I read on the BBC's website that Rangers could be fined up to 100k and their fans banned for 3 games due to a report on the sectarian singing at a recent game. I listened to five minutes of Jim Traynor's phone-in on Radio Scotland yesterday morning and one Rangers fans, who sounded very articulate and very unlike the usual fans from all teams that phone into that show, suggested that he continued to sing these songs because it made a tremendous noise and increased the atmosphere at games. He accepted that these songs were wrong but continued to sing them. He also spoke about that fact that Rangers fans were banned from singing these songs in the past and the fans stopped singing temporarily, not because they accepted the songs were in poor taste, but because they did not want to have their beloved team fined.

Even Walter Smith has accepted that the songs are wrong and asked the fans at a recent news conference to stop the practice.

I don't believe Rangers fans will either stop this. The practise goes back too long and it's the majority of the fans that sing them, not the minority frm my experience.

My team, Hearts, used to sing these songs at Tynecastle. When I started going to the games at the age of 13 or so, the fans in the Shed would sing the same songs that Rangers' fans continue to sing; songs containing lines about being "up to knees in fenian blood" and it did add to the atmosphere, especially when we played the historically catholic teams like Celtic and Hibs but, during the 90s it was frowned upon by the majority of the fans to the point where, if anyone started to sing Hello Hello or the Sash the majority of the Hearts fans would start booing, chanting that these Hearts fans should bugger off to Ibrox where they belong. As a result the Hearts fan don't sing these songs anymore as far as I am aware, without altering the atmosphere.

Rangers fans should take a leaf out of our book. Invent new songs that don't include lines about killing catholics. This behaviour should be sidelined to the dim and distant past. It doesn't belong in society anymore. It's anti-catholic bigotry, nothing less. How would these songs be viewed by society if they were directed at other ethnic groups?

But I don't believe these fans have any intention of stopping now because it's too ingrained in their conscience. It doesn't apply to all Rangers fans, of course, but it appears to apply to the majority by the sounds of things. They will claim that Celtic fans sing about the IRA and while this is probably true, it doesn't make the practise right.

So fining the team and banning fans from the game may be a draconian method of dealing with this but it may be the only way.