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Media Already Misrepresenting Celtic’s £6 Kilmarnock Give-Back

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Tonight the Affiliation of Celtic Supporters Clubs has released a statement clarifying the position of the club with regards to the £6 “give back” that was announced on the official website today.

The situation, as it stands, is this:

Earlier in the season, Kilmarnock announced that every visiting club’s supporters would be charged the same price, £20.

The one exception was Celtic.

This caused considerable angst, and outrage, but the Rugby Park club would not relent.

There was talk at official Celtic supporters meetings of organising a boycott of Kilmarnock at that point; this never got to a vote, because our fans don’t have a history of officially boycotting games, but there was a lot of anger over the move and some individual supporters buses did take the decision not to attend Kilmarnock games whilst this policy was in place.

Furthermore, the Affiliation of Celtic Supporters Clubs announced that they would have a protest before the match, highlighting the “Twenty’s Plenty” campaign which has gained a lot of support across football in Scotland.

They even invited Kilmarnock’s fans to join them.

Today’s decision by Celtic, to subsidise fans tickets by £6 apiece, was our club’s contribution to this campaign, a bold move which should be applauded.

In essence, Celtic are saying they agree with the supporters on this and feel Kilmarnock’s move discriminates against our fans. This is the club’s way of reducing costs for supporters and making sure than any boycott would be minimised so as to assure the best attendance by our fans on the day.

Of course, this isn’t how some of the media is spinning it.

They’ve conveniently ignored all that, and tried their best to turn this into an issue wherein Celtic is “bribing fans” to attend games.

The Daily Record’s online report is headlined “Celtic cut cost of Kilmarnock game by £6 a ticket in bid for more backing as title tussle goes down to the wire.”

This is a disgraceful spinning of a serious initiative and one which affects all Scottish teams.

As usual, what we have here is a headline writer doing his or her level best to put a negative slant on anything which originates at Celtic Park.

The article itself puts the story in its proper context, but the clickbait headline is nothing short of appalling.

Celtic’s attendances have been fodder for all manner of hacks this season, where comparisons could be made with those at other clubs. Whilst crowds at Celtic Park haven’t been great of late, the club still sold more than 40,000 season tickets.

Above and beyond that, and perhaps just as important, we’ve sold out nearly every allocation at every away ground we’ve visited.

Our travelling support remains formidable, and second to none – not that you’d realise that with the way the media gushes over the travelling horde from another Glasgow club. They back the team like no other in the country.

Today Celtic has said thank you to them all, and put itself firmly behind a campaign to assure better, and lower, prices for fans all round.

Our media would rather spin that.

Which is why so many of us hold them in total contempt.

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