Furious league bosses have called on the police to track down the ‘idiotic’ Ibrox coin tosser and have him banned from football for life.
The SPFL have released a stinging statement following the shameful scenes in the dying minutes of Thursday’s Old Firm showdown, when Celtic sub Arne Engels was felled by a missile while attempting to take a corner. Match ref Don Robertson appeared to pick up several coins from the sidelines and Parkhead boss Brendan Rodgers confirmed Engles was struck ‘an inch away’ from his eye.
Rangers also released a statement condemning the incident and pledging to assist Police Scotland in a hunt to identify any culprits. And the country’s football authorities want the courts to crack down on thug fans by hitting them with banning orders. An SPFL spokesperson said: “This behaviour is completely unacceptable, and we fully support any steps taken to identify those responsible for such idiotic, criminal acts.
“The dangers of so-called supporters throwing such items onto the pitch are obvious and anyone found guilty of such disgraceful conduct must be dealt with severely by the courts, including the imposition of football banning orders. We await the match delegate’s report, and we would urge any fans with relevant information to contact Police Scotland.”
Last month, SFA president Mike Mulraney called for similar life long punishments to be dished out to anyone caught with pyrotechnics inside Scotland’s stadiums – just days after the kick-off to the Old Firm’s league cup final had to be delayed because of smoke bombs in the stands. Mulraney said: There’s one critical thing we have to remember – it’s a crime. Everybody is losing focus on the fact that it is a crime and that we have legislation to deal with it being a crime.
“It doesn’t matter how much the chief executive of the SFA or a club says, ‘Please don’t do that!’. It’s self-evident that these messages are having no impact. What does have an impact is if you use the tools that are currently afforded to us. We have a piece of legislation which allows for football banning orders.
“We need to ban them out of our game. They are criminals, they are not fans. They might call themselves fans but they are criminals. Last year we had one football banning order. One! I’m getting asked, ‘What are you doing about it?’. And I’m saying, ‘We will work with anybody to have a positive impact on society and to make sure people are safe,’. But we need the football banning orders to be embraced as the tool that’s currently available to actually ban these people and make it a criminal offence for them to come into our grounds. We’ve only had one in the last year.
“The police are the specialists and we cannot second guess them on how to do their job. But what we can question – not the police or the courts or the government but everybody together – is why are we not banning them?
“There were 43 banning orders two years ago. Then it went down to 20. And then, in this last year, there was one banning order.
“I think it’s reasonable for us to say, ‘Maybe we should be using that tool that’s at our disposal as a society, if we are all going to work together,’. We can say to them, ‘Please can you ban this person? You’ve arrested them, can you ban them? Please!’.”