The use of pyrotechnics at football divides opinion.
There’s no doubt it provides a superb spectacle, but the dangers are very real.
With Dundee’s match v Rangers already well delayed, with the Rangers team bus caught in traffic, it was again halted just two minutes into play as flares set off by Gers fans set off fire alarms in the stand. The players were taken off the park.
Ultimately, football exists to watch the players play, not to witness a fireworks spectacular or light shows.
Pyro can create spectator vision issues as smoke wafts across the pitch and it can cause breathing difficulties for some fans too, not to mention the dangers of serious burns.
Former Dundee player Leigh Griffiths was fined earlier this year for booting a smoke bomb thrown by a spectator back into the crowd.
Football matches are fractured enough these days with the interruption of games by lengthy VAR intrusions, the last thing the game needs is further interruptions from pyro disrupting matches.
It may be a spectacle, but the main event concerns the round ball in play, not an amateur dramatics display from folk who appear to have more interest in creating their own entertainment off the pitch than what they’ve paid to watch on it.
In football you’re only a number and, when you stop performing, your number is very quickly up as Steven MacLean found out at St Johnstone.
A club legend, the transition to top flight management came too early for him and, while Saints fans are vexed that a great club man has departed, very few feel that the club haven’t done the right thing in parting ways with him.
Loyalty counts, but success counts more and Saints had enjoyed very little under a man who, as a player, gave them some of their finest moments.
Fans are fickle, but they pay their money and are entitled to be.
I saw some Celtic fans complaining after their squeaky win over St Mirren that James Forrest, who’s in his testimonial year, was past his sell by date, and others opining that the five-year deal for Callum McGregor was replicating what they felt was the mistake of keeping Scott Brown when his best days were behind him.
Clubs and supporters alike are merciless in passing judgement on those who are deemed to have no further use to them.
It’s one of the reasons I can’t blame players and managers who put career advancement before club loyalty when opportunities to move present themselves.
Dundee United are proving adept at wining with scintillating style, but also with dogged determination.
A free-flowing, high-scoring hammering of Arbroath was followed by a doughty display to take the points at Airdrie.
The hallmark of top sides is that they produce required results when they’re not necessarily in their pomp.
No team can hit the heights every week, but the best sides find ways even when they’re off the boil to make things too hot for the opposition.
United are becoming masters of the art.
Conversation