The Metropolis

Boris & Ken take note: Celtic and Rangers show how much rivals really need each other

Mike Bonnet | Thursday 16 February, 2012 11:46

_{A river of empty seats separates the warring children}

For neutrals, watching big beasts like Ken and Boris slug it out is an enthralling spectator sport. But are these intense rivalries destructive, or do they raise the game of both involved? Mike Bonnet casts his eyes north of the border to see the damage that can be done to the victor when one half of a vicious rivalry throws in the towel.

Amid speculation about the possible demise of their arch-rivals Rangers, it must have seemed strange for Glasgow Celtic’s chief executive Peter Lawwell to be fielding questions on whether his own club could survive without their Old Firm counterparts.

Surely any mishap befalling your oldest and bitterest foe can only be good news? Especially when that mishap takes the shape of a 10 point deduction and makes the small matter of your 43rd Scottish league title a formality.

“We’ll survive very well”, the Celtic chief executive responded. Adding with just a hint of schadenfreude, “We’re going to be in better shape than them if their problems cause greater difficulties.”

But in a league rightly criticised for its lack of competitiveness, switching from duopoly to a monopoly will leave a spectator sport about as interesting as the board game.

Trouble down by the river

The issue of Rangers’ difficulties and their potential impact on Celtic highlight an important dynamic present in any rivalry: that both sides define themselves antithetically to the other.

‘Rivals’ is a Latin word in origin, derived from rivalis meaning ‘persons dwelling on opposite sides of the river’. The symmetry in this image of two rival camps across a river is apt. Both camps may think they have the best river bank, or the greenest grass, or whatever people squabbled about in Roman times. No doubt they hate each other, but what made them noteworthy and set them apart from the numerous other riverside encampments of olden times was the competition between the two. Like it or not – and the answer for anyone in Glasgow is bound to be not – to outside observers the animosity between Rangers and Celtic is viewed similarly. It’s impossible to conceive of one without the other.

The good old days of the Cold War

What happens when you take away a hated rival is demonstrated by the US’s response to the end of the Cold War. Despite having been concluded for over 20 years you can still find some of the victors lamenting its loss. With characteristic grammatical aplomb George W Bush mused: “It was us versus them, and it was clear who ‘the them’ were.” Bush is not alone in his views. He’s not even alone among former US presidents. Whilst in office in 1993 Clinton joked “Gosh I miss the Cold War” as conflicts in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia brought home how unpredictable a post-Soviet world would be. Winning the Cold War had eradicated the Soviet Union, but left a void that needed to be filled and a question to be answered: who will be our rivals now?

Both alike in dignity, or lack of it

As successive details of Rangers’ worsening financial situation have been leaked to the press, Celtic choruses of “we’re having a party when Rangers die” have grown louder. These may be two football clubs alike in dignity, but they’re hardly a pair of star-crossed lovers. But if Celtic get their way and it ends in tragedy for Rangers, what then? Perhaps more than any other, the identities of these two clubs are counterbalanced; each one validates the other. And if you think nobody would miss the unsavoury scenes and sectarian songs that accompany Celtic and Rangers whenever they clash, just remember the former US presidents who pine for a day when the threat of nuclear war loomed over us all.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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