The Betfred semi-finals take place this weekend with Hibs vs Celtic on the Saturday and then Rangers vs Motherwell on the Sunday, and already we have seen a huge similarity between the two matches. Yet again both Rangers and Celtic will be taking a huge percentage of the tickets available for the games with Hibs and Motherwell taking a smaller allocation offered to the clubs. Everyone on the Rangers CCCS (continuous credit card scheme) being offered a brief and more going on public sale to season ticket holders, and finally public sale being released in the last few days.
So, what does this mean for the state of Scottish football in general? Rangers have been offered up to 38,000 and will probably sell every ticket available to the club yet Motherwell are struggling to get near the 9000 tickets up for grabs, I mean c’mon, it’s a semi-final in the League Cup and they can’t even sell out a game against Rangers with the possibility of a final if they beat us.
I totally appreciate we will always have and always will have a larger support than the rest of the teams in the league but this is such a pathetic showing of fans, although I do understand there could be a fair few factors that contribute to fans staying away from their club’s games and not just matches at the national stadium. Motherwell’s last league game saw them bring in just over 2000 away fans with the club’s own Twitter feed saying it was over 50% of their average home gate. So, in retrospect, the club selling nearly 9k tickets is a fairly impressive amount for such a poorly supported club and as a Rangers fan, I’m not complaining about having a vast amount of the ground being filled with my team’s support.
Certainly, when I grew up all the top flight Scottish teams were well supported and always had a good travelling support but the decline of the national team and the witch hunt over Rangers domestically has had a massive impact. I understand people don’t care to watch the national team play and actively make a point of not watching it for various reasons, bad management from top to bottom has affected the team and it’s echoing back through the leagues.
No matter which way you want to grind your axe, Rangers being sent to the lowest league in Scotland has had a huge hand in the demise of the Scottish squad and in turn, it’s now being resonated throughout the Premiership. At the end of the day I’m Scottish and certainly don’t want us to struggle to qualify for tournaments but this is exactly what’s happening. The SFA have made a rod for their own back and its crippling our game in so many ways.
With rising costs to attend matches and mismanagement from a senior level, it’s no wonder people are refusing to make an effort and support their chosen club. Rangers will always have massive support home and away and that makes me immensely proud to be part of such a fantastic fanbase, but for the rest of the clubs in Scotland, it’s slowly dying on its arse.
Rangers will go into this weekend’s semi-final with almost 4 times the fans that Motherwell will take and I can only see that as a huge advantage for the Gers. Some of the current squad won’t have played at the national stadium and it will give them a huge boost seeing the blue, white and red everywhere they look. For me it’s the first game I’ve been to in months due to being away due to work and I cannot wait to hear the Rangers fans in full voice. I relish games like this, a semi-final at Hampden with us determined to book a place in the final against either Hibs or Celtic. Who wouldn’t want to go and watch that?
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