The Scottish FA’s Equal Ban: Disproportionate Punishment and Institutional Cowardice

The SFA’s equal ban on Celtic and Rangers ignores the Blackbourne report’s damning findings - a cowardly abdication of leadership. But it was always going to happen this way.

The Scottish FA’s decision to impose identical behind-closed-doors bans on Celtic and Rangers for the Ibrox pitch invasion is not justice, it is institutional cowardice masquerading as even-handedness. By treating two fundamentally different sets of conduct as equivalent, the Scottish FA has ignored the very evidence laid out in the Blackbourne Report they commissioned, while allowing Rangers’ operational failures and the criminal behaviour of their ultras to go unpunished.

A Disproportionate Sanction Ignoring the Evidence

Celtic’s statement following the ban was unequivocal, the punishment is “disproportionate”. The club pointed out that it was the away side, with no responsibility for stadium safety arrangements, yet has been hit with the same sanction as the host club whose failings were comprehensively exposed. The Blackbourne Report identified “significant failings” by Rangers as the host club and by Police Scotland, failings that directly contributed to the disorder and created the conditions in which fan behaviour became dangerous.

The report’s found that Rangers’ risk assessment was “near-identical” to that used for a league fixture just seven days earlier, despite 5,600 additional away supporters and the heightened stakes of a cup tie. Their ingress plan for over 8,000 Celtic supporters was described by its own architects as “aspirational”, with no fan-flow calculations carried out and fewer search lanes deployed than for a smaller crowd the previous week. The Celtic Safety Officer was not consulted on the away ingress plan, a fundamental failure of the duty of care owed to visiting supporters.

Yet the Scottish FA’s disciplinary response treats both clubs as equally culpable. This is not balance; it is a betrayal of the evidence. Clearly the investigation and report was nothing more than a stalling tactic and a waste of time & effort.

Rangers’ Operational Failures and the Attack on Celtic Personnel

The Blackbourne Report documented how Rangers’ safety team rated the risk of a pitch incursion as “Unlikely”- a prediction spectacularly disproven within minutes of the final whistle. When the pitch invasion began, additional Public Order officers were delayed because they had to negotiate CBRN barriers, placed there as part of Police Scotland’s own security planning. It took four minutes and twenty-eight seconds for police to establish control, time in which masked Rangers fans armed with poles, missiles, and other weapons came within a “very small margin of a violent mass confrontation” with Celtic supporters celebrating on the pitch. They also attacked Police officers and the club’s own staff as they rampaged across the full length of the pitch.

Crucially, the report also recorded that a Celtic staff member was assaulted during the disorder and footage also showed several Celtic players were targeted by Rangers fans as they ran off the pitch. This was not an isolated incident; Rangers supporters have attacked Celtic personnel on the pitch and on the sidelines in derby games numerous times over the past few years, yet the SPFL and SFA refuse to take action time and time again against Rangers and their criminal ultras group. By imposing an equal ban, the Scottish FA has effectively declared that institutional failures matter less than fan behaviour, even when those failures created the environment in which fan behaviour became dangerous.

The Union Bears: Carte Blanche from Rangers and the Scottish FA

The Blackbourne Report singled out the Union Bears, Rangers’ ultras group, for forcing past stewards and police to reach the pitch. The report described their movement as “reactionary, confrontational, and overtly threatening”. Yet the SFA’s response does nothing to address the structural conditions that allow such groups to operate with impunity. There is no mention of stricter liability for clubs whose supporters engage in organised disorder. There is no call for legislative change to empower authorities to ban individuals or groups from stadiums across Scotland.

Rangers’ refusal to ban the Union Bears for starting the incursion further highlights the complicity of the Rangers hierarchy in everything that the Union Bears do. This includes their recent anti-Catholic banner unfurled before their 1-0 win against Aberdeen at the weekend, which the media are also unsurprisingly silent on. Would they be silent if it targeted any other religion or a minority group? I think not.

Rangers’ Statement: Deflection and Blame-Shifting

Rangers’ response to the Scottish FA’s decision was equally revealing. The club announced a reduction of the away allocation for the upcoming Premier Sports Cup fixture against Celtic to just 300 tickets - a fraction of the 8,000 that attended the Scottish Cup quarter-final. They cited the Blackbourne report and the “current risk” as justification, claiming that a reduced allocation allows “greater individual ticket-holder accountability, stronger ingress controls, enhanced segregation and additional safeguards.”

