2 January 1988
Celtic v Rangers, 2nd January 1988. Photo The Celtic Wiki
Celtic 2-0 Rangers. The victory was completely overshadowed by the disgraceful actions of a section of the Celtic support who racially abused Mark Walters and threw bananas at him. There was a backlash from the Celtic support as it was an anthesis to what Celtic stands for. It was Walters’ first match in a Rangers jersey, and he was the first black player in Scotland for generations. The abuse was unacceptable and led to soul searching amongst the support. On the football side, McAvennie was the hero again, grabbing a brace. A crucial victory on the way to a sensational league and cup double.
Continued on the next page…
My main memory of the ‘Mark Walters’ incident was Scotsport the following day. Ian Archer was up first and delivered a well deserved lambasting to the idiots responsible. He then turned to one of the Rangers board who was there to talk about the squillions of pounds then being spent on re-developing Ibrox.
“X million pounds,” he said (can’t remember the exact amount), “that’s a lot of bananas!”
I don’t remember anything else as I was rolling on the floor laughing.