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Today the media is dredging up our so-called Role Of Dishonour … the 12 times in 6 years UEFA has fined our club.
Nothing here is new. They print this list on repeat every time we have one of these.
It amounts to a few banners, some songs and the occasional flare. Until this incident there was nothing in there to justifies the acres of woodland scrub which have given up their lives to have this slapped all over newspapers. The number of words online about it is probably in the millions.
UEFA has a sliding scale of punishments. If we poke them with a stick long enough they will take serious action, but to read some of the more hysterical nonsense in the press and on certain forums of the Sevconian persuasion you’d think we’d more than justified it already. They dredge up cases where UEFA has closed grounds and stands and hold them up as if they are proof that our fans should be banned from attending games.
This incident was potentially serious.
The club clearly had a hell of a job on its hands in talking UEFA down from a position where dire consequences could have followed. But UEFA has made it clear that it knows rule breaches have taken place at Celtic Park but equally that none of them justifies for a second the kind of punishment some people have consistently demanded.
Celtic’s reputation around Europe is sterling.
I just got back from Munich and I saw it enhanced everywhere we went in that city.
UEFA is not going to close stands over political banners. They might do it over smoke bombs and flares, and they would certainly do it if a rain of missiles greeted an opposing player or fans routinely got onto the pitch, but most of what is in the so-called roll of dishonour is minor league stuff and the governing body knows it perfectly well. The Celtic support is revered across football; Nyon knows what we are.
The manifest stupidity in bringing flares and smoke bombs to games has to stop; give the fans their due on that since the start of the season. There have been no occurrences of it of any noteworthiness. The club outlined its own position clearly in closing the safe standing area, and the fans have taken heed. I cannot commend everyone involved enough for showing common sense and doing the right thing, for the good of Celtic.
That aside, we’ve got nothing to fear from UEFA and they have no reason to worry about us. The media has dredged up our record again but nothing in this is new. They did all of it when we were cited in the first place.
What Celtic will hope for, what we all hope for, is that it’s for the last time. We are the best fans in the world, and UEFA knows this full well.
I’m just tired of people giving the Scottish press license to suggest otherwise.
This is a re-post of a long piece from last year … these are some of the many things that make us great.
As the media is taking such pleasure in highlighting the negative, I thought it was right to accentuate the positive.
Last year it was announced that the Celtic supporters would be unveiling a banner at the Hearts game, in memory of the murdered teenager Paige Doherty.
This was a wonderful show of solidarity and support for her family, completely unexpected, something that resonated far beyond football.
It’s a tremendous gesture.
It came at the same time as our club organised a trophy for a five-a-side tournament that was being held in memory of the murdered teen Lawrence Haggarty.
Celtic is a special club, with special fans and these are far from the only times when our supporters have chosen to do something like this; the causes and individuals our fans have chosen to embrace over the years have been diverse and brilliant and very often moving.
Some have sneered at us for it – one football website, who’s name I won’t mention, to spare them embarrassment although they richly deserve it once mocked our fans for “trying to be everybody’s pal” and even of “latching on to despair” to make ourselves feel better – and the media prefers to focus on any negative they can find.
Our attitude to such ridicule is a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
If they don’t get it there’s no way we can ever explain it to them.
We know why we do it, and we know that the right people appreciate our efforts.
These are five stories about the people we’ve helped and the things we’ve done.
This is what makes us different.
This is who we are.
A Tribute To A Fallen Player: The Fans Spontaneous Commemoration Of Miklós Fehér In Benfica.
On 1 November 2006, Celtic fans watched our side lose heavily in Benfica.
Despite the 3-0 defeat, they left Portugal with the acclaim of not only the local media but news outlets across the world, ringing in their ears.
And they deserved it.
The occasion was incredibly memorable and moving even before the fans staged their impromptu tribute to a fallen Benfica player.
It was the 30th anniversary season for the Lisbon Lions, and a lot of Celtic supporters make the pilgrimage to the Estadio Nacional before the game, in order to sample the atmosphere there and pay their own tributes to that magnificent time.
The Lions themselves were in town, and they were allowed onto the pitch at half time in the game, where they were received warmly by both the Celtic and Benfica fans alike.
The game was memorable too, but that for all the wrong reasons.
Gary Caldwell had one of the worst nights of his life with a series of glaring errors – including an own goal – contributing to the scale of the loss.
It was a pretty one sided encounter.
