Lennon, Neil – Miscellaneous Articles

JOINING CELTIC IS pounds 6 SIGNING NEIL LENNON'S PROUDEST

Sunday Mirror, Dec 10, 2000 by DONNA CARTON HE'S the pounds 6 million star signing who Celtic fans are praying will clinch them Scotland's Premier League championship.

But the impressive skills which have given Northern Ireland international Neil Lennon a glittering career nearly came to nothing.

His back is held together with a piece of wire – the legacy of an injury early in his career which would have finished most other young footballers.

And even then the midfielder was lucky to be playing soccer at all. If the nuns at his Co Antrim school had had their way he would have given the game up completely long before. Lennon's life was put on hold nine years ago while he went through the delicate operation to have a piece of bone inserted in the base of his spine.

But it's unlikely that any opponent 29 year-old Neil will face in Scotland will be tougher than his old headmistress in his home town of Lurgan. Neil's insistence on soccer instead of Gaelic football landed him in bother with Sister Saint Anne, then principal of St Michael's Grammar School.

She threatened to kick a young Lennon out of school for his commitment to soccer. But, luckily for Celtic, his parents stepped in and reached a compromise with the school. Lennon's Gaelic football coach Seamus Heffron, 42, a teacher at St Michael's said: "If Neil had forsaken soccer I'm sure he would have made it in Gaelic football. No doubt about it. In fact I think he would have been prolific.

And Ursula said: "There was a bit of a row but it all worked out okay in the end. Neil agreed to play Gaelic and was good at it. The school won a cup the year he played and he went on to play football.

"So he got a good bit out of both worlds after all."

Recalling the spinal injury, Neil's dad Gerald said: "Neil had to have a piece of bone inserted at the base of his spine. It is placed there with a piece of wire – tied in a perfect buttlerfly knot, It looks great in x-rays.

"He wore a back brace for six months and was out of football for 15 months.

"It is testimony to his spirit and his steely determination, that he didn't give up then but still went on to pursue his career, the only career he wanted."

The crippling back operation forced Lennon to miss the whole of the 1991-92 season while he was with Crewe.

Lennon, who still has a huge scar on his back has said of the operation:"It was a pretty scary senario – and I knew I faced a predicament. But I didn't try to fool myself about it."

But having passed a medical at Celtic Park Lennon is only looking to the future.

And mum Ursula said that Neil focussed on getting to Glasgow and knew he could make it. She said: "He had his sights on this for a long, long time and now it has happened," she said.

"His dad and I are delighted. Whatever Neil wants, we support him and this is definately what he wants.

"This bid by Celtic has been going on for such a long time. I'm glad its completed now."

She went on: "Neil has worked long at hard and that is why he is so good at what he does. When he was a child it was just football, football all the time. He played it constantly and the only presents he ever wanted were football kits and footballs.

"That's what made him happy and he stuck at it, no matter what. He has been working at this now for 13 years and he deserves this chance to play for Celtic like he has wanted.

"Young people go to university and their course is over in four years but Neil is still working hard.

"He went away when he was just 16, a very young age, and made a lot of sacrifices to get where he is today."

Ursula has never met Celtic manager Martin O'Neill but said: "Martin O'Neill was keen to get Neil and Neil was keen to go. Its great that it has happened."

Gerald remembers when Martin O'Neill entered his son's professional life – persuading him to sign for Leicester from Crewe.

"Martin O'Neill drove to his house and badgered him all night," said Gerald.

"Martin kept on at Neil and he must have rang me half a dozen times until he got Neil to sign."

He added: "We are absolutely delighted for him. If Neil is happy then we're all happy. It is Neil's career. It's his choice and we will be there to support him."

And the loving father knows that his son is a bit sad leaving Leicester, too.

"Although its a great opportunity, however, as a dad I can see that its a tough time too.

"It is difficult for him to just get up and leave his home in Leicester and start a new life somewhere else.

"One morning you're in your kitchen, the next you're on your way to Glasgow for a new life, new friends and a new team.

Lennon will bow out but the bigots still remain

(4 May 2007) Graham Spiers (The times)

At Ibrox this afternoon, one of the greatest love-hate relationships in the history of Scottish football reaches its conclusion. Neil Lennon, the Celtic captain, will play at the home of Rangers for the last time.

I call it “a love-hate occasion” because, while Lennon loves playing there, the Rangers fans hate him.

The phenomenon of Lennon’s experience in Scotland has told us much about Scottish football, and quite a bit about Scottish society, too. It is silly and even dangerous to extract sociological conclusions out of the maw of the football arena but, that caveat duly noted, what has happened to Lennon since he signed for Celtic in November 2000 has been sobering.

