Ross County’s Allegation Against “Celtic Fans” Is Serious. We Should Demand They Back It Up.

How easy it is to smear Celtic fans through the media these days. Ross County has done so today and The Record is only too keen to publish their allegation that their ticket office has been “intimidated and threatened” by our supporters whilst they tried to buy briefs for the wrong end of the ground. That story smells like a rotted fish to me.

I went online a moment before I started to write this, and did some poking about. There are tickets for this match on sale on at least a half dozen “tout” sites. And we’re expected to believe that our fans have attempted to go through Ross County’s own ticket office and then issued threats when their efforts were rebuffed?

Excuse me for having doubts. Someone is playing games here and it ain’t us.

Ross County are just one of a number of clubs in this league who have failed, lamentably, to market their tickets to their own fans in significant numbers and yet persist in trying to lock paying customers out of games. Scottish football, it seems to me, has had a collective outbreak of insanity over this stuff in recent years … and it’s costing teams.

These are pretty serious allegations to make, and especially through a public forum. Ross County’s own statement is shabby and missing a few crucial things like hard facts. They talk about “suspected Celtic fans”; what forensic examination have done into these folks that they have been allowed to form that suspicion, a suspicion that allows them to attack our entire support?

Celtic should be asking for clarification. Hell, Celtic should be asking for evidence and making it clear that this kind of public hatchet job isn’t going to wash. The overtly aggressive tone of their club’s statement is also bang out of order; our fans have no history of making trouble up there and so quite where this nonsense has come from I don’t know.

Engaging in threats and intimidation? It seems a bit stupid to me when the first requisite for getting tickets up there is having to actually pick them up in person … I am sure their club records these sort of calls. Maybe they want to pass them onto Celtic, for our own investigatory purposes. Had they done that instead of releasing their spiteful statement, I would suggest that this article wouldn’t have been necessary.

But that, of course, would have denied them their opportunity to play to whatever gallery they are aiming for here.

Look, anyone who gives ticket office staff abuse is a moron, for want of a word that I can get away with. We don’t want people like that amongst our fans far less mingling with the opposition, but their statement reads as a blanket attack on our fan-base, without a single word in support of the fans who just want to watch their team.

It’s a sufficiently serious charge that Celtic should be asking if they can prove it. If they can’t, then they had damned well better withdraw it.