The Celtic fans were magnificent throughout though, and it was during the second half when they unfurled a banner in honour of Miklós Fehér, who had died on the pitch whilst playing for the Portuguese club in a league match against Vitoria Guimares two years before.
The banner had his club shirt and number 29, and the words “Nunca Caminharás Sozinho” – You’ll Never Walk Alone.
The Celtic fans who had raised the money to have it made donated the banner itself, along with the rest of the cash, to Benfica, and were allowed to personally present it to their legendry striker Nuno Gomes.
The money was given to a local cardiac unit, the banner was given to the Benfica supporters for their home games.
Gomes spoke of his gratitude after the match.
“It was an unforgettable moment and a wonderful gesture,” he said. “A real milestone in terms of fair play.”
He wasn’t alone.
UEFA’s delegate that night was Sandor Berzi, a Hungarian, like Fehér, and he was personally touched, telling the media afterwards that “I was very surprised by this and expressed my thanks to the Celtic delegation at the directors’ lunch, and again when the presentation was made to the Benfica players after the game. I thanked the Celtic supporters because it was a fantastic thing they did … It’s already appeared on the website of the Hungarian Football Federation as well as other sports websites and everybody is very appreciative of what happened … And I also got in touch with his Hungarian club (Gyori ETO FC) and asked them to inform Miklos Feher’s parents as well. It is very often said that football is a big family but Celtic and its supporters have proved this.”
Looking back on those, and other, tributes still fills the heart with pride today.
Celtic Fans And Hillsborough. Why Liverpool Fans Will Truly Never Walk Alone.
Of all the clubs in England, Liverpool is always the one I’ve felt the closest emotional connection to.
Their fans are very similar to ours, in their passion and their outlook.
They are a community club, rooted in their city and its history, as we are rooted in ours. Their fans have a clear-headed understanding of the politics of this island – how could they not? – and have a radical edge every bit as sharp as that of groups like The Green Brigade.
They understand solidarity.
They’ve made it one of their watch-words.
It’s not a coincidence that Celtic Park and Anfield are easily the two finest grounds on this island in which to enjoy a European footballing occasion, and whilst you can argue all day about who’s fans give the most vocal support the two clubs simply tower above the rest in that regard.
Speaking, I think, for all decent football fans, Hillsborough is one of those events which defines your life, something that, when you truly grasp it, alters your perception of the world and the way you think about it completely. It crosses all boundaries and barriers.
When I first read Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch it was the chapters about Hillsborough that stood out most for me, the way he felt on that night, the way he felt in the weeks afterwards, the way he realised he’d had his own lucky escapes.
I was too young, when it happened, for the full emotional weight to hit me the way it did him, but I’ve watched every documentary on it that I can find, as well as Jimmy McGovern’s magnificent drama. I can understand how Hornby felt, and reading his words and being able to connect them with the scenes from that day gives you a sense of creeping dread, and makes you feel sick in your soul.
These were people like us, people we could have known, grown up with, shared experiences and memories with.
This could have been us.
More than anything else, it’s the sense that this was so f***ing needless that hurts the most; this wasn’t an unavoidable tragedy, some kind of natural disaster or act of God. It wasn’t something that allowed, or allows, people to mourn and get on with their lives. Because it was avoidable, and not even in the way that, say, leaving a dangling cable for people to fall over it is …. This wasn’t just a preventable disaster, but one that was born from certain attitudes and a host of official screw-ups on the day in question. This one was caused by people, by police, by those who were supposed to be responsible for the safety of those in their charge.
Those people thought of the fans that day – all football fans – as if they were second class citizens or worse.
They penned them in like animals, allowed those pens to become over-crowded and did nothing to alleviate the situation until it was already too late. It wasn’t just that these were mistakes made – mistakes happen – but the mind-set from which those mistakes sprung. And to make those kind of mistakes, deadly mistakes, is bad enough … but to then try and shift the blame onto the dead and those who mourned them … unconscionable.
B*****ds. How dare they?
Which is to say nothing of The Sun, and Kelvin Mackenzie’s moment of madness (one of many, but far and away the worst) which trawled the gutter, found bottom and then just kept digging like kids trying to reach China from a back garden.
There’s no amount of invective or foul language that I can use that will ever come close to exhausting how I feel about the people who work at that paper, who commissioned those pieces, wrote them, edited them, or allowed them to be published.
It was an assault on decency itself.
It still reeks like snake shit today.
