SCIENTISTS have confirmed what football fans have known all along: supporting a losing team is bad for your health.

Researchers looked at the impact on the general health and wellbeing of Celtic and Rangers supporters in Glasgow after a series of Old Firm games.

They discovered that Rangers fans, who have endured seven defeats in a row at the hands of their arch-rivals, were 50 per cent more likely to suffer symptoms of stress including headaches, anxiety, sleeplessness and feeling “generally under the weather”.

They also suffered from “social disfunction”, deliberately avoiding contact with other people after watching a losing match, the research found.

In contrast, fans of Celtic, the Scottish Premier League champions, were among the happiest and healthiest of supporters, although they were just as likely as Rangers fans to catch a cold after a game.

The study was carried out last season by David Sheffield of Staffordshire University, in partnership with colleagues from Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian and Paisley universities.

A total of 121 football fans — 49 from Rangers, 42 from Celtic and 30 others — were asked to record physical or mental health problems they experienced up to five days after three Old Firm games.

Dr Sheffield said: “This was a small study and in the interest of balance we were hoping for a win and a loss, or win and a draw, but Celtic kept winning every game, which scuppered our plans a little.

“However the seriousness of the physical symptoms suffered by some Rangers fans after losing to Celtic were really quite startling. They generally felt under the weather for two or three days after the match. They reported being irritable and anxious, they struggled to sleep properly and were far more likely to suffer headaches than Celtic fans.”

Surprisingly, fans of teams other than Celtic and Rangers were the most depressed of all.

“On average, the symptoms suffered by Rangers fans after an Old Firm defeat were 50 per cent more severe than for Celtic fans. But the ‘other’ fans reported most symptoms of all the supporters we surveyed, which we have been unable to explain in this study.”

Celtic and Rangers fans gave the game equal importance in their lives and had equally high expectations, rating success more highly than fans of other teams who were possibly more used to losing, Dr Sheffield said.

His findings will be presented at the British Psychological Society conference in Edinburgh tomorrow.

The research echoes the findings of two other recent studies in Holland and England that investigated the impact of football on mental health. Researchers found that in the days following a national defeat more people died, often of heart attacks.

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