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Celtic Players Are Proud To Represent Their Country. We Should Be Proud They Do.

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There’s a lot of debate online and elsewhere about whether Celtic should withdraw their players from Scotland fixtures due to the SFA’s scandalous refusal to confront the issues which have been raised in light of the Tax Case verdict at the Supreme Court.

I said in an earlier piece that this particular international break had come at a bad time, and that we could do without it. But I’ve never been in favour of our players withdrawing from international squads. It’s just wrong.

If the top clubs all did it the global game would be much the less for it, and in an era where footballers are greedy beyond belief it impresses me that some, indeed most, still consider it a huge honour to play for their national team.

Celtic players are rightly proud of it, and I think we should be proud of them.

We are above such petty behaviour as a club, and besides, I don’t see how we can force our players to back such a scheme.

Many of them do believe in doing their bit for their country; Scott Brown is a prime example.

Our players would miss out on that experience and it would be grossly unfair of us to demand that of them in a grubby battle with the association.

It gives me a lot of satisfaction to see how fundamental our current and former players, as well as our ex manager, are to the national setup right now. There was a time, as I’m sure people don’t need to be reminded about, when this was not so.

Celtic players were often shunned by Scotland, and that includes a section of the Tartan Army.

Those days are well and truly gone.

In fact, it’s a large section of a certain other club’s fans who are vocal in expressing their wish that Scotland lose every game, and especially when Celtic are so well represented. They are the fans without a country; Britain doesn’t count, and in case they missed it, it’s contemptible to cling onto the coat-tails of someone else’s nationality and England fans treat the idea with undisguised scorn.

A lot of our fans have an affinity with Ireland; understandable as a lot of them hail from there or have deep roots in that country, but we’re a Scottish club and it’s a source of special satisfaction for me that we’re carrying the flag alone in Europe as well as providing the core group of players for the national team.

It reminds this country of what it owes us, and what role we play here in the grand scheme of things.

It reminds the association that we’re strong.

And if there’s one lesson to take from this it’s that; Regan and his cohort of criminally negligent governors can bunker down as much as they want, but they are reminded constantly, daily, that we’re holding the power in our hands.

They can duck our demand for an inquiry for only so long, and then they are going to have to give us what we want.

Until then we’ll do what we always do; we’ll act professionally, responsibly, with the good of the game foremost in everything we do.

And yes, I am proud of that too. We all should be.

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