Both Celtic and Rangers fans bash Scottish international

When it comes to playing for Scotland, club rivalries need to be put aside. Celtic and Rangers fans united in bashing one international.

Some might say it’s impossible for those intense club rivalries to be ignored, forgotten and it either can’t or won’t happen. Scotland’s huge win on Thursday showed decent evidence that it can be done, apart from an occasional fan who isn’t prepared to try. Sadly though, one of those is in the actual Scotland squad.

There’s plenty of history behind us where this hasn’t happened. Even in selection of Scotland national squads and teams to play there’s enough examples of questionable decisions seemingly made based on a player’s club. You only have to look at the international caps records for the Lisbon Lions players to see a dreadful example of players being overlooked because of the club they played for.

In recent years that’s much less evident from the authorities, but the fan rivalry has remained. Can we make Thursday’s triumph the springboard for that to change? If we want to see more continued success for Scotland, and perhaps a real chance of getting past the Euro finals Group Stages, we need everyone to come together and back the squad.

These fans show it can be done with their respect for players across the club divide.

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But what about the flaw in the camp? Is it just a small point or a sign of a need for a different player mentality too? Ollie McBurnie has been making a statement for a while when playing with teams who like to follow the Celtic lead and have a huddle before matches. As a staunch and fervent Rangers follower he can’t bring himself to participate in a huddle with its strong Celtic background. Hers been doing that at several clubs and now with Scotland.

It might seem like a signal to his fellow Rangers followers on how he feels about the Ibrox team. But it’s surely more a lack of respect for the team building principle of the huddle at the clubs or teams he is playing for. When it comes to Scotland, here is the classic example of a simple mentality change needed to move to a one team culture. If the fans can make the shift, surely so can a player.

On the other hand, if McBurnie doesn’t pick up his Scotland performances then maybe the problem will go away.

He did well with his penalty on Thursday, let’s keep that respect across rivalries for performance going. But in all honesty his lack of control of the ball on Thursday underlined an overall poor performance. It’s not that the huddle by Scotland players isn’t worthy of his respect, it’s more now wondering why he is allowed on the pitch at all.