That my club has such a close association with the families of those who died, and with those who campaign for the justice that’s been denied them, even today, even when everything that they’ve been saying for all these years has been fully vindicated … well it’s a source of more than just pride to me.
Our club and our supporters could never have turned their backs on the Liverpool fans.
I cannot imagine a world in which we would have.
The stories from fans of both of our clubs on Hillsborough and the aftermath and how a deep connection was forged could fill a book, and I’m not joking. I’ve spent much of the day reading them. They are heart-warming, inspiring, and tear-inducing.
We were, of course, the first club Liverpool played after the tragedy, hosting a fund raiser at Celtic Park fifteen days after the disaster. That game raised over £500,000 for the families; my old man, who was a steward at the time, said even he and his colleagues donated their wages to the fund.
We lost that game 4-0. Our fans cheered every Liverpool goal.
There has probably never been a more emotional version of You’ll Never Walk Alone sung at Celtic Park.
Watching the footage still makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up today.
Over the years, Celtic fan sites have written anniversary tributes, we’ve helped share articles beyond count on the Justice for the 96 campaign, we’ve given every emotional and even financial support that we were able to.
And there have been banners, so many banners, amongst them the one The Jungle Bhoys and those from the Kerrydale Street forum had made in October 2006, twenty-six feet long and emblazoned with the words “Justice For the 96”, the two club crests and, of course, the legend “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
The gesture was returned by a grateful Anfield support, when they invited some of the Celtic fans to a Champions League match against PSV, and unveiled their own banner, with the words “Thank You Celtic Fans, We’ve Never Walked Alone.”
Damned right.
Justice for the 96.
The Forgotten Fans Of Vigo: Celtic Supporters Chip In For Local Fishermen Whilst Scottish Media Focuses On “Mid-Air Riot.”
Aaaah the Scottish media … you have to love them for their total lack of class, and what happened on two different planes going to and from Vigo for Celtic’s match there, on the Road to Seville in December 2002, really does offer some insight into how they operate.
Let’s get the negatives out of the way; let’s talk first about the “mid-air riot”, lest I be accused of revisionism and ignoring the elephant in the room.
First, it wasn’t a “riot” at all; it was something that, in another time and place, might have been passed off as a minor incident.
Only that it took place in the air – a singularly stupid place to be involved in any kind of altercation at all – makes this one different.
That and the fact that it involved Celtic fans, of course.
This was the incident that happened whilst fans were returning from the game, one where we lost 2-1 but went through on the away goals rule. It seems to have started with a Celtic fan lighting up a cigarette in a toilet. The crew were alerted to this, somehow, and an argument broke out after the crew informed a group of Celtic fans that they’d all be detained when the plane landed, in order that the culprit be identified.
The Celtic fans were already a little peeved off. The Vigo trip hadn’t been without incident. A group of police had gotten rough with fans in the airport. How rough? They truncheoned a wheel-chair bound fan. Brian Quinn, the Celtic director, and a former governor of the Bank of England, personally witnessed Celtic fans being assaulted by the police. One of them was his son. He lodged a formal complaint with the Consulate.
A lot of stories had circulated about various incidents before, during and after the game.
Most were over-dramatized nonsense.
Because, ironically enough, both sets of supporters regarded, and treated, each other warmly.
In addition to all that, the flight itself had been delayed for 12 hours, making fans who were already slightly the worse for wear even worse.
What happened on the flight, stripped of the immediate hysteria, amounted to little more than an argument.
At one point, according to the official narrative, someone “hit” a stewardess on the arm; no-one has ever been charged with that. Some witnesses say it was a supporter, tapping her on the arm, trying to get her attention.
Regardless, that appears to have sealed the deal and the plane was routed to Cardiff and grounded. It didn’t involve more than just some shouting and remonstrating, which is pretty daft on an airplane but certainly not something unique to this particular incident.
It wasn’t anything like as bad as described.
When four fans appeared in court in connection with it, in March 2003, the charges were related to being drunk and aggressively abusive on board an aircraft.
In a pub it would have been a breach of the peace.
On a train it would have been a matter of little consequence and folded in to the everyday news cycle.
On a plane, everything is different, and so the flap over it, and the headlines, are perhaps understandable even if the lurid spin of the Scottish media, in particular, was depressingly predictable and anti-Celtic.
None of that is an excuse. It’s just what happened.
People can judge for themselves who they blame based on the truth, and the context in which it took place.
All of it helped to tarnish what was an otherwise excellent occasion, and one which helped push out of the spotlight a gesture on another plane, one going to the match, which otherwise (but maybe not) would have made the headlines instead.
