Rangers fans vote overwhelmingly on a Guard of Honour | OneFootball

The latest buzz in Scottish football is quite something: Rangers supporters have decisively said there will be no guard of honour for Celtic, who are now the champions of the Premiership. You can hardly blame them either. Expecting the fans of Glasgow Rangers to greet Celtic as champions, with all the victors’ relish that must entail, at Ibrox, is much like expecting a lion to give a hyena a pat on the back for making off with the lion’s kill. The kind of passion that fuels this rivalry between the two clubs is not something that can be measured on a mere sporting scale. Nor would it be right to think of it as just another kind of game or any kind of friendly gesture, even if something as solemn as a dirge might accompany the guard of honour that would see Celtic onto the Ibrox pitch.

An Ibrox Noise poll was so one sided we had to remove it after a borderline angry reaction to the notion!

The idea of Celtic winning the league again this season has undoubtedly been a major talking point. You can call their league performance a scene of devastation because they seem to have steamrolled right over the other teams, leaving nothing but dust in their wake. It’s like they’re not just another team but a force of nature.

And what is the proposed guard of honour but a ceremony where the players of your vanquished team—your supposed representatives—are made to stand (and squat) in a line to applaud that force of nature? Indeed, the ceremony demands a defeat of both your team and its ego. And that’s happening right where your team, and supposedly your ego, reigns supreme: on your own team’s home turf. The defeat now seems even more absolute. Yet the guard of honour means you have to stand and applaud, in that very moment of ego-deflation, which adds insult to injury.

The Rangers-Celtic rivalry transcends mere competitiveness. It’s not just about which team wins more often—even if that’s the essence of competition—but it’s also about who does it with more style, or (if you must) more panache. That’s important because, to the people in the stands, watching nascent pseudo-battles unfold on the pitch is less about watching a well-wrought drama, or even a farce, and more about watching war dress up as a sport. For the moment, with all the bigness that can imply, the victor is creating a space for themselves in the annals of history, a space that will often reappear in the stories those fans recount later on for anyone willing to lend them a hearing for a few minutes’ time.

In essence, shunning the tradition of performing a guard of honour is more than what meets the eye. It’s a stark refusal by Rangers to allow their Glaswegian neighbors to “bask in the glory,” as it were, which would normally accompany such a passage by two nearly archrival clubs. Scottish football lovers are, if anything, known for their bravado and love of a good fight. It’s why so many are enthralled by this latest twist of the old firm tale and why, no doubt, the next chapters to be played out on the green sward and beyond will be awaited with plenty of anticipation.