Dundee Did The Right Thing In Banning Boyd. Now Celtic Must Do The Same.

When I read Kris Boyd’s shocking article on Leigh Griffiths at the weekend I posted the question; was he guilty of incitement?

The answer seemed obvious.

The tone of that piece was spiteful, gleefully anticipating a professional footballer being subjected to the most disgusting abuse. Worse than that, it made excuses and offered justifications for those who would do it.

That article should never have seen the light of day in a national newspaper.

It was the kind of gutter trash we most often associate with the worst of the fan sites across the city. As I’ve said before on here, many times, Boyd is not a journalist and it is an insult to the profession to pretend that he is.

Boyd is a professional troll and cheerleader for Ibrox.

He should be viewed in that light.

He should be treated that way.

No club in this country should be credentialing him on the basis of his work. It doesn’t meet the standards of a school paper far less a national broadcaster. People should stop treating Boyd like a serious media personality, he is very far from that.

You know, when this club banned Andy Walker I profoundly disagreed with that decision.

The ban was for speaking out against the shambles that is our board of directors; all that man did was do his job, which to scrutinise their decision making and comment on it as he saw it. That’s what he’s paid to do. Our board would have been better doing what they were being paid to do than banning a guy for that. I am no Walker fan – far from it – but that was outrageous.

Likewise, what the club across town did the other week when they banned Sutton and Lennon by saying their safety couldn’t be guaranteed. I thought that was a deplorable smear against their own fans as well as being a pretty weak excuse to hide behind. That club makes a habit of such petty and spiteful acts, and we ought not to have been surprised.

But Dundee stood up for their player, in light of a cowardly personal attack by a yahoo who should have had his crayon set and paper taken off him ages ago. They stood by Leigh Griffiths, as a club is supposed to do with one of its employees.

And yet, in a very real way they went above and beyond the call of duty, because Griffiths is actually our employee and not theirs. Why is it left to them to stand up for him and to protect him from such an outrageous attack? When do we step up to the plate?

Griffiths is a clown who has blown his last chance at Celtic Park, but underneath all the issues this is a human being who didn’t deserve to be the subject of bile and vitriol and naked hatred on Saturday afternoon. Boyd didn’t just cheer it on, he encouraged it.

Dundee took exception to that. I would have hoped that Celtic did too, as Griffiths is still our player when everything is said and done and Boyd crossed every line of decency and taste and obliterated any ethical boundary he was supposed to adhere to.

There is no further debate about what Kris Boyd is and what he is not.

That man should not be allowed to pretend to be a pundit.

He should not get the legitimacy of hiding behind a microphone with that permanent smirk on his face.

Dundee has made it clear that he is no longer welcome at their ground and every club in the country ought to follow suit, except for his favourite one who already have “official club partners” every bit as loathsome.

Celtic should be next out of the gate.

We should inform Sky he’s not welcome now or in the future.

If Boyd wants to spew bile against our club and our players he is welcome to do so in private or in public if some idiot gives him a forum to do it, but we should not permit it – we must not permit it – in our ground.

Griffiths may not be worth a Celtic shirt, but he deserves the bare minimum of protection that we would offer anyone on our books.

Kris Boyd did not care at the weekend if someone took his words to their ultimate, twisted conclusion. He endangered the safety of one of our players and the club he’s on loan at took that more seriously than we appear to have done up until now.

Let’s be honest, we’ve banned actual journalists for less.

Boyd is not one, and he crossed a very big line at the weekend. It must be the last time he’s allowed to do it whilst holding media credentials. It’s high time Celtic made it clear that he’s not welcome in our house.