On the way to the game, on board a Cambuslang Travel flight, John Wilson, one of the organisers of the trip, mentioned that Vigo, a port city on the north-western Atlantic coast, had been badly affected by the Prestige oil spill, an environmental and economic catastrophe for the region, and which had happened in November that year.
He had heard of how disastrous it had been for the fishermen of Vigo, who were, at the time, getting by on government handouts of £5 per day.
He asked the fans on board the plane to chip in.
The supporters did so, and his firm decided to match them, pound for pound.
The donations, worth thousands, were handed to Vigo councillors by Peter Rafferty.
That this story is so little known speaks volumes for the media narrative of the time, which was that Celtic fans had caused mayhem on that particular trip.
The truth was very different; once again, we’d made friends with rival fans, and gave generously on behalf of people we’d never actually met, for no other reason than we happened to be there, and we could.
It’s far from the only time we’ve done so; not even mentioning what the club itself does, there’s fan groups like The Green Brigade, targets of much media opprobrium and general public misunderstanding, who run food bank appeals and have raised money for refugees.
Celtic sites, most notably CQN, raise money for schools, soup kitchens, wells in Africa and a thousand other causes.
The Celtic Supporters Association make donations every month.
Their annual Rally is exclusively run for good causes.
What happened in Vigo wasn’t unique.
It was part and parcel of being Celtic fans, but it bears special scrutiny because of the spontaneous nature of it, and the way it’s sort of been forgotten by history, airbrushed out of it by media stories relating to that trip which sought to paint us in a very different light.
Helping Out The Families And Survivors Of Dunblane: A Magical Gesture From The CSA.
Dunblane haunts Scotland to this day.
It was the ultimate unthinkable tragedy, and it happened right on our doorstep.
For a while in 2003, I worked in the town whilst I was a student at Stirling and to say I fell in love with the place, and the friendly people there, is an understatement. The event itself has always tugged at me because of that and I’ve written on the subject in various blogs and at various times, in an effort to understand it better.
But it defies understanding.
It defies rationale.
What the Celtic Supporters Association did in the aftermath of it is all the more special to me because of how I feel about what happened there.
Their gesture resonates today.
It was incredible, and it was far-reaching. It helped tremendously.
After the horror of the day, Ron Taylor, the headmaster of Dunblane Primary, told the press that what he wanted, more than anything, was to see the children smile again. The Celtic Supporters Association took up his cause.
Their fund-raising drive was, and will always remain, an incredible feat which accomplished everything it set out to do and more.
Reaching across the global Celtic Family and beyond (press reports talk of a Rangers fan who gave £200 – he wasn’t the only one, not by a long way) it eventually raised over £100,000 and every single penny of it went to making magic literally happen.
That money was used to send the twelve surviving children from the class, along with their families; mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, to Disney World, as guests of the Association and the Celtic Family as a whole.
Not only did that cash pay for the trip, but it made sure that the families had enough spending money – £1300 each – to enjoy themselves to the maximum.
It is an unbelievable kindness.
It had a startling impact, and not just on the families and children.
Gerry Madden of the CSA, who accompanied them on the trip, like most people hadn’t really grasped the full horror of what transpired that day until, as he put it, “when the children went into the swimming pool and you saw the gunshot wounds … It was great to see their excited faces. But when I was there my mind was with all the children who died.”
The families themselves talked afterwards about how it impacted on them, and the wee ones in particular.
“We see quite a difference in Mark since the trip,” said Jim Mullen, one of the dads. “It was a really good time for him to go. He came back singing and laughing which he hadn’t done very much throughout the year. We are so grateful.”
I can think of few more important campaigns our fans have been involved with, and few causes more vital than helping those wonderful children laugh again.
A Thousand Individual Tales Of Triumph And Tragedy, And Of Lights That Never Go Out.
Aside from the stories already recounted, there are hundreds – literally – that each could justify their own section of this article, and as such I’m loathe to group them together because of how major they are and how they resonate through our support.
Stories like that of Martin “Kano” Kane, whose personal tragedy inspired the CQN site to phenomenal feats of fund-raising and generosity, and which enabled his family to virtually rebuild their home and their lives around his care.
Martin, who was a prominent CQN contributor, fell ill with what was later diagnosed as Devic’s Syndrome, a neurological condition, in 2008.
Overnight, it left him almost completely paralysed.
