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This Is Our Time, But Don’t Think We’re Sleeping At The Wheel

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If you will indulge me for a moment, for a brief history lesson.

In 1888 when Brother Walfrid started our great club to feed the poor of the parish, our noisy neighbours had been in existence for approx 15 years.

They had no religious affiliation.

With Celtic being used to feed the poor, the majority of whom were Catholic, the religious bigots of Glasgow felt that they should align themselves against this.

With the influx of Catholics from Ireland there was an undoubted. and understandable, magnetism toward Celtic but in Scotland, in fact in the UK as a whole, they were simply seen as second class citizens, or worse.

For the Protestant community in Scotland it was “jobs and favours for the boys” and the rampant racism and bigotry wasn’t even hidden. Signs like “no Catholics allowed” proliferated, and statements from senior members of the community where they referred to the Irish as having ” impure blood” show this.

This continued for decades and it has only been in the past 30 years that it’s started to change.

This history swept up football, of course.

We as a club, especially from Fergus onward, decided that we would be more than just a club, that we would be social institutuion that offered leadership and observed a duty of care to the wider world. We decided to go about our business correctly, build and become stronger and now that football, and society, is held to account more the unfairness and jobs for the boys attitude is being wheedled out.

We have said that bigotry still exists in Scotland, for years, despite the paranoia claims and ridicule, but in the past few weeks it has been shown that what he have been saying is true. There is less of it, but it has not gone. When you read some of the statement eminating from Sevco fans you see that old mindset. They don’t want things to be fair. They feel the way it should be is the way that it used to be, all favours and backs scratched.

Never is this attitude more clearly expressed as it in how they see us.

They judge us by their own past standards. They assume we are winning, not because we are better and run correctly and behave in a manner that is professional, no they say it must be favours! It must be State Aid that we have our house in order. It must be control of the media (haha) that we get such good press. (No laughing.) It must be because the SFA is on our side that we get bans overturned. Their own sins and crimes weren’t sins and crimes but punished as if they were by a conspiracy.

They don’t object to the cheating itself, just that they think it benefits us now.

They want a return to their backhand cheating ways, those days when they could do as they liked.

Let’s face it, it’s the only way they see their way clear to becoming anything to rival us.

Now there is a vociferous movement to ensure that their “own people” are in charge of the game again, as if Regan is somehow their enemy.

What they want is the very definition of corruption.

Factor in the behaviour of their fans before and after the last game, it was shameful, it shows their sense of entitlement, their sense of superiority.

In a week where the biggest and best club in the country is given less tickets than the opposition for the flagship game of the season, what else can you say? Would this have been allowed if Sevco were in the final?

We also have the steady seep of information about the behaviour of people at Ibrox prior to Whyte’s takeover … and what the SFA knew and when.

And these people want back at the top table?

This cannot be dismissed by the media for much longer. Tom English can decry “bigots and bores” as he sees fit, but a serious discussion on the SFA’s fitness to govern the game is long overdue.

The new type of news reporting, such as social media, means it will be had with our without them.

Darryl Broadfoot, outgoing media officer for SFA, said at the weekend “there is no agenda.”

There is though, and not just one.

The press would rather write nonsense like “Sevco will pay £1m for player if he is right” and help sell season tickets for the Ibrox club.

It’s the same old nonsense.

Through all of it, Celtic marches on.

This is our time. This  is payback for everyone who revelled in our state in the early 90’s.

David Campbell is a Celtic blogger and fan from Glasgow. He’s keeping an eye on our enemies, whilst enjoying our supremacy.

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