Mark Hateley goes all “David Leggat”

It's hard to say who is doing the most damage to Rangers as the shockwaves from a second UEFA probe crash up the marble staircase at Ibrox this morning.
Is it the plain stupid? Those noisy lamebrains who haven't got the intelligence to step into the 21st Century and who put their own religious intolerance before the good of the club they claim to love? Or is it the deeply sinister? Stealthy, unidentified individuals lurking around in the shadows deliberately seeking to do as much harm as possible to a club they themselves can't tolerate because of their own deep-rooted prejudices? It's time to ask the question because something absolutely stinks about the way in which my old club is being singled out and held up to scrutiny in such an unprecedented fashion.
As chief executive Martin Bain seemed to suggest last night, following the news his stadium could be shut down for at least two European ties next season, I fear there are some dark forces at work here.
Let's get one thing straight. The idiots who continue to spout their sectarian bile are solely responsible for bringing this mess to the door of the club. Every right-minded Rangers supporter should be steaming up with anger about the way in which these so-called fans continue to plunge the knife into the heart and soul of Ibrox. To put it in words even they might understand, these people are now up to their knees in the blood of the very club they claim to care so much about.
If they don't wise up, ditch all their FTP add-ons and all the rest of their anti-Catholic c**p the damage they will cause from here on in could be off the scale. They have a decision to make. Do they love Rangers enough to change the way they behave? Or is it more important to them to continue to live in the 1690s - no matter how dire the consequences may be? I have seen with my own eyes how supporters can change. On my first trip with England to Brazil the players shared a plane with a hate mob from the National Front.
When we were leaving the airport those same people were waiting for us, shouting "black b******s" at my team-mates John Barnes, Mark Chamberlain and Viv Anderson. It was disgraceful and I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Thankfully these days are long gone, proof of how attitudes and behaviour can be changed. In my time in Scotland, Rangers have worked tirelessly to educate their supporters and ram home the message of what's right and what's wrong. I accept there are still some morons who don't want to listen. It's not just a minority who indulge in these prehistoric chants because I've seen it for myself. There is still a great deal of work to be done.
But even so, I'm struggling to work out why my old club is being singled out with such zeal by the authorities when I witness behaviour every bit as unsavoury all across Europe and even in our own backyard.

Like Bain, I can't help but wonder if UEFA are being dragged into this by people working to their own dark agendas driven by the same old religious hatred.
I applaud UEFA for wanting to rid football of bigots and racists. Every decent person in the world wants this garbage removed from our sport.
But as well meaning as I'm sure their intentions are, I have a serious problem with the way this case against Rangers is being put together. How can they attempt to drive discrimination from our terraces if they adopt a policy which can be open to allegations of discrimination? I'm all for a zero-tolerance approach. But only if it's applied across the board and by people who are in it for all the right reasons.
UEFA's own delegates are properly vetted and have been primed to look out and report any club whose fans damage football's reputation. But two of those delegates were in Eindhoven and at Ibrox for the return game with PSV and neither saw fit to mention the singing of the Rangers supporters.
It could be they simply didn't know what they were meant to be listening out for. They didn't notice anything particularly offensive because they were not examining every lyric or every song in an effort to find something out of line.
But there were other delegates in both grounds who knew exactly what they were after. Not UEFA men but observers sent there to collate evidence by another independent body, FARE (Fans Against Racism in Europe). By their own admission FARE have no established vetting process to determine who might be deemed a fit and proper person to carry out these undercover probes.
They have no idea about the background of the people they are sending in as monitors and no way of knowing if they can be trusted to provide them with an honest appraisal of supporters' conduct.
That is bad enough. But when you consider a body as professional and astute as UEFA are also willing to take these accounts as gospel it is an extraordinary state of affairs and one which is wide open to abuse.
We could have Celtic supporters turning in evidence on Rangers fans or AC Milan fans doing the dirty on Inter supporters. And no one at UEFA asking for proof of the impartiality of the star witnesses.
Something stinks. And I don't know what's more putrid, the hatred and stupidity of the fans who refuse to grow up and step into the light. Or the knows-no-bounds skulduggery of those preying on the ignorance of these idiots and using them to service their own unpalatable ends.

 

Is Hatley still an employee of Rangers ...

If so, why is he employed as a newspaper columnist in the Daily Record? Independent/inbiased opinion?

This reads like he's sat down with Bain to draft up.

 

Hateley's an idiot is all, he laps up and regurgitates what he is told by his masters. His guff would be out of place on Rangers News.

 

Hately couldn't string a sentence together in a week of Sundays. These articles are always finished with the tag-line "as told to..."

In other words, Hately rambles a load of pish into a tape recorder and the DR journalist translates it to suit to sort of people who read the DR.

 

Exactly.

Hey, wait a cotton pickin minute, I read the DR

 

Hateleys ghost writer seems to have somehow overlooked the fact that these "unvetted" observers reports dont need to "be taken as gospel" , the offending chants are recorded on the tv coverage of the game. Numbskulls.