You might have seen a story doing the rounds tonight, about Celtic having sent a letter to supporters on the subject of their personal hygiene.
The media has had a ball with this one, with even The Washington Post commenting on it. It must be a slow news day over there, what with the NFL, the NBA, MLS, US presidential primaries and the fact that one unarmed person has been killed by the police every three days in 2015 so far.
As you can imagine, this story has also gone down rather well in Sevconia.
The trouble is, this ain’t a new story.
It looks like it’s not even a true story.
I wonder just how much research the hacks here did before they put this reeking piece of what is almost certainly fiction online.
Why do I say almost certainly fiction?
Because the same story has done the rounds at clubs all across the UK for a while now.
And it’s been fictitious everywhere else.
Right now, as I write this, the same letter – word for word, signed off by the “Supporter Liaison” – is doing the rounds at Stockport County.
So, do we have the same PR department, or what? Or is this what it looks like?
A joke. One the media bought into lock, stock and barrel.
I saw this “letter to the Celtic fans” doing the rounds on Facebook a fortnight ago, and what comes across most in it is that it looks, and reads, like a fake, like something someone put together in five minutes with some Photoshop.
One look at it could have told you that. A read of the wording would have done the rest.
Something stinks here. And it ain’t the Celtic supporters.
It’s the media’s lack of any scruples and love of simply jumping into something without getting the facts right. This one is a source of special pleasure up here though, because it’s the supporters of our own club. Except, once again, it’s not.
Amongst the many “serious” news organisations which has published this transparent guff is Sky Sports, The Telegraph, Bleachers Report and our own home-grown rags, The Daily Record, The Daily Mail and The Sun. Not one of them contacted Celtic first … it’s publish first, and the facts be damned.
Especially when the “facts” are so juicy.
Shame on the lot of them.
When Celtic confirms what a lot of us already know – that this is utterly fictional, nothing more than someone’s idea of a joke which has gone viral – I trust they’ll all have the good grace to apologise and set the record straight.
Aye, but I won’t be holding my breath.
This one smelled from the start.
But what really reeks here is an entire, shameless industry, existing on fiction and lies.
its all over the papers here in Portugal… And all over the rest of the world … IF IT IS TRUE … Then it sure as hell shouldn’t have been leaked !! Another thing I showed my journo colleagues here the headlines that were running over there and they were dumbfounded that the press would be SO NEGATIVE when the ONLY REPRESENTATIVE of the country was playing and POSITIVE REPORTS to get POSITIVE RESULTS were needed!