The Celtic Bus Park Fiasco Is Both Chaotic And Dangerous For Fans.

If you travelled to the last two games on a supporter’s bus, as many, many thousands of our fans do, you’ll know that the parking situation has become increasingly chaotic.

The matches involving the Ibrox club and Real Madrid were characterised by the utter shambles at the end in the bus parks, as bus drivers, un-stewarded and un-policed, all tried to leave the areas at once.

To say that this is a dangerous situation is to put it mildly.

It created predictable chaos, but thankfully nobody got hurt. I was in The Emirates after the Real Madrid match and our coach was one of the last to leave; an hour after the final whistle.

Coaches missed ferry transfers. Fans missed flights and trains. It was a shocking mess, and it happened although there were stewards in the area. I don’t know whether Celtic employ them or not, but people report having seen them standing in groups and allowing the chaos to unfold around them. There was not a police officer in sight.

This was not just the Emirates either. I have friends whose buses park in the area behind Janefield Street, and they reported similarly barmy scenes.

In the aftermath, John Paul Taylor was inundated with messages, and Celtic has since convened a meeting to discuss the matter with all the stakeholders including the police and the council. By God, fans deserve some answers.

The SLO has been as brilliant as ever in trying to get them.

Hopefully, even before the meeting has taken place, this will be the catalyst for those responsible to get the finger out and resolve this situation, which appears to be of fairly recent vintage.

Certainly, things cannot be allowed to devolve to the point where this kind of thing becomes routine. My supporters bus was just one of many which made complaints over this, and the Association has been busy expressing its own displeasure.

These two games were excellent occasions, played in front of full houses. But especially on Tuesday night, they ended with a lot of frustrated and angry people. That should not have happened and it cannot happen again.

It is the absence of any police on the scene which is especially odd, although I know, having once worked in one of the bus-parks, that stewards are perfectly capable of organising an orderly exit for the coaches.

So something went wrong here big time.

The club is determined to find out what, and hopefully whatever it was can be resolved quickly.