SOCCER ANGLES: Bullets and bombs in the post, this has become the most provocative part of the troublesome story of Scottish football since Christmas, writes MICHAEL WALKER

LAST MONTH’S news that Derry City council had reluctantly sanctioned the construction of a fence adjacent to Irish Street to separate feuding sectarian gangs was one of those spirit-sagging details we thought belonged to a previous century. Peace walls. A euphemism of our age.

These are emotional, cultural, religious and political divisions made flesh and until there is no need for them we should not be wholly taken aback by the sort of life Neil Lennon has to lead.

But taken aback, or dragged backwards, is how Scotland felt on Wednesday morning.

Bullets and bombs in the post, this has become the most provocative part of the troublesome story of Scottish football since Christmas.

The revelation that three “viable devices” had been sent to Lennon, QC Paul McBride and former politician Trish Godman raised the sectarian stakes to a level that actually merits the overused term – shocking. This was and is shocking.

One thing that must be stated early, and restated, is that Neil Lennon has not brought this on himself, he is not the provocateur, he does not deserve this.

Nor do the others embroiled. Even Rangers diehards would struggle to call Paddy McCourt or Niall McGinn offensive characters.

But it has been felt for a long time that a brick thrown in Derry can be heard in Glasgow and the case of Kieran Bowell offers fresh proof of that. Bowell, the captain of Berwick Rangers’ under-17s, used his twitter account to send out the message that Lennon got what he deserved.

It was excruciating for different reasons but perhaps most saddening is Bowell’s age and geography. This is not someone born into ghettoised Belfast life 40 years ago. This is someone born in the mid-90s playing for a club on the border with England that is deemed Scottish. Berwick is not Govan. Berwick is not Dee Street.

It would be no surprise to hear that Bowell, and his teenage peers, were aware of the divide that binds Celtic and Rangers but to be so enmeshed by the sectarianism of the Old Firm, to be so familiar with its base language, to be so partisan is evidence of the scale of the problem facing Scottish society.

This was not completely shocking, in the surprising sense of the word, but it was shocking. It made you think the culture of casual sectarianism, the unthinking derogatory use of “Fenian”, of the singing of “party tunes” such as The Billy Boys, has an effect that outstays the songs. People, we should have known, actually believe this “We Are The People” guff. In the North, usually those let down economically by generations of thin-lipped Unionist politicians.

When Lennon addresses the subject of religious and political bigotry he mentions the volume of it. When he was assaulted in the street not far from his Glasgow home eight years ago, Lennon was struck as much by the details of his assailants as he was by the headbutt and punches. Two of the three men were Glasgow University students. In theory, they should have known much better.

But they, too, were caught up in the hatred.

What the events of 2011 have shown is that this stretches beyond two football clubs. Lennon may be right about the volume of it.

The clubs have become the focus, they may even be seen as a catalyst for wider aggravation by some under-employed former Northern loyalists – and where exactly are the ones expelled from Belfast at the minute? Bolton? Ayrshire? Wherever, there is an uneasy religious undercurrent.

And where are those two students now, in the established middle-class professions of medicine and law which they were studying? Where will Bowell be in eight years’ time? Do they all still believe that hating Neil Lennon is acceptable? Perhaps they will be at Ibrox tomorrow lunchtime, all three of them. There Lennon will stand on the touchline and receive “pelters” as they say in Scotland.

After the week just gone, there may be a sense of much-needed restraint about those heckling the Celtic manager, but imagine if there’s a match-defining, season-shaping penalty claim.

Ibrox in uproar. It won’t be the last time.

In that scenario, Lennon will need to show restraint. He apologised to his board after the infamous early-March confrontation with Ally McCoist at Parkhead. Those two managerial figures need to lead with their head tomorrow. They could do with giving Old Firm football a good name.

Because another by-product of violence is that those not in the midst of it turn away. There was an argument put forward last month that the “special” nature of the Old Firm makes them attractive to TV. Let’s look at that another way: would it not be really good if Celtic and Rangers were attractive because of the nature of their play? Rather than them talking continuously about moving to England, they might get some thinking of an invitation.

No one will want to encourage this kind of baggage south, that’s for sure.

And in the absence of that change, where does Scottish football go? It needs to improve itself from within. It needs to become more competitive as a whole. It needs to become about more than the latest Old Firm story.

Everyone in Scottish football should have a look at themselves. That includes Lennon, and the Celtic fans singing IRA songs in Kilmarnock on Wednesday.

It includes the Rangers supporters who are more interested in red, right, and blue than 4-4-2. It includes McCoist. It includes everyone in a society that allows this kind of stifling, aggressive culture to sprout and spread like a virus. It includes those on Irish Street in Derry.

PULIS PULLING RIGHT STRINGS

EATING your words is never the most enjoyable form of diet but after praising Owen Coyle here last Saturday, it seems appropriate to mention that his Bolton Wanderers team were subsequently demolished by Stoke City at Wembley.

How Coyle and Bolton respond is now their issue. Last Sunday was a reminder that Coyle has been at Bolton for 15 months and that he and his players have done plenty in that time.

Tony Pulis (right), by contrast, has been at Stoke for five years and, though they are more than willing to mix it, to tug at shirts and pull opponents out of the wall, Pulis has forged a team that goes beyond rudimentary.

Pulis deserves credit.

Matthew Etherington personifies their extra dimension. He is the sort of player you can imagine playing for Bolton.