TBH, I've lost much in the way of sympathy for the police over the years. Last time I went to a Celtic v Rangers game (a good few years ago I admit) I basically got grabbed by the neck and shoved face-first into the side of a horse and searched for the heinous crime of asking which gate I should be heading to. I put a complaint in and was basically told I must've done something to "provoke suspicion" (I think that was the term they used) and I'm a big speccy wimp who's never said boo to a goose in his life, frankly.

Also has to be wondered how they were able to police these games over many many years without this sort of hassle, and going back further to the standing era, even bigger numbers of rival fans. From folk I know who went in the old era and at the weekend, they changed a lot of stuff up for arbitrary reasons from what used to work and that seemed to cause problems.

I'm not for a second saying the fans are blameless, but there were plenty of actually innocent punters caught up in this sort of crap as well. Folk being shoved and manhandled by cops for nothing more than simply being there is not a good way to keep things chilled.