You wouldn’t have thought it possible in the 21st Century that a footballer could be so abused because he represented Northern Irish Roman Catholicism.

Lennon is no angel. In seven years in Scotland he has been no idle pacifist. On occasions, in particular at Ibrox, his behaviour has been appalling, none more so than on that afternoon in August 2005 when he so lost the plot after being sent off by the referee, Stuart Dougal, that he very nearly slugged the match official as he stomped off the pitch. In that moment of red mist, rarely have Celtic been so humiliated by the antics of a captain.

Lennon is from Lurgan, he is a street-fighter. He grew up in an environment in which he belonged to a persecuted minority, and he learnt how to react to adversity. On the football field this can exhibit itself in some very uncaptain-like antics, such as his frequent middle-fingered gestures to abusing opposition supporters. So if anyone wants to defend Lennon’s case, they needn’t draw comparisons with Mother Theresa, because there aren’t any. He is no beseecher of peace and tranquillity.

Yet his experience of bigotry in Scotland has been eye-opening. It started first of all when he had to stop playing for Northern Ireland following the abuse he received at Windsor Park after signing for Celtic. That, in itself, was telling: such opprobrium had never been an issue for Lennon while he was a player for Leicester City. But, come his arrival in Glasgow, and his donning of the green-and-white hooped shirt of Celtic, one of sport’s most visible symbols of the Catholic tradition… now that was different.

The rancour that subsequently forced Lennon to stop playing for Northern Ireland didn’t stop with his international retirement. It followed him to Scotland and to his club career at Celtic, and, in particular, into the seething saga of the Old Firm.

I have always maintained that no one’s heart need bleed for Lennon. He has loved his football career and enjoyed many remarkable highs, and occasions such as today at Ibrox, where the abuse will rain on him, is something he relishes. To any proud Scot, though, it is embarrassing to witness the bigoted abuse at these games. Notwithstanding the fact that football crowds often indulge in empty, ritual chanting, it is disturbing that Scotland should still house so many serious bigots in the modern day and age.

Actually, that last comment needs qualifying. The bigotry issue in Scotland is greatly improving, and anyone who vehemently denies this must be strangely besotted with the idea of a permanently-benighted nation. But what the Lennon experience has proved is that enough bigots are still around for the Scottish Executive to have been utterly justified in making antisectarianism measures a central plank of its recent policy.

It has been an embarrassment for Rangers, in particular. The abuse of Lennon was a contributory cause of the club eventually being punished for bigotry by Uefa in May 2006, and Martin Bain, the Rangers chief executive, has unveiled initiative upon initiative to try to arrest the problem among the club’s supporters.

Two days ago, in what is now almost a tedious routine, Uefa fined Rangers for the second time in 12 months for sectarian chanting. No one, let it be said, is more frustrated by the blight than those ordinary, decent Rangers fans whose sole agenda is their love of their team.

The one delicious irony about Lennon as a personality – not that you would know it from the pitch – is that he is a highly likeable man. It has caused me no end of mirth to point out to Rangers-supporting friends that, while they detest the Celtic captain on the field, they would actually really like him were they ever to unexpectedly share a pint with him.

One of football’s endless intrigues is the way in which a player on the field and the same man in his civvies can seem like two different people, and Lennon is one such case. He is one of the most affable blokes you could meet.

I hope they give him a fond send-off at Ibrox today. Lennon will certainly be hoping that they do.

Plagued by the phoniness

Political Football: Neil Lennon

It happened in August 2002. Just before Neil Lennon could captain Northern Ireland for the first time, somebody phoned the BBC and threatened to kill him. The midfielder, who had had death threats before, withdrew from the match. He never played for his country again.

It was one of the last episodes in the Troubles, the Protestant-Catholic conflict that tore apart Northern Ireland for over 30 years. Lennon was punished for being a Catholic who played for a Catholic-identified club, Celtic of Glasgow, and had reportedly said he would like to play for a united Irish team, while almost all Northern Ireland's supporters were Protestants.

"It was pretty crushing," recalls Michael Boyd, head of community relations at the Irish Football Association, and one of the few in Northern Ireland who dared confront sectarianism. "That was probably the lowest point of our Football for All campaign. But it acted as a catalyst for change."

Five years on, the Neil Lennon affair appears to belong to a different age. Not only does the sectarian Protestant Ian Paisley now rule Northern Ireland together with the sectarian Catholic Martin McGuinness. In football, too, Northern Ireland's fans have cleaned up their act to the degree that last year they won the Brussels International Supporters Award as Europe's best fans.

