Fever Pitch, 1909
Simon Craig discusses the long-term feud between the Scottish football teams Celtic and Rangers and a rare episode ninety years ago, when fans from both sides united against the authorities.
Crowd violence at sporting events is nothing new. The worst in history involved two chariot-racing factions, the Blues and the Greens, whose Nika riot in Constantinople in AD 532 left some 30,000 dead. In a curious echo, the Blues and the Greens were the factions involved in serious sporting violence in another great city of a great empire nearly 1,400 years later. Blue is the colour of Rangers and green that of Celtic, Glasgow’s football giants. The riot occurred during the 1909 Scottish Cup Final at Hampden Park.
Today no fixture has a worse reputation than Rangers versus Celtic. Even those with no interest in the game know the reason: Rangers are Protestant, while Celtic are Catholic; when they meet no one is Christian. Recent years have been relatively quiet, but experienced football spectators can still find the atmosphere at one of their encounters positively frightening. What was it like ninety years ago?
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