Boyd’s “Joking” With Madden Should Drive Home To Celtic What We’re Up Against.

Scotland’s incestuous little world of mutual backslapping and nudges and winks, the atmosphere which our club and its official leaders tolerate for reasons passing understanding, has been revealed at its worst this weekend with the “jokey banter” between arch-Celtic hater Kris Boyd and the referee from yesterday’s game.

Boyd is a troll, but even in terms of trolling this is more outrageous than normal and not just from him but from Madden as well. This isn’t even on the level of a nod and a wink, this is open and in our faces, this is naked and on full display.

I find it absurd that some in our support would seek to create phantom enemies when the real ones are right in front of us and not even operating from the shadows.

This club doesn’t have to go out and find antagonists, the opposition already exists and is fully engaged with their task.

Scotland is a tiny country, a country where there is an active dislike of our club and its roots and origins; this is a fact. Some of those people are in the media. Some are in the governing bodies.

Some of them run clubs.

Others are, as we all know, active on the periphery of the sport … they exist, and it would be foolish and even dangerous to deny that they are out there. Boyd’s open sniggering with someone he clearly knows reasonably well doesn’t prove that they are part of the same nexus but it proves that they aren’t shy about the idea they might be.

See, when the Ibrox fan-base rants about the Unseen Hand, I think they envision genuine sit-downs between all the principal parties, where conspiracies are mapped out and bad deeds plotted for the future.

Even if their own worst fears were realised it wouldn’t work like that … people don’t get together and plot.

They don’t have to.

In a country this size, these people all move in the same circles so they all know each other already and they all know what’s what.

That’s why when you accuse refs of bias their mates in the media rally round.

Dick Campbell can be touted as a manager of the year in spite of being a stone bigot; his numerous pals in the sport will tell you he doesn’t have a bigoted bone in his body.

I remember Keevins praising – praising – John Brown over his reaction to a bowl of green jelly at an event one night … these people all think this is perfectly normal and even quite funny.

That’s how these things really work, on nods and winks and words to the wise, wee asides which normally happen in private … but which Boyd and Madden, because they are now so confident that they can act with impunity, have made public.

None of these people gives a damn anymore, and that, folks, is what we’re up against.