At last an ugly story has a happy end, and it's partly thanks to Lennon. As a reward he becomes the fifth member of Channel 4 News's Political Football XI.

The Lennon affair began in March 2001. He had played for Northern Ireland for seven years without incident – Catholics have always featured in the team, if not on the stands – until he signed for Celtic. The place where Glaswegian football arouses most emotions is possibly Northern Ireland. The local Catholics tend to support Celtic, and the Protestants Rangers. 15 years ago, I took the ferry from Northern Ireland to Scotland with some local Celtic fans to watch the Old Firm game between the two clubs.

Though the people I travelled with treated me well, I have never seen such hate around a sports match anywhere. It was fans like these who sent death threats to the Catholic Maurice Johnston when he joined Rangers in 1989. As a joke at the time went: "What's the difference between Salman Rushdie and Maurice Johnston?" Answer: "Maurice Johnston's really in trouble."

When Lennon joined Celtic, some Northern Irish Protestants were unforgiving. To them, wearing the green-and-white hoops was a greater crime than being Catholic. During Northern Ireland vs. Norway in Belfast's Windsor Park in March 2001, Lennon was abused by a section of his own crowd. They sang traditional anti-Catholic songs, and chanted, "We've Got a Provo on Our Team".

At half-time Boyd entered the stands to see who was singing: about 50 to 100 people in the Kop, and a sprinkling of others, he says. "The thing that really annoyed me," he adds, "was that they probably saw themselves as loyal Northern Ireland supporters."

Lennon, who left Celtic this summer, after sealing the league-and-cup double in his last match, and who now captains Nottingham Forest, has left a legacy. He may be the last British professional to suffer such persecution. There certainly shouldn't be any more in Glasgow: since Johnston broke the dam, Rangers have signed countless Catholics, mostly from continental Europe.

Remembering the episode, Boyd says: "It's a shame it ended Neil's international career. He was a great player."

In compensation, Lennon enters our political XI in midfield alongside our previous picks Diego Maradona and Walter Tull, and in front of the defenders Paul Breitner and Franz Beckenbauer. Next month, we pick our first forward.

Simon Kuper writes for the Financial Times. source: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/sports/political+football+neil+lennon/882547

Thursday, 22 August, 2002, 14:08 GMT 15:08 UK

Driven out by hate

O'NEILL IS THE FIRST OLD FIRM BOSS IN YEARS TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT BIGOTS

By Graham Spiers
Rangers fans were branded bigots by Celtic's manager after their recent game – much to the fury of Ibrox fans. But Graham Spiers says O'Neill should be praised for his comments. Nobody needs to preach to me about the complexity of bigotry.

Sometimes explicit, sometimes subliminal, sometimes clouded by humour, trying precisely to trace a bigot is a vulnerable and dangerous task.

There are some strands of evidence though, which can be presented without argument. Let us suppose, in the case of prejudice against Catholics, that someone regularly and with great relish refers to someone as “a Fenian bastard”.

Or suppose, with equal fervour, they enjoy singing about someone “dying a Fenian bastard” or of being “up to our knees in Fenian blood”. Or consider even the plain, less adornedNei chant of “dirty Fenian bastard”. Now this is language uttered without fear or inhibition, which can be taken as evidence of bigotry.

This was Rangers chairman David Murray's major problem three days ago. Following comments made by the Celtic manager Martin O'Neill, about the bigotry at Ibrox last weekend, the irony was that it was Murray who was suddenly on the back foot. Murray was forced to come out and defend his club's supporters, yet he knew he had a difficulty. His problem was that, at Ibrox, hordes of Rangers supporters routinely shout and chant bigoted slogans. “We should guard against broad generalisations [about] our fans,” said Murray in response to O'Neill.

But it was the subtext of this remark that was telling. Murray knows, as everyone else knows, that the atmosphere at Ibrox on match days can be thick with bigotry. Around almost every corner of this sensitive subject, you have to apply checks and balances. Rangers should not be tarred exclusively with the sectarian problem, because Celtic suffer from it as well. In this specific context, we are dealing with Rangers and Ibrox, precisely because of what Martin O'Neill said earlier this week. Moreover, at Rangers, by general consent the sectarianism is worse than it is at Celtic. He outcry over O'Neil's comments in Barcelona about the bigotry of many Rangers supporters has been extraordinary.

