Scotlands Disgrace: Celtic Fans & Daily Record

[Gunnerhibby]

For three weeks now, Hibs fans have had in their midst two very special supporters, a couple who have travelled thousands of miles to fulfil a New Year's resolution to see Hibs play at Easter Road. Hibs-daft Sergey and Katya Tomashevsky spent half-a-year's wages to travel from their home in the southern Russian town of Rostov-on-Don to make their first visit to Easter Road.

Although they had to wait another week after arriving they were'nt dissappointed in that their first Hibs match in Scotland, travelling through on Bounce Tours, coincided with the teams best away victory in 33 years, a 6-1 hammering of Motherwell. This only succeeded in whetting the young Russian couples appetite. This was duly served up with a cracking 2-2 home draw with Celtic, and yesterdays 2-1 win over Dundee United, completing a nice wee treble of unbeaten Hibs games in Scotland. But Sergeys first real Hibs match was when he made the "short" trip to Dnipro for last years Uefa cup match.

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Sergey's love affair with Hibs and Scottish football started many years ago, and he has been a regular poster, not only on this website but hibs.net too, to keep up to date on matters Hibernian. He also posts on Port Vales website as he has friends in the midlands and plans to visit them before he goes home.

When he returns to Russia, Sergey will return to the daily grind of his "9-5" job, which is that of a sports journalist with the sports newspaper Football Courier. The newspaper covers Southern Russia and the surrounding region, and probably has a higher circulation than all the Scottish tabloids put together.

Sergey is in a win-win situation with his job in that he has full press accreditation to report on matches and be present at pre and post match press interviews, and he gets paid to indulge in his favourite pastime of watching football whilst writing up match reports for various games.

When the chance to report on a Champions League match in 2004 came up he jumped at the chance as it was a Scottish team taking part, it was Shaktar Donetsk v Celtic.
It was during this trip that Sergey met up with Celtic fans in indulged in some "banter" with them. He also had his picture taken with Celtic fans whilst was wearing a hooped jersey. Nothing wrong in that, or so you would think.

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It now transpires that the photo has found its way from some paranoid, inbred Kettering Celtic supporters to the Daily Record, who plan to do a hatchet job on Sergey. Not content with raping the history of Scottish Football regarding Hibernian FC but they are now trying, in their own bilious way that Celtic fans do, to tarnish the reputation of a young couple for having the audacity to claim they support another team in Scotland. Sergeys attempt at "joining in the banter" with these Celtic fans has now been turned completely against him by "the greatest supporters in the world". In an article in todays Daily Record, these parasitic supporters of Scottish football are claiming that Sergey is a "serial fan", a "con artist", preying on the goodwill of supporters to give them money and lodgings wherever they go. To what lengths will these inbreds go to put down our club and its supporters? As for the Daily Record, well, they just don't give a toss that it might just be a load of paranoid gibberish and will print it anyway. Keeps them in with their target audience.

Sergey has been living with Hibs fans Gibby Newton for his stay in Scotland and he tells us that the Record contacted him on friday to put these allegations to Sergey, realising the "twist" that the Record trying to put on it, Sergey refused to talk to them other than deny these scurillious allegations. Even after a number a phone calls from a Record journalist they still refused to talk to them, cullminating in the journalist attemting to accost Sergey as he boarded his coach leaving St Andrews Square bus station yesterday. Gibby said: It was a ridiculous situation. Sergey and Katya have done nothing wrong and this journalist was determined to get a story out of them. We had heard over the weekend that this crap was going around, it had even spread amongst Hibs fans. Sergey openly explained that he had been to the Champions League match, in his capacity as a sports reporter, and met these Celtic fans, but their claims that he'd been a "life-long hoops fan" are way off the mark. Sergey stated that he was a fan of Scottish football, in general, and was delighted to meet them over in Ukraine. Now, it seems, his attempt to enjoy the banter of football fans has been turned against him.

Sergey, and Katya, return to Russia in a few days, and with them go our best wishes of many Hibs fans they have encountered whist over here, and we hope that their next visit will not be that far off.

Gibby added; Sergey has had a great three weeks visiting Edinburgh, and the seeing the Hibees play at Easter Road has been a real joy for him. He's dissappointed that this sorry episode came about to end what has been a wonderful trip for him and Katya and he hopes to make it back to Easter Road in the near future. Sergey leaves Scotland with our total backing and best wishes.