The latest independent review of the Old Firm Scottish Cup quarter-final at Ibrox does more than revisit a bad night. It argues that Scottish football came very close to something far more serious, and that the systems meant to stop scenes like this are not changing behaviour quickly enough.
Four months after the match in March, Mark Blackbourne’s 37-page report said the ugly scenes came within a very small margin of becoming a violent mass confrontation. That is a strong conclusion, but it is also a carefully framed one: the review places the disorder inside a wider pattern of unacceptable conduct rather than treating it as an isolated flashpoint.
A trend, not a one-off
The report says there has been an upward trajectory of recorded unacceptable conduct by fan groups and individuals. It also says the volume and variety of incidents across seasons 2024-25 and 2025-26 — including pyrotechnics, objects thrown, pitch incursions, anti-social behaviour and targeted intimidation of players and officials — should not be dismissed as a statistical fluctuation. In the report’s view, it is a trend.
That matters because it changes the argument from “how did one match get out of hand?” to “why are the current controls not working?” The review criticizes both clubs, the Scottish FA and the SPFL, along with the police, and says ultras from both sides were part of the problem. In other words, this was not presented as a single club’s issue or a single crowd’s lapse.
Why the sanctions are being questioned
Blackbourne’s central policy argument is clear: the disciplinary frameworks exist, but in their current form they are not reversing the trend. He says the sanctions are too modest, too deferred and too inconsistently applied to alter behaviour. That is the kind of assessment that goes beyond blame and moves into institutional failure.
The review also points toward a different starting point for serious incidents. Instead of fines being the first response, it urges crowd-number restrictions as an opening sanction. That is a significant recommendation because it targets the matchday environment itself, not just the balance sheet after the fact.
There is no way to read that and avoid the obvious implication for Rangers Fixtures going forward: the issue is no longer only what happens on the pitch or even in the stands, but what authorities are prepared to do when incidents cross a line. If the concern is escalation, then delayed punishment may be too weak to matter.
What comes next
The immediate significance is that both Rangers and Celtic now sit inside a wider disciplinary conversation that extends beyond one cup tie. The review suggests the underlying behaviour has become recurrent enough that football authorities cannot rely on familiar responses and expect different results.
For Scottish football, that is the uncomfortable conclusion. A match that should have been judged by football has instead become a case study in crowd control, deterrence and credibility. And if the warning in this review is taken seriously, the next question is not whether action will come, but whether it comes early enough to change what happens next.
