SCOTT Bain has admitted he would like to see a return to the traditional ticketing arrangements at Old Firm games – even though he believes Celtic’s chances of beating Rangers on Sunday will be significantly increased by having far more fans behind them at Parkhead than their city rivals.
Rangers announced last May that they would be slashing Celtic’s allocation of briefs for matches at Ibrox by over 6,000 to just 800 and selling season tickets to their supporters for the Broomloan Road Stand.
The Scottish champions responded to that move in September by reluctantly reducing the size of the away support inside Celtic Park at the Glasgow derby match to around 800 as well.
A statement read: “This is not a development we welcome and it is unfortunate that the initial decision came without any form of discussion. The previous arrangements worked well for both sets of supporters as well as contributing to the status of the fixture as a sporting occasion.”
READ MORE: Celtic call for talks in Old Firm ticket allocation row while restricting sales to Rangers fans
Brendan Rodgers’ side won the opening Old Firm game of the 2018/19 campaign 1-0 in the East End in September while Steven Gerrard’s team prevailed by the same scoreline in Govan at the end of December.
Celtic are currently 10 points ahead of Rangers at the top of the Ladbrokes Premiership table with eight games remaining and can effectively, if not arithmetically, sew up their eighth consecutive league victory with a triumph this weekend.
Bain, the Celtic goalkeeper who is set to start in his second match against Rangers this weekend, appreciates that having the vast majority of the 58,000-strong crowd roaring them on will give Neil Lennon’s men a huge advantage over their opponents.
READ MORE: Celtic hit back at Rangers over ticket allocation spat
But the former Alloa and Dundee player, who helped his side come from behind twice to win 3-2 at Ibrox back in March even though they were reduced to 10 men with the second-half ordering off of Jozo Simunovic, feels the world-famous fixture would benefit from revised ticketing arrangements.
“There will be a lot more Celtic fans than the last time we played them,” he said. There will be less Rangers fans and we need to use the atmosphere. If anything, I like it when there are more away fans. It creates a better atmosphere, more of an Old Firm derby feeling. But it is what it is.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here