Although he was goaded into making his remarks, what O'Neill said was the essence of truth and he deserves great credit for saying what he said. Last Tuesday evening, O'Neill claimed there had been “racial and sectarian abuse” of his players at Ibrox when Rangers played Celtic last weekend, and that at times it had reached “an incredible crescendo”. Speaking from a media perspective, I hardly know a reporter or an observer with any experience of Ibrox who would deny what O'Neill said. Personally, I have been going to Ibrox, man and boy, for 30 years and would certainly concur with O'Neill. Some among us might not like that fact. Others may prefer to keep quiet about it or even erase it from our consciousness. Others might even be embarrassed about it. But I'd like to find a convincing man or woman anywhere who would be willing to stick up their hand and say “Bigotry at Ibrox? Not true.”

What was mystifying was the remarkable controversy following O'Neill's comments, as if he had said something plainly preposterous or delusional in nature. Every sentient person I have spoken to about O'Neill's remarks has congratulated the Celtic manager for saying what most observers in Scotland have been stating for 50 years. Yet there is still an impression somewhere out there that O'Neill was in the wrong.

The fact is that Rangers cannot crush their sectarian problem. Years ago, David Murray referred to the Rangers supporters as “an embarrassment” because of their bigoted chanting, yet try as Murray might, or try as Martin Bain, the club's director of football might, they cannot erase the stain. These days, at Ibrox on match days the idiom of bigotry is as prevalent as ever. In these debates, you cannot just indulge in unsubstantiated or timeworn hunches. Instead you must present cold evidence born of experience. So from myriad examples in my own experience, let me provide one concrete case from Ibrox and the Old Firm game last Saturday. As it so happened, I gave up my usual seat in the press box to a Sunday newspaper journalist, whose immediate need for more working space was more pressing than my own.

Hence, I made my way to a different seat at Ibrox, with greater proximity to the Rangers supporters. It was an experience that reminded me again of how widespread and malignant bigotry at Ibrox is. From too many mouth to count, people like O'Neill and Neil Lennon, the Celtic midfielder, both Catholics from Northern Ireland, were subjected to sustained sectarian abuse throughout the match. It is worth actually citing these slogans. They ranged from “Fenian c***” to “Fenian scumbag” to – in the case of Lennon – “away and f*** yersel Lennon, ya Fenian bawbag”.

A Rangers supporter sitting close to me, and representing that great strand of decent Ibrox supporters who must be routinely embarrassed by all this said, said to me jocularly at half time: “You'll note that we are among the discerning Rangers supporters up here”. He was joking, but his sarcasm made the point. It was a rotten, ignorant, venom-filled atmosphere, which, Martin O'Neill, three days later in Barcelona, would quite rightly describe as bigoted. Yes, it is a subtle business actually “defining” a bigot. Yes, a 90-minute bigot on a Saturday afternoon doesn't necessarily mean full-blown bigotry in the rest of an otherwise decent citizen's life. Yes, inhibited people often bow to peer-pressure and join in such chanting when they'd rather not.

The very least you should be, though is suspicious of such behaviour. In many cases, there is simply no doubt about it. If the diagnosis of a real, genuine, bigot proves to subtle to perform, then the only response can be the one I gave to the very likeable Donald Findlay, QC, when he denied being a bigot after resigning in disgrace as vice-chairman of Rangers. “Donald, I don't know if you're a bigot or not,” I told him, “All I know is that you acted like one,” For too many people, in the raucous atmosphere of Ibrox, the shouting and singing amount to prejudice. From my point of view, if innocents are otherwise tarred by these allegations, then I simply have to keep apologising to decent supporters who feel the rough edge of a critic's pen.

Just don't deny the unavoidable truth…that here in 2004, an alarming number of Rangers supporters, as David Murray well knows, are bigots. It is folly, not to say a cultural disservice to Scotland, to denounce O'Neill for what he said this week, and I say this as one who is only too aware of the futile and dramatic exaggeration of bigotry in our country. Five years ago, when the composer James MacMillan, in his famous outburst, claimed that such places as Scottish Television and BBC Scotland were “jam-packed with bigots”, I regarded it as plainly absurd, a mis-use of language.

But Martin O'Neill's comments this week carried a distinctive, more authentic tone. O'Neill knew what he was talking about and he hit the truth dead-on. O'Neill, I believe is the first Old Firm manager in 30 years to offer such a bold and unequivocal condemnation of the sectarian problem. For that fact alone he deserves credit, though it begs an old question from some of us: why is that Rangers and Celtic who find themselves at the very centre of this blight should be so routinely silent about it? Alex McLeish, the Rangers manager, is, to use the vernacular, a top bloke.

Anyone, like me, who comes across McLeish will vouch not only for his milk of human kindness, but also his charm, thoughtfulness and strong humanity. Yet what would I give for McLeish one day to say: “You know what? I love football, I love Rangers, and I love the passion of our supporters. But bigotry is something I detest to my very core, and I wish those Rangers supporters who indulge in it would stop embarrassing themselves, our club, and me”. Those of us who inhabit the football world have a favourite cliché about all of this.

