Come Monday morning police will be inundated with complaints from Celtic fans who have watched the game on TV, writes THOMAS ROSS KC, amid Scotland's controversial new hate crime law

There is definitely the potential for people to be in breach of this new legislation at Sunday’s Old Firm match.

Whether the cops will go wading in and start picking people out of a crowd of 50,000, I’m not quite so sure.

But, undoubtedly, there’s the possibility that things could be sung or said that could amount to an offence.

However, in terms of the aggravation part of the act, a lot that was already in law anyway even before this new bill was passed.

For instance, people might commit a breach of the peace, which is the most common thing for people to be charged with at a football match. But that was law anyway.

A lot of it isn’t actually new. It’s been an offence to commit any act of racial hatred since 1965 [due to Race Relations Act].

This aspect of stirring things up is difficult to prove. Theoretically, someone could be charged with stirring up hatred, but it’s far more likely they’d just be charged with something that’s been in law for many years [breach of the peace].

But it’s an absolute certainty. Come Monday morning, Police Scotland will be inundated with complaints from Celtic fans who have watched the game on TV.

They will have the volume turned up full blast, listening for something to complain about in terms of the songs from Rangers fans.

That’s been the case for years anyway. I had a pal whose mate used to work for FIFA as a lawyer.

He would go in, open his email inbox on a Monday morning, and there would be maybe 20 emails.

There would be one from Estonia, one from Finland - and about 18 from Glasgow with people complaining about songs during an Old Firm game.

I understand the police have been given internal guidance, presumably through their own legal department.

They’ll have read the legislation and then been told what amounts to an offence, but it’s difficult.

In terms of the police officers at the game, I doubt very much whether they would want to involve themselves and start wading into the crowd.

In the context of the Old Firm matches, there have been a lot of offences committed over the years by a lot of different people - and the police have turned a blind eye a lot of the time.

They could probably arrest 20,000 people at every match, but they don’t.

The police generally take the view that, as long as there’s no violence, it’s OK.

If the fans are just shouting stuff at each other, or at the players, the police tend to just let them get on with it. That’s my experience.

To be fair to them, that’s not necessarily a criticism. It’s a massive scale we’re talking about.

To be honest, it actually doesn’t really matter what the police charge the person with.

All the police will do is report the matter to the Procurator Fiscal.

It will be the Fiscal who then decides what charge, if any, goes to court.

Even in that scenario, I find it highly unlikely that the fiscal would want to prosecute anyone under this new legislation.

It’s just so complicated. They could just issue the person with a fixed penalty and breach of the peace, which quite a lot of people will accept.

In football, you can’t get a banning order from a fixed penalty.

So if they want people potentially banned from attending matches, it would need to go to court.