SOCCER ANGLES:Given what they know about life in Glasgow, Neil Lennon and Ally McCoist should display maximum restraint when their clubs meet, writes MICHAEL WALKER

JUST IN case you were wondering, Celtic play Hamilton Academical at Parkhead today. It’s a three o’clock kick-off.

Sort of get forgotten, details like these, don’t they? Should Celtic defeat Hamilton, a team that has won two of its previous 27 Scottish Premier League games this season, Celtic’s lead at the top of the SPL will be eight points. Rangers, that team from across Glasgow, then play tomorrow at St Mirren. Rangers have three games in hand on Celtic at kick-off then, so the SPL title race remains tight and interesting.

That’s not enough, though, is it, a football contest? As we know from more than a century of Glaswegian Irish history, Celtic and Rangers are more than football clubs.

In that respect they are like Barcelona, it’s just that when people discuss Barca’s status, they generally marvel at it. Sometimes they veer into Catalonian politics and the football club’s central role in it, but mainly they stay focused on the game, the jerseys, the style.

Occasionally it is like that with the Old Firm. There have been enough mesmerising players in blue or green down the decades for football to dominate debate but at the back of it all there is always that knowledge that Rangers and Celtic are each a cause as much as a club.

That is the way it is and has been, but for way too long the Old Firm has been the cause of blight as well.

Listening to senior Scottish policemen and representatives of A&E departments at Glasgow hospitals over the past fortnight has been a depressing reminder of the cause and effect of Celtic and Rangers upon the society which bred them.

Various policemen have called for the Old Firm derbies to be banned, played behind closed doors or only allowed in midweek. Not one of them has said anything remotely positive.

Their remarks almost always include alcohol and the opinion born of experience that it is not inside the ground where most damage is done.

To an extent we know all this but the events of the past fortnight when, in total, there have been around 500-Old Firm related arrests – according to the authorities – shows that we are back on the high plains of Old Firm animosity.

This is the opening line form the Glasgow-based Herald'smatch report on Thursday morning: "Celtic are in the last eight of the Scottish Cup but Mark Wilson's deserved winner was almost a footnote in what deteriorated into a lawless Vesuvius of a tie at Parkhead."

Michael Grant’s report told the story of a worrying night, the worst of which – inside the stadium – was the nose-to-nose confrontation between Neil Lennon and Ally McCoist.

Whether they like it or not, neither man can behave like this. The grim repercussions will be felt elsewhere and seen in police cells and hospital beds. Both men know it. However frenzied the atmosphere, McCoist and Lennon simply must display restraint.

That is easier said than done, of course but it still applies. Their frantic behaviour is/was the consequence of frantic rivalry generating frantic noise leading to frantic football, frantic tackles and frantic refereeing. Red cards were shown on Wednesday for tackles that were not worthy of them. That in turn led to the touchline. It is a volatile circle and at some stage someone, preferably Lennon or McCoist, must put a foot on the ball, so to speak.

Of equal concern now are two things. First is that amid the outcry over the last two Old Firm games, there has been a whisper that actually all of this is not the end of the world.

The SPL has a new television deal to negotiate and without the Old Firm and their incessant meetings, there would be little or no interest. The mayhem is, we are led to believe, an attraction, as in WWF. This may indeed be true – which station would base a deal on transmitting St Johnstone v Falkirk? – but there is a mercenary motivation that is unappealing. Let’s stoke it up for money?

Sod the nurses.

Secondly, this is not the end of it. Although the clubs have met five times so far this season, there are another two on the way, the first a fortnight tomorrow. That is the Scottish League Cup final at Hampden Park.

The second could be one of those “Helicopter Sundays” on the final day of the season when the league trophy sits waiting to fly to the destination of the new champions.

That is part of the colour and the drama of the last afternoon and in a more innocent football culture would be a sort-of welcome addition.

But the Old Firm is not innocent. Practically everyone involved is a knowing participant. They know the who, what, where, when and why and still go on with it regardless of the society around them.

The needle and the damage done, as Neil Young sang once, in a song about addiction.

Luiz looks suited to hurly-burly

THE OLD Firm antics in Scotland were matched to some extent by one of those fractious weeks in the Premier League.

How Wayne Rooney was not dismissed at Wigan last Saturday for his blatant elbow is something we'll not know until referee Mark Clattenburg admits that he bottled it when seeing the perpetrator.

Then gun-toting Ashley Cole steps in, shooting a visitor to Chelsea's training ground at close range with an air rifle. Then Kolo Toure, a calm man by English football's standards, goes and fails a drugs test.

In the midst of this it was easy to forget David Luiz. What a game he had on Tuesday against Manchester United.

Not only did he score the sort of goal that Fernando Torres has not, Luiz, 23, dealt with Rooney with breathtaking aggression. Luiz made a statement with his performance, that he is more than ready for the helter-skelter of England. As Chelsea travel to Blackpool on Monday night, it's probably just as well.

Given targets Macedonia game

SHAY GIVEN is already back doing light physiotherapy at Manchester City. He has had an operation on his shoulder, not the same one as last season, and sounded relatively optimistic earlier this week.

Given was realistic about playing for City again, even before this strange injury flared up.

He thinks it will be six to eight weeks before he is fit to play again and is aiming for the May games against Northern Ireland and Scotland as preparation for the qualifying trip to Macedonia in the first week of June.

"That's the aim, I feel I'll be all right for those games," he said.