We say of bigotry: “It's not football's problem, it's society's problem,” Well, yes, this is self-evidently true, and the medicine for it all surely lies in education. But football shouldn't be too dumb to speak up about the problem. Nor should we go mute when seeking to apportion blame in the endless, tip-toeing sensitivity about what attaches to Rangers and what to Celtic. Rangers, in particular have a major problem with bigots, which I believe the club is trying to address. Martin O'Neill, meanwhile, deserves credit for having the courage to talk about it.

Night O'Neill brought bigotry issue to a head

Support for Neil and family

By: Newsroom Staff on 04 Mar, 2011 17:00

A SUSPECT package addressed to Neil Lennon was today intercepted at a Royal Mail sorting office in Saltcoats. Alert postal staff spotted it and, thankfully, it proved to be a hoax.

It comes just weeks after bullets were sent through the post to the Celtic manager, along with two of the Club’s Irish players, Paddy McCourt and Niall McGinn.

Celtic Chief Executive Peter Lawwell said: “Clearly, this most recent sickening event in a long line of threats to Neil and his family is extremely worrying.

“This demonstrates the intensity and pressure which Neil endures as the Celtic manager. However, he has coped with these issues incredibly well during his short time as manager, showing what a strong character he is.

“Indeed, it is extremely sad that Neil has had to contend with such issues for more than a decade, both as a Celtic player and manager.

“No-one in any walk of life should have to live their life in this way and those responsible should be condemned.

“It goes without saying Neil and his family will continue to receive every support from the Club.

“We know Neil will also have the full backing of all our fans as he and the Club did on Wednesday evening. While these events are very concerning, we would ask that they continue to back the Club in this positive Celtic manner.

“While the authorities and other commentators have taken a close interest in recent football events, we would hope they would give similar attention to also condemning such actions.”

Speirs article from 'The Times' today

Graham Spiers
March 5 2011 12:01AM

Yesterday was a time to lie low for Neil Lennon, though the Celtic manager was still making news.

A further, distracting bulletin about “a suspicious package” being sent through the post emerged from Celtic Park, with the club also laying on extra security for Lennon at training.

The Celtic manager chose not to appear for his routine Friday press conference, 14 hours after the SFA appeals process reduced his touchline ban from six to four matches, and 36 hours after the touchline mêlée — with Lennon in its midst — at Celtic Park on Wednesday night.

It was a wise decision. As good as he is with the media, the last thing Lennon needed was a further grilling on the shambolic episodes of Wednesday’s Old Firm Scottish Cup replay. Many around Britain watched that match, and saw a Rangers team disintegrate in performance and discipline, but also witnessed Lennon, his face contorted with anger, mixing it with the worst of them on the touchline.

Alan Thompson, Lennon’s assistant, claimed yesterday that Lennon had personally apologised to the Celtic board for his conduct on Wednesday night. “Neil apologised to the board regarding the events after the game, and the board have accepted that,” Thompson said. Those Celtic fans who repeatedly insist that their manager was an innocent in Wednesday’s debacle might pause to reflect on this news.

Lennon the sometime nice guy is not to be disputed. But Lennon the occasional hot-head continues to be a vexing subject.
Three days on, it is still to be fathomed what he was thinking in stalking from his technical area at Celtic Park to mouth off at El Hadji Diouf — other than that Lennon was trying to goad the Senegal striker, which wouldn’t be hard. As for his touchline spat at the final whistle with Ally McCoist, whatever the Rangers assistant manager said to him, it was Lennon who came off worst, his face once more twisted with anger, leading him to shove McCoist while the Rangers manager-in-waiting backed off impassively.

On Thursday, we then had these troubling words from Martin Bain, the Rangers chief executive, believed to be aimed in the direction of the Celtic manager, when he said: “There was increased tension between the clubs, mainly as a result of incidents at previous matches, where two of our players were the subject of extreme verbal abuse in the tunnel and around the dugout area at Ibrox.”

If anyone, upon reading this statement, doubted that Lennon could become involved in such a verbal rammy, they need only check again the footage from Wednesday night at Celtic Park. The Celtic manager simply is incapable of holding himself back.

Lennon has brought so much vitality and restoration to Celtic. You cannot argue with that: look at the Clydesdale Bank Premier League table, look at the last four Old Firm games, or at this looming Co-operative Insurance Cup final. Clearly, Lennon’s passion for the job and his club has rubbed off on his team, which is, arguably, the primary task facing any football manager.