But Rangers also used their statement to criticise Celtic, claiming that the club had not provided “clear acknowledgement, condemnation or deterrent messaging” following the events of 8 March. This is rich coming from a club whose own safety and operational planning failures were so comprehensively exposed by the Blackbourne report and who have refused to take any action against the Union Bears following the Cup game. Rangers’ statement reads less like an acceptance of responsibility and more like an attempt to shift blame, precisely the kind of deflection that the Scottish FA’s equal ban enables.

The Ticket Farce: A Line in the Sand

With Rangers reducing the ticket allocation for the League Cup tie to just 300 tickets, there needs to be a line drawn in the sand. Celtic’s hierarchy need to stand up and be counted. Enough is enough. In my opinion, this whole ticket fiasco needs to end now. Either they go back to the previous ticket allocation of Celtic taking the whole of the Broomloan Stand and Rangers getting the same allocation at Celtic Park, or call it a day and ban away fans from the grounds entirely. Rangers started the ticket farce after bowing down to their militant and rabid fan base after they couldn’t handle Celtic winning time and again at Ibrox; it is time that Celtic ended it once and for all.

The SFA’s Cowardice: A Clear Failure in Leadership and Discipline

While Celtic fans can be blamed for invading the pitch to celebrate, as Rangers fans had done so earlier in the game when they thought they had scored, and the damage done to the seating and graffiti, along with under 100 fans forcing their way into the ground without tickets [another failure of Rangers and Police Scotland’s operational planning], the Scottish FA’s cowardice in refusing to deal with one club more than the other is evident. They will not punish one more than the other despite the report saying otherwise. This is a clear failure in leadership and discipline.

The SFA’s tribunal directed both clubs to stage their next home Scottish Cup games behind closed doors, with a second such sanction looming should there be another incident of “unacceptable conduct.” Both clubs were then told that £100,000, would be payable to their opponents of said game. The reasoning? The Blackbourne report noted that “the post-match pitch invasion by several hundred Celtic supporters was wholly inexcusable. It provoked an immediate hostile response from sections of the home support.” True, but this does not equate to equal responsibility for the conditions that allowed the disorder to occur nor does it factor in that one club [while illegal] entered the pitch the celebrate, the other invaded the pitch to attack them, to assault and do them serious damage all because they just watched their club lose a penalty shoot-out.

By tarring both clubs with the same brush, the SFA has effectively declared that institutional failures matter less than fan behaviour, even when those failures created the environment in which fan behaviour became dangerous. This is not leadership; it is abdication of responsibility and clearly shows that once against the Scottish FA hierarchy are not fit for purpose.

A Watershed Moment Wasted

Mark Blackbourne concluded his review with a stark assessment: “This is Scottish Football’s ‘Wembley 2021,’ a watershed season, where action is greater than words -greater than a report.” He was right. The words are now on the page. The question was whether Scotland’s football institutions had the courage to act on them.

The Scottish FA’s answer is clear, they do not. Their equal ban is not a solution; it is a surrender. It is a decision designed to minimise controversy rather than to maximise safety. It is a refusal to confront the uncomfortable truths that the Blackbourne report laid bare.

The Path Forward: Honesty, Accountability, and Action

What is required now is not more reports, more meetings, more expressions of regret. What is required is honesty, honesty from Police Scotland about their operational failures, honesty from Rangers about their complacency and their failures, honesty from the football authorities about the inadequacy of their disciplinary frameworks and their cowardice and refusal to treat Celtic and Rangers as individual clubs rather than lumping them together as one.

And above all, what is required is accountability of all stakeholders. The Blackbourne review notes that “the majority of stewards and police officers present that day faced the highest level of non-compliance, intimidation, threats and violence from individuals with disorderly and criminal intent and they held the line.” Their actions deserve praise. Their leadership, however, deserves scrutiny and they must be held accountable.

The senior figures who briefed the press within hours of the disorder, blaming the fans while remaining silent on their own failures, should reflect on their own conduct. The Scottish public and the football community deserve better. The ordinary officers and stewards who put themselves in the middle of those scenes deserve better. And the genuine majority of supporters, who came to watch a football match and instead witnessed scenes of chaos and danger, deserve better.

A Betrayal of Trust

The Scottish FA’s decision to ban both Celtic and Rangers equally is not justice. It is a betrayal of the trust placed in them by supporters, by players, by the very institutions they are meant to govern. It is a decision that prioritises appearances over substance, neutrality over accountability, and convenience over safety.

If the next near-miss is not a miss at all, the Scottish FA will have no one to blame but themselves. They had the evidence. They had the recommendations. They had the opportunity to lead. They chose instead to hide behind the illusion of fairness, while the real failures go unpunished, and the real risks remain unaddressed.

What will it take for them to actually take proper and appropriate action?