Michael Weir: Scenes appalling – but real Hibs fans can’t pay for actions of idiots

Police lead a supporter away after he confronted Rangers captain James Tavernier on Friday night

I couldn’t believe after all that had been said following that dreadful bottle-throwing incident during the Scottish Cup match against Celtic only a few days earlier that we’d be talking about another stupid, senseless individual after Rangers captain James Tavernier was confronted.

Understandably, given they’ve both taken place during games at Easter Road, there’s been a lot of headlines and demands that “something be done”. What’s been missing, though, is a suggestion as to exactly what needs to be done to stop such behaviour.

As we saw in England over the weekend, the problem isn’t Hibs’ alone, Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish assaulted by a fan and then a supporter getting onto the pitch during Arsenal’s match with Manchester United.

That’s not to excuse what’s happened at Easter Road. It’s embarrassed the club and, I’d imagine, every other Hibs supporter who doesn’t want to see the club’s name tarnished by the actions of a couple of idiots.

How do you stop it? Frankly, I don’t know. You can have as many stewards, police and CCTV cameras as you like but how do you prevent an individual, probably with a few drinks in him, taking it into his head to act in such a way?

Yes, you can shut sections of a stand – or even the whole stand – but surely you can’t punish thousands of decent supporters for the actions of one or two?

There have, of course, been isolated incidents of such behaviour down through the years but I don’t know what it is at the moment that we seem to have had a string of them in the past week.

Once again, though, it’s distracted from what was a cracking game of football. Hibs could have been out of it in the first half but deserve great credit for coming back strongly and might have won it in the end.