Celtic’s Tynecastle Allocation Is Disgusting. It’s A Joke That The SPFL Allows This To Happen.

Celtic fans have been told that they well get less than 600 tickets for the game at Tynecastle. This is another reduction, and it’s one that shows how unacceptable and disgusting the current away ticket situation has become.

It is a disgrace that the governing body stands back and allows this. Their complete failure to show leadership is killing the national game.

I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Once you stop away fans from attending matches they fall out of that habit. You see empty seats in grounds all over the country every week now, so this isn’t about prioritising home supporters as some have suggested; it blatantly discriminates against certain clubs and their fans, most notably ours.

Hearts, who are one of the clubs continuously making this claim, don’t restrict tickets for their biggest rivals in this way, so their claim that they do it in our case because that allows them to give as many tickets as possible to their own fans is held up to be a transparent fiction. The reason clubs do this now is to gain a sporting advantage, it is as simple as that.

Almost every league in Europe has a guaranteed away fan allocation. This is another glaring example of how our league lags behind others in allowing gaping holes in the regulations. There is no reason why they couldn’t have put a minimum figure on there. Until recently it would have sailed through in a vote of the clubs. It’s only recently that’s become an issue.

Why are they letting this go on? They can claim that this requires the consent of the clubs, but in fact the SPFL executive has taken decisions out of the hands of the clubs before and they could easily do the same here. The clubs shouldn’t be near this decision. It’s the clubs who have done it. But they should never have been allowed to anyway.

The SPFL executive is weak. It projects its weakness. It’s why I knew we could get away with banning Ibrox fans from Celtic Park; what exactly was the SPFL going to do about that? It must be one of the most gutless football bodies anywhere, one that is content to administer without actually doing one bit of governance, and that’s how we got here.

Heart’s decision is a total nonsense, and if it wasn’t for the fact so many of our away games are shown live on television our away support would be even more disenfranchised, to the point we’d be lucky if the average fan saw any games which aren’t played at home.

The UEFA regulations exist for two reasons; to allow away fans the chance to watch their team, realising in the words of Stein that “football without the fans is nothing” and to protect sporting integrity in giving even the away club a suitable following to cheer them on.

And you know what? The best and most vocal statement in support of the fans that I’ve heard in the game since this crisis sprung up with Ibrox’s appalling decision to limit our tickets came from a player at the weekend just passed, and it was a women’s player at that.

Caitlin Hayes was absolutely superb in standing up for the rights of fans to watch their team and she called out the governing bodies as well as the Ibrox club. But you know what? She was also criticising ours because they’ve not done nearly enough.

Their statement – and I was glad we made one, but found it lacking – was pitiful compared to hers, which was magnificent in its fury and its disgust that this is what we have come to.

She showed the sort of leadership and the coherence in thinking that those running the clubs and the game itself are badly lacking, and if there more like her we wouldn’t be in this mess which gets deeper and darker and murkier the longer it goes on.