Scottish FA Orders Review as Police Scotland Hides Behind FOI Exemptions

The Scottish FA has ordered a review, but Police Scotland’s refusal to answer basic FOI questions undermines confidence as they claim disclosure would damage future operations

The Scottish FA has at last publicly announced that they have commissioned an independent review into the disgraceful scenes at Ibrox on 8 March, when Rangers supporters stormed the pitch to attack celebrating Celtic fans, after losing on penalties to Celtic in the Scottish Cup Quarter Final. The decision to appoint Mark Blackbourne to lead the review is welcome.

According to the Scottish FA’s statement, the review will examine the incidents that followed the Scottish Cup quarter-final and will be led independently by Blackbourne. That matters, because what happened at full-time was not a bit of football “passion” or a handful of isolated idiots. It was a failure of planning, a failure of control, and a failure of duty to keep fans safe inside a major stadium.

The most frustrating part is that the public still knows far too little about how this match was policed. My Freedom of Information request, submitted in the weeks after the match, asked a series of simple, legitimate questions of Police Scotland. How many officers were deployed for this game, how many officers were deployed for previous derby games, how many were inside and outside the stadium, who the match commander was, what their previous experience in Glasgow derby matches had been, and how policing levels compared with other major events such as Scotland games, cup finals and Murrayfield rugby internationals. Police Scotland refused to answer any of them, hiding behind sections 35 and 39 and arguing that disclosure would prejudice law enforcement and public safety.

That may sound tidy in legal language, but to ordinary supporters it looks like the usual institutional circling of the wagons. If a force cannot even explain the broad shape of how it polices one of the biggest fixtures in Scottish sport, then the public is being asked to trust a system that remains deliberately opaque. Transparency is not a luxury here. It is the minimum standard after a public disorder incident that left four police officers injured, numerous fans injured, and resulted in 16 arrests so far.

Those numbers alone should have triggered a fuller public accounting. Four officers injured is not a minor footnote. Sixteen arrests is not the end of the story either, especially when Police Scotland has reportedly not ruled out a public appeal for suspects in the near future. If there are still outstanding lines of inquiry, then fine pursue them. But ongoing investigations do not erase the need for scrutiny over the decisions that allowed the disorder to unfold in the first place.

The refusal to confirm whether Police Scotland is even conducting its own internal investigation or review is equally telling. By invoking section 18 and refusing to confirm or deny the existence of such information, the force has shut the door on a basic accountability question. Again, the official reasoning is that revealing whether information is held could prejudice the public interest or compromise any ongoing investigations. But the effect is the same, the public is left in the dark while the police reserve the right to demand trust.

That is not good enough after an incident of this scale. Fans, clubs and the wider public are entitled to know whether the policing operation was suitable, whether the match commander had the experience required, whether the balance between inside and outside deployment was right, and whether lessons were learned from previous derby matches. The refusal to answer those questions invites suspicion that Police Scotland would rather defend its structures, and cover up their own failings than question them.

It also raises an uncomfortable wider question about consistency. What is the normal policing picture for Scotland national team games, for League Cup and Scottish Cup finals at Hampden, and for rugby internationals at Murrayfield? These are all major occasions requiring careful security planning. If police are willing to disclose some general operational information for one type of event but not for another, then the public deserves to know why football is treated as a closed shop.

The Scottish FA review will only matter if it is hard-edged, independent and willing to ask the hard questions. It must not become a comfort blanket exercise designed to close ranks, to ignore the findings ultimately, and move on like every other commissioned Scottish FA review in recent years. The issue is not just what happened in the terracing and on the pitch after the final whistle. It is what kind of policing operation was in place, what warnings were missed, and why a high-risk fixture ended with supporters on the pitch, and those in the stands under attack, and officers injured.

Scottish football has spent years pretending that crowd trouble is always somebody else’s problem, always the fault of “a minority,” always a matter for post-match outrage and then silence. But if the public is to believe that authorities are serious, then the truth about that day at Ibrox cannot be buried under boilerplate exemptions and carefully managed statements.

The review is a start. Transparency is the test. And until Police Scotland answers the obvious questions about deployment, command, planning and accountability, the message will remain the same - they are asking the public to accept a system they are not prepared to explain.

Read my Freedom of Information request in full and Police Scotland’s reply.