Celtic v Rangers kick-off time: Why tonight's start time is significant

It has to be hoped that the day and timing of tonight’s derby isn’t an omen. Not when the latest pairing of Celtic and Rangers, in being staged in midweek with a 7.45pm kick-off time, is the first to be played against such a backdrop since a certain Scottish Cup fifth round replay between the pair in Glasgow’s east end on Tuesday, March 2, 2011.

The encounter then, won 1-0 by Neil Lennon’s side, has entered infamy as “the shame game”, a footballing occasion that rocked wider society, and led to a Scottish government summit on sectarianism within a week. From which ensued the creation of the wholly ill-thought-out Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012. A bill that set a different tariff for criminality for those attending football games, and which was repealed in 2018 having proved an abomination of law-making.

The reaction to the events at Celtic Park almost 11 years ago now seem ridiculously overblown. Especially in relation to Celtic’s limited role in a tawdry spectacle. They were dragged into the outcry as a result of an altercation between Lennon and Rangers’ then assistant manager Ally McCoist as the two exchanged a handshake at full-time. Something whispered in the ear of the Celtic manager by McCoist led to Lennon going berserk and prompted a finger-wagging, eyeball-to-eyeball, remonstration with his adversary.

Across the game itself, during which tempers frayed, it was the conduct of Rangers players that proved most indefensible as they had three men red-carded in going down to a Mark Wilson goal early in the second period. Bad blood had simmered from the initial tie 10 days earlier, in which El-Hadji Diouf had a running battle with Scott Brown. In the bitter rivals’