But he has to rein himself in. Lennon cannot go on like this, warring on the touchline, showing such open aggression, or having to be constantly restrained by Thompson, his assistant. It doesn’t matter that a large contingent of Celtic fans love all this, and go by the principle that, the more aggression Lennon shows, the more they adore him.

Ultimately, such open aggression and hostility only leads to the sort of ugly images we saw on Wednesday night.
Lennon now poses a dilemma for the Celtic board, for all that he has apologised to them. John Reid, the club chairman, and Peter Lawwell, the chief executive, both want the best for Celtic, and will not hinder Lennon in any way as he continues his march towards trophies.

Indeed, Reid’s affection for Lennon has been clear on a number of occasions, as he has slung an arm around his shoulders. Reid relates to Lennon, the underdog from Lurgan in Northern Ireland, a country which the Celtic chairman had the thankless task of trying to fix as a member of Tony Blair’s Government.

Yet admiring Lennon’s ardour can also be counter-productive. Lennon, starting from today, is to sit in the stand for his club’s next four matches, and once all the evidence is gathered from Wednesday night, a further touchline suspension is sure to be imposed. What good does it do? If Lennon’s principal weapon is the passion he conveys to his players by the side of the park, where is the benefit in all these antics and their subsequent punishments?

Lennon, arguably, remains the most engrossing figure we have had in Scottish football in years. He is also, beyond dispute now, the most controversial.

Kris Commons yesterday claimed Rangers came to Celtic Park to “get into” them in Wednesday night’s chaotic Old Firm Scottish Cup fifth-round replay.

“We didn’t have anyone sent off and hardly any yellow cards,” Commons, the Celtic midfield player, said. “There were no rash tackles from us. Rangers came to do a job and that was obviously to get into us. We are more than happy with the way we handled the game.”

Commons also gave little credence to claims by Martin Bain, the Rangers chief executive, that the tension around the game was because two Rangers players had been subject to “extreme verbal abuse” in the original tie at Ibrox. “As a professional footballer you have to take that on the chin,” he said. “We get paid to play football with the abuse that comes with it. If you can’t take a little bit of banter then you are in the wrong game.”

From The Times September 22, 2005

Imagine there's no fairness: for Neil Lennon, it's easy if you tryBy Phil Gordon LOOK UP next year’s edition and you may well see a mugshot of Neil Lennon next to “Contempt”. Or perhaps Lennon will simply be underneath “Kangaroo court”. That is what the Celtic captain has been exposed to over the past few weeks, following his controversial confrontation with Stuart Dougal, the referee, after the the Old Firm match at Ibrox on August 20.

On Tuesday, both men had their day in court — or Scottish football’s version of it. The SFA disciplinary committee at Hampden Park reviewed the incident in which Lennon was shown a straight red card as he left the pitch after the 3-1 defeat by Rangers. It handed out a three-match suspension. That has not been enough for a media lynch mob that had been talking, wildly, in terms of an 11-game ban, or perhaps a cell on Devil’s Island next to Dustin Hoffman.

For anyone who studies these things, it fitted perfectly. It was a punishment to fit the crime. “Misconduct of a significantly serious nature” was the SFA’s verdict. That is swearing at the referee, to you and me. The only problem has been that many newspapers have either never looked again at the incident on television, or simply chosen to ignore the nagging feeling that it was not as bad as it had been hyped up to be, because it got in the way of a good — or in this case, bad — story and steamy headlines.

The most alarming thing to emerge from the Lennon- Dougal affair was the nature of the coverage. If this had been in any other area of the newspapers, other than the sports pages, a lot of it would have been thrown out by the lawyers in case it got the paper into deep trouble.

Perhaps I am just being old-fashioned, or it is the product of too many days spent watching real-life court cases, but the one thing drummed into me by the law professor on the journalism course at City University was beware of contempt of court. In news, business and especially court reporting, you have to get the facts 100 per cent accurate — 98 per cent is not good enough — or else you and your newspaper could find yourself in front of a judge.

Football reporting? Oh, just use your artistic licence. The most commonly used descriptive mistake about Lennon’s confrontation was that he “manhandled” the referee and linesman. Now, according to the Oxford dictionary, “manhandle” is to “move a (heavy) object with great effort or to handle roughly by dragging or pushing”. Anyone who looked at the incident again could see that such a description did not fit what happened at Ibrox. Lennon, in football parlance, may have “lost the plot” but in strict legal terms he and Dougal came shoulder-to-shoulder and there is slight contact with the linesman, James Bee.

The offence was entirely verbal. Dougal’s match report confirms this. The red card was issued because the Celtic captain called him “a f****** disgrace” and “a f****** joke”.

