No, Martin O’Neill Did Not Condemn The Celtic Fan “Song-Book” Last Week.

Another day and another pathetic attempt at deflection from our media, this time twisting the words of the former Celtic boss Martin O’Neill to try and get it to sound like he condemned the songs of our fans. He did nothing of the kind as even a glance at his statements reveals.

He was on the TalkSport podcast last week – yes, last week, not this morning or anything – and the discussion was moved towards the statement Hibs made where they announced that they would be cutting allocations for certain clubs in the aftermath of the Martin Boyle incident.

Now, before I go any further, Hibs supporting friends of mine have pointed out an important fact; nowhere in their statement have they mentioned Celtic. I’m told it’s better to wait and see on that, and I find that point an interesting one. There may be a twist there.

Still, the media has seized on the reference to “clubs” and not just the one club their fans demanded the cut for, and that means that we’re automatically dragged into this nonsense whenever the chance to do it presents itself. That’s what’s happened here.

Martin O’Neill tentatively praised Hibs for the courage to be willing to lose money to tackle anti-social behaviour in the stands. “It’s impactful and important because if we’re prepared to do that (lose money) we obviously mean it’s gone too far and a line has been crossed and we want to do so something about it and address it,” he said.

“That dialogue will happen with the SFA, SPFL,” he said. And obviously I want to write about that later on today because, actually, that the clubs are trying to deal with this shows just how little the governing bodies have done or are willing to do. “We have a brilliant game in Scotland; we are immensely proud of and we want to make sure it’s observed in the best way possible.”

Notice that O’Neill talks as if he’s still up here. This is a guy with a genuine affection for our game. A lot of the guys who fell in love with our club in that period and who are prominent in the media – like Sutton and Hartson – are amongst Scottish football’s best ambassadors. For some reason our media would rather find people willing to kick our national sport.

O’Neill wants the best for Scottish football. That’s why he wants to see some of the worst behaviour removed from the stands. All of us would applaud those comments, but they aren’t the ones that the hacks want to focus on. They’ve chosen to highlight the next bit.

“He was talking especially about the flares and pyros,” O’Neill says, a point that The Record chose to completely ignore. “A player going to take a corner kick and being pelted with stuff. Those things are issues (for Hibs) rather than sort of tragedy chanting. It’s been going on for a long time.

“Is it something they want to try and ban because someone from a Celtic viewpoint sings The Fields of Athenry or from an (Ibrox) viewpoint sings The Sash My Father Wore? I’m not sure. It’s a brave move of him in reducing an allocation if he thinks this is causing deep offence to a lot of people up there because Hibs will be losing out in terms of money.”

He mentions one song our fans sing and one song the Ibrox fans sing. Neither of those songs is in the least bit offensive. That’s the point O’Neill was making, and he was making it more in relation to Celtic fans and their songs than those at Ibrox sing.

Listen, O’Neill is very subtle at times, and maybe he’s a little too subtle. But it’s not a coincidence that he chose The Fields Of Athenry, one of the most inoffensive songs on the planet. He’s saying that any issue with our fans comes downs to other types of behaviour, like the smoke bombs and the pyro. Nobody can really have an issue with our songs.

He’s said it. Why would Hibs want to ban fans over songs like those? That would be risky. That might even be described as stupidity. Their own fans sing Irish ballads; go to a single Hibs match and that’s clear immediately. Go to a Hibs pub (and I’ve been to a few of them) and you’d swear you’d walked into a new bit of The Brazen Head. O’Neill knows this.

Nobody has to tell Martin O’Neill what the really objectionable chants are. Nobody has to educate him on this. He knows better than almost anyone in the recent history of our game.

The only person who gets it more, who understands it so completely, is Neil Lennon. It was Lennon who was on the end of one of the most poisonous 90 minute hate-fests in Scottish football history, at Ibrox, and it was O’Neill who took a moment after that game to wrap an arm around him and walk him up to the 7000 Celtic fans who even after a defeat left the ground that day fired up and proud.

In the aftermath of that, O’Neill sat in front of the media for a Champions League tie and accused the Ibrox supporters of racism. Anti-Irish racism. That led to UEFA targeting the first Ibrox club for special attention, and that led to the only meaningful sanctions which have ever been handed out to the clubs who have played at that ground for this stuff.

He is aware of what the Hibs fans wrote in their letter to the club, and so he’s clear on what concerns people over there. And let’s not forget, he’s not actually saying that the Hibs chairman is right or wrong … just that he’s brave to be willing to sacrifice club money, but obviously feels that certain incidents were too far.

And what’s the incident? The Martin Boyle one. We all know that. When I say that O’Neill can be too subtle at times what I mean is that he credits his audience with enough intelligence to read between the lines; he should know already that some of our hacks have no interest in doing that and will not place his comments in any kind of context. They will draw from them the meaning that they want and that’s what they will run with, as The Record has done.

At no time did he criticise the songs sung by Celtic fans. If he also hasn’t openly criticised the ones sung by the mob across town it’s because he’s Martin O’Neill and he doesn’t have to. Because nobody in the game with the slightest understanding of life up here is in the least doubt which set of supporters he recognises as being the worst in that regard.

The Record knows all this. They just choose to misrepresent it, all the better to drag us into the muck and the reason they’re keeping a story which is now over a week old going is that the English FA showed us up at the weekend in how they handled an incident at Old Trafford yesterday. Suddenly the Boyle incident is news again … and the Ibrox club’s shame is being broadcast to a whole new and interested audience. So of course that calls for some deflection.

Like I said earlier, O’Neill’s comments came last week … they’re only seeing the light of day now because the media doesn’t want to talk about the hatred of the Ibrox fans and wants to make this a plague on both our houses. We should not let them do that.

Thanks to those who spotted the “offensive” typo when talking about the Fields of Athenry. I did, of course, mean “inoffensive” as all but a handful are clearly aware. This is why I rely on you guys to keep me right!