His family was devastated, and would have struggled to cope in the aftermath without the support of what started out as a small number of amazing people, but grew to encompass the Celtic Family as a whole.
They raised enough that Martin was able to go home, once his house had been made accessible and special equipment installed for him.
When he passed away in January of last year, those who knew him mourned his passing privately and the Celtic support celebrated his life publicly, with a minute’s applause at the home game against Motherwell.
Yet Martin left behind more than just a name on a blog and the warm memories of those who had known him.
He left behind a magnificent legacy, the Kano Foundation, which his friends and supporters had founded in his name, and which, by that Wednesday evening, had already helped over 3000 children to enjoy free days out at Celtic Park.
In addition, their work has branched out into other areas, and has helped many, many more.
Then there’s Oscar Knox, whose all-too-short life was such an inspiration to every single one of us.
His incredibly sad story, about how he was diagnosed with Jacobsen’s Disease (affected less than 1 in every 100,000 children) and then neuroblastoma (also affected less than 1 in every 100,000 children – Oscar was the only child in the world affected by both), was also an incredibly uplifting one.
His struggle, fought with a cheeky smile and a spring in his step which few of us would have been able to find, touched our hearts and even lifted them.
People today still share their memories of Oscar.
The picture of him on the pitch at Celtic Park, hugging Hoopy the Hound, still makes a lump in your throat and brings a tear to your eye.
Oscar was one of those special people who made the world a better place simply by being here; his spirit touched all of us, and lit a light in our hearts that never goes out.
Everyone in the Celtic Family feels the same way, and over the course of his illnesses that Family rallied round him and his and made his last days better.
He was our ambassador, and our standard in the title winning year of 2013-14, and his death touches all of us even today.
So too does the spirit and enthusiasm of another one of our ambassadors, the Celtic superfan Jay Beatty, who’s family’s most devout wish was that could live his life without being subjected to unkind treatment because he was born with Down Syndrome.
The Celtic Family made sure of that, and a lot more, making him an instant hero from the moment Georgios Samaras plucked him from the crowd to celebrate Celtic’s title win in 2014.
Now Jay is one of the most recognisable faces amongst our support.
He has a huge following on social media, and his fame throughout Scotland and beyond is such that when Hamilton invited him to take a penalty at half-time in the match against Celtic last year that the strike won the SPL Goal of the Month competition after an overwhelming “write in” from fans and a whopping 97% of the vote.
A similar story is that of the world famous Thai Tims, who’s phenomenal videos are a huge hit with Celtic fans across the globe.
There’s is a story of triumph, tinged with tragedy, which resonates far beyond Celtic Park and which continues to inspire us today.
Their adoption of Celtic came about because of one of their teachers, but their impact was felt beyond the club itself.
Nevertheless, it’s the Celtic Family that’s most widely embraced them, and how could it not?
Their classroom is a shrine to our club, and their songs about its players are always joyous and often times hilariously witty.
The kids themselves have enjoyed memorable visits to Scotland, paid for partly by the club and partly by the fans.
They even got a song into the charts!
But it’s impossible to tell their story without telling that of Reamonn Gormley.
Reamonn spent time in Thailand, with those wonderful kids as a volunteer for The Good Child Foundation.
His year there was of tremendous help to those children, who loved him dearly, and a source of great pride to those who knew him.
He was a true ambassador for this Family, spending his gap year in such a way.
On 1 February 2011, his life was horribly cut short when he and a friend were attacked as they were coming back from a pub where they’d watched Celtic play Aberdeen. His death was shocking to the whole of Scotland.
In the end it galvanised the Celtic Family to one of its greatest, and most lasting, achievements; a memorial hall, in the Thailand school where he had taught.
The fans had set a fund-raising target of £1967. (The significance of the number will definitely not be lost on anyone.)
Such was the reaction of our fans that they exceeded it … by a staggering 1674%.
The total sum raised was £32,936.03.
Paul Lennon, of the Good Child Foundation charity, said, when the Hall was built, “I once talked with Reamonn about the construction of such a building for the charity, and it fills me with sadness when I think of that day. It’s a hall built from tragic circumstances, but will bring enjoyment and be a place of learning to many children for years to come. We believe that Reamonn’s spirit is here with us.”
It remains so.
Like Oscar and Martin Kane, his is a light than never goes out, for the way it touched so many others and who’s legacy continues to build better lives even today.
These are the stories of a mere handful of causes for which Celtic fans can be justifiably proud.
I could have featured many, many, many more.