or the SFA if they could have a tifo for that game. They were all knocked back, so what happens? All four clubs set off pyrotechnics.
'It's just very, very short-sighted, and it's the people that you would think would be the sensible ones that seem to be the ones that aren't willing to have that conversation.'
If the issue of pyro is one that splits opinion, there is universal agreement that the violent scenes that played out in the streets of Glasgow City Centre in January between Celtic and Rangers Ultras were completely unacceptable, and did much to damage the reputation of the Ultras groups and erode sympathy for their cause.
Over and above that, it afforded the government the opportunity to grant additional powers to the police to stop and search fans at the next Old Firm fixture, the one referenced earlier in the article that sparked such controversy.
(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group) Hundreds of Celtic fans were subsequently kettled on London Road for hours without access to food, water or toilet facilities, missing the game in the process.
'I think that we can point at specific incidents of Ultras maybe not behaving in ways that members of the public would see suitable, but I don't think that's the reason for the policing that we see because it has happened continually at least as far back as 2011,' Quigley said.
'And I think a lot of it comes down to how fans are viewed, how fans are treated and how little stake we have in the game.
'I think until we get to that point, whether there's another incident like Christmas or not, fans are still going to be treated like this.
'We're not saying that everything that any football supporter does, so long as they do it under the guise of being Ultras, that means that they should be devoid of any consequences.
'But what I would also say is from my own perspective, and I've been involved in the Fans Against Criminalisation campaign, is that when you grant police carte blanche power to target fans in any way that they like then historically it's been demonstrated that it will impact not just fans that have been involved in specific incidents, but it quickly becomes a really wide weapon that they can use to target anyone.
'If you were the police and you were a match commander on that particular day, where would you want the Green Brigade before the game? You would want them in the Celtic Supporters Club, and you would want to march them right along to Celtic Park.
'That was by far and away the best-case scenario for Police Scotland. Instead, they have attempted to use those powers – illegally, on the day, in my view.
'But the point I would make more broadly is that by proactively affording themselves emergency powers that allows them to stop and search any fan, to hold any fan without cause and causing them to miss games, firstly it's an obvious threat to supporters of those specific clubs.
'Hundreds of fans have missed games as a result of it, but also - and it's something that we've already seen with the OBFA - it will quickly impact all other clubs. You'll start to see it at cup finals and then semi-finals and play-off games and then Lanarkshire derbies and this game and that game.
'It's something that will very quickly spiral and present a real threat I think to not just Ultras, but to fans across the board.
'We don't really need to go that far back in the history of supporter culture in this country to see how quickly the police will use and abuse broad powers like this.
'There was an incident with Hibs at Pittodrie a few weeks ago, where you're seeing big, burly grown men flinging punches at really young guys, and it was indefensible that footage.'
But largely unreported, Watson argues.
'If the tables were turned and there was footage of a fan that was punching a steward, it would appear on the back pages of the newspaper and the headlines would be never-ending,' he said.
'And quite rightly. But it's one rule for one and one for another.'
Which is ultimately, according to Watson, what this campaign is striving for – equal representation, yes, but also equal treatment not only for Ultras, but for football fans as a wider community.
'I think ultimately what we're looking for from clubs further down the line is for them to sign up to a standard that they will all adhere to, where every single football fan, regardless of what club they support and regardless of what ground that they're in, is treated in a certain way,' he said.
'I'm not saying that it's going to be easy, it was hard enough getting everybody round the table in the first place from different football clubs, and as you'll probably notice from the statement that went out, there's still a few that haven't come round that table, and maybe won't.
'But I think football clubs really underestimate fan power. I hope what this will do, is really give those in the boardroom a bit of a wake-up call.
(Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group)
'If you've got the vast majority of clubs in The Championship and Premiership putting out the same consistent message week in, week out, they're going to have to listen.
'There are going to be times where people push the boundaries and they do things that folk don't like, but what Ultras groups want to do more than anything is make the place where we live better, and make the people proud of what they're involved in.
'It's when you remove the social fabric of so many communities that there's a large gap, and for me the football club and these groups are the only thing that fills that void.'