As a former political activist, I am well versed in the reasons why political parties and major organisations often leak bad news on a Friday night.
It’s because not many people read the Saturday papers, but there are exceptions and sports fans are amongst them.
As a consequence of this, major sports stories often break at weekends and Friday night is a fantastic time to get out a good one and send people into the weekend with confidence soaring and good vibes all around.
Rarely, however, have I seen one released to cause such utter chaos to what was an already pre-defined news cycle.
This weekend was supposed to be about one thing; Sevco.
Barring a Hibs win in the cup, which none of the hacks really believes could happen and which I doubt myself, this was all meant to be about Warburton and his team and the “miracle” of winning the Scottish Cup, as if no side from the second tier has ever done it, as if the team with the second biggest wage bill in the land isn’t supposed to reach cup finals commensurate with that fact.
With Celtic managerless and season ticket sales imperilled, with many in the Celtic support in open revolt, with the uncertainty hanging over the club like the smoke from a crematorium the media had their lines all figured out for the eventuality of a Sevco win; Celtic in decline, “Rangers” on the rise.
We know this. We could have written the script for them.
With a single managerial appointment Celtic turned all that on its head.
Rodgers inspires us all. He clarifies the vision thing. He removes the uncertainty at a stroke. Celtic went out looking to hire the best man available and they got him. In a single act, the support has been unified and the mood transformed. Not only is it a sensational move on our part, and one that has electrified the support, it is a PR bonanza which guarantees that todays game at Hampden takes second stage, relegated, as it is, to a cup final between two lower league sides.
Do I think it’s a coincidence?
Of course I don’t.
Indeed, you can now look back at a week of what I lamented at the time of “mixed signals” and a press release which seemed ludicrous but which was now clearly part of a misdirection campaign designed to let Sevco fans and their fawning media sycophants think they’d have the news cycle to themselves for the weekend only for us to drop a Friday night bombshell that cleared the back (and front) pages in an instant.
What a masterpiece it was.
About as subtle as a neutron bomb, but that’s part of the point.
Not simply a statement of intent but, to use the Glasgow vernacular, a “get it right round yeh” which reminds everyone in Scotland who the top team in the country is.
Some of us have long lamented the public relations and media people at Celtic Park, but it’s clear that there are many who still know their business. This was timed for maximum effect and disruption. It was timed if not to wipe away the “feelgood factor” at Ibrox – which, after all, is partly built on getting into the SPL at “just the right time” when we were supposed to be a club stuck doing things on the cheap, a club in decline – then certaintly it will have dampened the “party mood” some.
Their sense of euphoria will have evaporated. Hard times loom.
Over on Fields, following our cup defeat, I wrote an article called The Storm Before The Calm, in which the hypothesis was that we would come to recognise the semi final penalty kick defeat to Sevco as an Inverness Callie moment, when the John Barnes experiment similarly ended in disaster.
Celtic knew the club needed to change after that and went on and brought in Martin O’Neill.
He went up against a Rangers team still choked full of top players and still spending Other People’s Money like it was going out of fashion.
He won three titles out of five.
Brendan Rodgers takes over Celtic at a time when we’re out of sight in terms of our financial power and our playing squad is full of internationals whilst they try to put together a team out of free transfers, some of them from England’s lower leagues.
They ought not to have beaten us at Hampden, but as few would trade a Scottish Cup under Barnes for the O’Neill revolution, Seville and the treble there can’t be many Celtic fans who aren’t content with the current position.
Sevco can have their day, strutting around the national stadium, but the future belongs to us.
If Rodgers is here as long as O’Neill (and I predicted yesterday that he would certainly match his fellow Irishmen in the length of his stay) there will be no three out of five this time but a perfect score which will take us to the magic number ten.
Whether Sevco really are on the rise – mired as they are in financial difficulties and facing uncertainty on many fronts – remains to be seen.
But Celtic can no longer be said to be in decline.
As one Celtic website said yesterday (IndyCelts, in an excellent piece) Brendan Rodgers with a decent transfer kitty is the stuff of their darkest nightmares.
Yesterday the nightmare came true.
Whatever happens at Hampden today, it casts a dark shadow over their weekend and into their future.
The appointment is fantastic.
The timing of it was sublime.
I think I’m going to enjoy myself today, and cup final be damned.