What do neo-Nazis and fascists have in common with Dundee FC fans?
Not very much, thankfully, despite what some complainants have alleged in the past week.
Over the weekend a newly-formed Dundee supporters group found itself slap bang in the midst of a social media storm.
Section Eighteen, as they called themselves, were working with the football club to put up a banner in the South Enclosure and to improve match atmosphere at Dens Park.
However, after posting a picture of their sign in place at the front of the stand on social media, some took offence.
The use of the number 18, a skull on the crest and the red, white and blue colours were seen as connections to Combat 18, a neo-Nazi group involved in football hooliganism in the past, most notably in the 1990s.
However, there was a much more innocent explanation.
Bobby Doig – who works for the Dundee FC Community Trust as a football coach – runs the new fan group with a friend and was stunned by the backlash.
“I didn’t expect all that to come,” he says.
“We thought it would be a good idea to start a kind of ultras group. Motherwell do it really well, St Mirren have theirs and Celtic and Rangers as well.
“We felt Dens needed a bit more atmosphere and thought it would be a good idea.
“So we were looking for a name and we all sit in the end of the South Enclosure, which is labelled in the stadium as Section 18.
“We thought, ‘That’s a good name, we’ll go for that’.
“We got the badge done and the banner made.
“Then there were complaints that it somehow related to this Combat 18 group. We’re all 17 or 18 so we’d never heard of that, we didn’t know what it was.
“We’ve absolutely nothing to do with neo-Nazis or anything like that!”
‘Talk of Scotland’
Social media exploded on Saturday ahead of the banner’s unveiling at the home match against Rangers a day later.
Seventeen-year-old Doig and his pals were caught up in the middle of it all.
But they quickly moved to distance themselves from any untoward accusations and have since been in talks with Dundee about how to move forward.
“I just couldn’t believe it really,” the former Dens ball boy added.
“It’s the talk of Scotland but we’re just a group of young guys looking to get some atmosphere at Dens Park.
“We’ve nothing to do with anything else.
“We just put a badge together, had the Dundee colours of red, white and blue and named it after the place we sit in the stadium.
“But we can understand why people see a problem.
“So we had a meeting with the club after the Rangers game and then we decided on a new name.
“We were told we could keep the name but I’d rather just keep everyone happy.
“We’ll now be the South-East Section and there’s a new badge.
“We don’t really care about the name or anything, we just want to get a bit of atmosphere going at Dens.”
Club reaction
Despite the criticism from some quarters, Doig is full of praise for the way fellow Dundee fans have stepped up to help them.
The club itself came under fire after taking down the original banner but Doig insists all the staff at Dens have gone out of their way to help the newly-minted South-East Section group.
The flak may have put others off but Doig is determined to improve the matchday atmosphere at the old ground.
He says: “A lot of people online have been really harsh in their criticism of the club but, to be honest, the club and the DSA (Dundee Supporters Association) have been absolutely brilliant with us.
“They’ve been so supportive. The DSA actually donated money to us to get the new banner.
“And the Georgi Nemsadze Dark Blues have helped us massively as well with donations and things like that.
“I totally understand where the confusion has come from. But it has motivated me even more to push on with this.
“We’ve got plans to get going this season but we hope to really kick off next season.
“We’ll have flags and a drum and we’ll try to get some atmosphere into the place.
“Myself and my mate Jon Hamilton run the group and we’ve a lot of plans for the future.
“The last five years at Dens haven’t been great for that [stadium atmosphere] so we’d like to improve things.”
