So there will be no guard of honour. There were actually people in the media who expected Kennedy to do this and that our players would agree to it. Or maybe they just want us to think they believe it.
The club has decided against taking “the moral high ground.” Oh the shame of it. Whatever will we do? How will we sleep in our beds tonight?
You know what? I’ll sleep soundly. We’ve definitely done the right thing.
What are conventions and traditions for?
They are marks of professional respect, one of the deepest things in the game. It’s one set of competitors paying tribute to a better team. It is timeless.
The Zulus didn’t really salute the men of Rourke’s Drift, but the idea comes from very real moments in history, examples where victors paid tribute to the vanquished and where defeats didn’t end in bitterness but with a kind of mutual admiration.
This is an alien concept at Ibrox.
Their refusal to pay that tribute to us was grossly offensive to everyone at our club.
It was a slap in the face, and Christ may have turned the other cheek but that’s what made him special in the first place. This is the world today, and if you do that you’re only begging to be kicked in the stomach as well.
We know the Ibrox operation. We won’t give them an inch.
They could have done this for us.
They did it for Hearts some years before, but that was before the real lunatics were in command of the asylum over there. I’ve never thought we’d have got the same respect.
Their rabid fans wouldn’t have allowed it for a start.
But that’s part of the problem; theirs is a club that panders to its worst element and the worst element is in the boardroom as well as the stands.
You only have to look at the press releases out of that place and consider who writes them to understand that.
Celtic owes these Peepul nothing.
Their failure to pay us this honour was disgraceful and the media treated the idea that they should as some kind of joke. Amazing how they’ve tried to spin it as something we should do ourselves “for the greater good.”
Celtic was correct to resist. We were right to ignore the likes of Caldwell and Rodgers and all the others allegedly of a Celtic persuasion who told us we should do this.
Kennedy said the players decided “as a group” not to do it; why would they have decided otherwise?
These men were denied that privilege at Ibrox.
We were never going to extend it to a club which didn’t think us worthy.
What do our critics think we are?
This is about respect … and we weren’t paid any.
To Hell with those who criticise us for responding in kind, just as they had no right to wail and whine and bitch us out when we responded the same way to their decision to cut our away allocation over there.
Celtic will never not respect tradition or precedent.
We always have and we always will. Ibrox set the precedent. They reworked the tradition. They pissed all over both and we were supposed to just accept that, but continue to respect the old ways?
They get what they deserve over there.
They get what they are due.
Anyone who wants to bang our club for this can sod off.
Our actions here are entirely appropriate.
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