It is misconduct, pure and simple. It was not as serious as the barging of linesman, Andy David, last season by Saulius Mikoliunas at Tynecastle. The Heart of Midlothian player did not, as has been commonly reported since Lennon’s incident, suffer an eight-game ban: he received three matches as an instant punishment for his two red cards and his five-match penalty for misconduct was brought down to three on appeal. Not by “the SFA cowards”, as some newspapers have branded the Lennon jury, but by Lord MacLean, an esteemed Law Lord.

Lennon’s three match suspension is a reflection of his disciplinary record since coming to the Premierleague five years ago. Have a guess how many red cards this menace to society has to his name? One. That’s right, his Ibrox crime was his first. Set against men in his line of work, ball-winning midfield players, Lennon would not even get first use of the soap in Alcatraz: Patrick Vieira registered eight at Arsenal, Roy Keane seven at Manchester United.

Anyway, that’s the facts out of the way. Enough of that boring stuff. How come the lynch mob managed to screw it up and watch Lennon get off almost Scot-free? Beats me. They certainly tried hard enough.

In the intervening time since Lennon lost his temper that day at Ibrox and Tuesday’s hearing, this was a man who, if he read the papers — which he does not — would have noted a string of articles that bordered on the litigious. A “backstreet thug” was one gem. It moved out of the realms of reporting and comment on a match, and its aftermath, into open warfare on one man.

Neil Lennon has been demonised by the press. They don’t like him. That is fair enough if it is an individual point of view, but when it is carried into print simply to pursue a campaign, it has unedifying overtones. This opinion, by the way, will be in a minority of one, or almost.

Don’t take my word for it. Ask the former Rangers player who defended Lennon on Tuesday at the SFA. Fraser Wishart, the secretary of the Scottish Professional Footballers’ Union, was not pleading for Lennon because it is his job, he did so because he believes it is right.

Now Wishart finds himself being portrayed in the media as some sort of Uncle Tom or, worse, a Lennon-lover. Not even OJ Simpson’s lawyer had the sort of questionmarks placed against his name that Wishart has.

“One of the things we argued was that you had to take Neil Lennon out of the equation because he is some kind of demonised figure,” Wishart told reporters outside Hampden as he explained his defence strategy. “They (the SFA) also had to forget it was a Rangers-Celtic game and look upon it as an isolated incident.

“One of the interesting facts is that Neil Lennon has never been sent off in the Premierleague and never been suspended. He has never been over the points threshold and that is a remarkable fact for someone who plays his position and the number of games he has played for Celtic. I think that record was taken into consideration and I think three games (ban) is reasonable.”

Hold on, there. We can’t have reasonable creeping into this, can we? Wishart underlined the whole unseemly thirst for blood when he added the name of Ian Wright, who was was banned for two games for pushing Willie Young, the referee, at Kilmarnock. “There have been similar cases over the last five years,” Wishart said, “but the players were not punished to the level that there seemed to be such a clamour for in the case of Neil Lennon.”

Bizarrely, Stuart Dougal turned up at Hampden Park with his own lawyer, for what was an in-house SFA disciplinary meeting. The irony of Dougal and Wishart being on opposite sides is that the players’ union man actually jumped to the defence of the referee in 2004, when the SFA fined Dougal £200 for using the same industrial language as Lennon — television viewers reported the referee for telling Christian Nerlinger of Rangers to “f*** off”. You would have thought this might be one man who would have cut Lennon some slack on a day in which his team had been well and truly beaten by Rangers.

Still, Dougal applied the letter of the law and Lennon was correctly punished for it. The newspapers that have ganged together to pursue Lennon could not claim to be following the letter of the law. They have treated Lennon with contempt in its most literal and legal sense. There is an agenda at work. Selling more newspapers might be one justification, but there appears to be darker motivation.

Newspapers may say that they merely reflect public opinion, but they also try to manipulate it. Unlike someone who has had a bad game, the newspapers’ mistakes are not usually as visibly and publicly denounced, though one former editor now has reason to rue his choice of headline, “Thugs and Thieves”, after unsubstantiated reports about a Celtic team night out in Newcastle turned out be nothing more than allegations.

Dougal and his referee colleagues were yesterday called the most vilified characters in Scottish football, but the truth, however unpalatable, is that that status is reserved for Lennon. There were no banners at Ibrox that day proclaiming Dougal to be a bigot; there was for Lennon. The referee has not been attacked in the street, or in his car; Lennon has. Death threats scrawled on the pavement outside the house? That will be Lennon again.

Helping to create such a public enemy No 1 is irresponsible when merely kept to the confines of a football ground, but when being demonised changes the way you walk down the street, it is time to think again.

