Every now and then something happens which sparks the debate around alcohol and Scottish football, igniting it back into the mainstream discourse.

This flashed up once again last week after Health Secretary Neil Gray reacted positively to comments made by MSP George Adam that the ban, in place since 1980, should be rethought in 2024. However, talk was quickly extinguished with First Minister John Swinney stating that, while any proposals would be given consideration, as would any with merit, there weren't any plans in place to reverse the ban. 

The story saw football fans across the country united behind the idea, but as usual they were met with the same stonewall responses for other supporters and concerned citizens who refuse to be reasoned with on the matter. There's three arguments which are often repeated whenever the debate comes up, none of which stand up to scrutiny. Let's go through them.

1. It's not safe for supporters

Having thousands of pissed-up people in a tightly-packed area together is always going to create a more unsafe environment than if those same people were sober. That much is obvious, but it is far from as straightforward as the argument would suggest. Despite it being 44 years since fans were allowed to drink in stadiums, thousands upon thousands of supporters would have attended a match this past weekend while intoxicated. The same will be true next week and every week after. The ban doesn't stop people from being drunk. In fact, as many fans who drink before the game would tell you, supporters will often squeeze in an extra drink or two in the pub beforehand because they know they can't get another for two hours. Or they'll do as this writer used to do back in the day in the away end at Easter Road and sneak a half-bottle of vodka in.

It also ignores how alcohol at football grounds would very likely be reintroduced, which would be the same as they did down in England. You're allowed a drink, but you're still not allowed to have it within sight of the match. Clubs can also act as they do in any public house and cut off anybody who's had a little too much. It is the law, after all, that you're not allowed to be served alcohol by any establishment while drunk. This is the kind of control clubs can exert which they wouldn't otherwise have with people sneaking in their own booze, which due to the need to hide it around one's person would mean the contents are a lot stronger than 4.0% standard lager.

It's also said that reintroduction would mean football would no longer be safe for children and families. This is rewriting of history as it was all-seater stadia rather than the booze ban which caused the shift in football becoming more accessible for all. Nobody is advocating a return to the norms of the 1970s and it simply wouldn't happen.

2. Football fans can't be trusted

Essentially, they believe rugby fans can have a drink because rugby fans are fine, upstanding members of society and football fans are brainless thugs who want to do nothing more than have a fight. Other than the fact that previously I worked in Edinburgh's hospitality industry for a number of years, both in the city centre and near Murrayfield, and I can categorically tell you that the behaviour of drunk rugby fans isn't all that it is cracked up to be, this argument is based largely on classism, narrow-mindedness and stereotyping.

3. Imagine an Old Firm game with alcohol (*clutches pearls*)

Once more, the current ban isn't actually stopping anyone from being drunk at a Celtic-Rangers encounter, and it's another unfair generalisation. But beyond that, this is the argument which rankles the most for myself because it underlines the perverse prism through which football is viewed in Scotland.

Believe it or not, dear reader, there are clubs in Scotland other than Celtic or Rangers. Wild, I know. There's even as many as 40 of them in the SPFL and rumour has it there's many, many more as you go down the pyramid.

This is a familiar problem with any discussion on Scottish football's wider health. It's always 'what about Celtic and Rangers?' The ban started because of disorder at an all-Glasgow cup final and it remains to this day because when people think about the reintroduction of alcohol to our stadiums, they picture a man in a green-and-white shirt and a man in a blue shirt drunkenly throwing punches at each other.

Again, this image is not fair. If you went to any Celtic or Rangers game in which they were playing, I dunno, Ross County, or Motherwell, or Kilmarnock, or one of the other many teams that supporters don't have long-standing beef with the opposition, then there wouldn't be any more disorder or violence post-alcohol ban than you'd expect at present.

If it turns out that Celtic and Rangers fans can't actually handle the added responsibility of having a drink, and this goes for supporters of any team, then there's a very simple solution to this: don't let them have it. Take away the responsibility. Give the club a year ban from selling alcohol to home fans and prohibit any opposition from selling it to them inside away grounds. Teach them to treat the responsibility with respect. If they continue to offend, take it away indefinitely. Such measures could even reduce the amount of anti-social behaviour inside football stadiums as fans of the same team would police each other more often, because they'd know exactly what it would cost.

Stopping supporters of Montrose or Kelty Hearts or Raith Rovers or St Johnstone or Clyde or Alloa Athletic or whomever from having a beer at half-time because Celtic and Rangers fans started a riot 44 years ago and you're too afraid they'll do it again if given the chance is just really stupid.

Unfortunately, while arguments that lack basic common sense, are full of ignorance or cloaked in prejudice continue to play such a role in this debate then the end of the ban seems unlikely to ever happen.