TAYLOR BACKS THREE-MATCH BAN

DAVID TAYLOR, the SFA chief executive, has backed the three-match ban handed out to Neil Lennon, the Celtic captain.

Taylor is adamant the punishment fits the crime. “Zero tolerance is exactly what we practice and a three-match ban on top of an automatic one-game suspension is a clear sign that this kind of behaviour is not tolerated,” Taylor said. “That’s why we introduced a five-match guideline for physical assault of an official, but we didn’t consider this to be in that category.”
Although industrial action would be unlikely, the Scottish Senior Referees Association is looking at a protest against the three-game suspension.

But Taylor insists match officials do have the full support of the governing body. He told BBC Sport: “The SFA is 100 per cent behind referees on the park, but, after the match, it is out of their hands. It is similar to policemen and law courts, but we have very good relations with our referees and encouraged them to set up their association.”

FAREWELL, NEIL LENNON – THE BHOY WHO LIVED THE DREAM

By David Potter (from KeepTheFaith website)

By David Potter

Perhaps the strongest indication of the value of Neil Lennon to Celtic over the past six and a half years has been how much he is hated by our opponents. He is booed regularly at away games (and not only at Ibrox) and if any Rangers supporter is interviewed and asked his Most Hated Player, he will almost certainly say “Neil Lennon”.

Lenny has clearly therefore done them a great deal of damage! This was the role that Peter Grant used to fulfil, and it is no accident that Peter and Neil are both self-confessed Celtic supporters. In a sense they both transcended professionalism. Yes, they took the big bucks, but they loved the green and white as well!

Lennon is above all else in his life a courageous person. He has faced death threats with equanimity and determination, and he has also shown a different kind of courage by being very open and honest about the psychiatric problems that he has had to deal with in his life. It is not easy to acknowledge such things, but in the same way that Danny McGrain was a tremendous pillar of support to those with diabetes, Neil has been a great example to those with varying degrees of mental health problems.

The jibes of the ignorant have not been silent in this regard, of course, but Neil has answered them in the only way that he can – on the football field. Five League Championship medals, three Scottish Cup medals and two Scottish League Cup medals are a mighty strong argument.

Lenny also was called upon to deal with the non-too-intelligent on his appearances for his country. Religious hatred is of course a feature of Northern Ireland (let no-one pretend otherwise), but this piece of bigotry had an added dimension. For here we had people allegedly supporting a country but booing one of their OWN players for his perceived religious beliefs and the Club that he played for! Wisely Neil decided that Windsor Park was not for him.

But Celtic Park most certainly was for him. Celtic supporters recognise Lenny as one of our own. Most Celtic supporters worth their salt will admit to hating losing a football match and doing odd things like going to bed early when this happens. We can imagine Lennon being like that – like us. And we saw the other side of him on Sunday as he stood holding a Celtic scarf aloft facing the hordes who love him and who had just seen him captaining the Club to the Championship for the second time in a row.

Lenny's position as a defensive midfielder has been pivotal to the success of the Celtic team over the last seven years, and he revelled in this role. He also, unlike some players, made the transition between O'Neill and Strachan a seamless one as far as his play was concerned.

He retained the love and affection of the fans, even in the bad times like Black Sunday of 2005. There were times when the crowd turned on him of course (against Boavista in the UEFA Cup semi-final at Celtic Park springs to mind), but Celtic fans are like that sometimes. Noticeably, there was never any lasting criticism. Eyebrows perhaps were raised when he was appointed Captain in the summer of 2005, but it turned out to be a good move by the then new Manager, Gordon Strachan.

Neil did have his wild moments, of course. No denying it. Following an “incident” he played for several games in the middle of season 2001/02 with a bandage round his head. He had a frightening tendency to talk himself into trouble with referees. For example in a game against Falkirk just before Christmas this season he earned himself a red card when the team was in the lead in the last minute and a penalty kick had been awarded for Celtic! And his well publicised and obvious clash with Aiden McGeady at Dunfermline, again when we were winning, did him little credit.

There was gossip that he might have been stripped of the captaincy, but Strachan knew when he was on to a good thing and retained him in that capacity. Lenny is, after all, a winner and Strachan recognises that fact. The good points, therefore, far outweighed the bad ones and allowed us to forgive the odd moment of over-zealous and unwise commitment to the Cause.

Born in 1971, Neil still has some football left in him and it will be interesting to see what he does now. He is probably making the right decision in leaving Celtic at this point, for he would surely have been “phased out” gradually next season. But it is certain that Celtic will seldom have a more committed or determined character than Neil Lennon.

We wish him well in his future career and in his personal life.