This Is The Week When The Celtic Board Has To Visibly Come Out Swinging.

The headline to this piece was written last night.

Between my putting it in a folder for today and starting this article, Celtic has been told that the referee for the game between Livingston and our club is none other than Don Robertson, whose decisions against Hearts are about to put Brendan Rodgers in the frame at his Hampden disciplinary.

That’s just a month ago. Do you see any sign of Willie Collum getting a gig refereeing a game involving our rivals? How many games ago is it since they made their demand that he not do so?

I don’t care what the weak men running our club say; putting the pressure on, targeting it where it belongs, delivers results. They got their way.

Their club stamps its feet and no matter how disgusting their assertions are – Collum is targeted on the basis of his religion, nothing more – they get what they want. They allege bias and no-one blinks. Rodgers faces a multi-match ban because a ref is bad at his job and he had the temerity to say so. I find that shocking. Our club should be outraged.

Our case looks extremely strong to me. We only need to point to Collum to suggest that other clubs have done much worse. Motherwell released their own furious statement last week. But because nobody put a name to it that’s permissible. The rulebook in Scotland borders on farcical, but it’s kept that way, I think, because people prefer it like this.

All that grey area. It gives unscrupulous clubs and individuals all the freedom to navigate that they want. Celtic’s case here should be cast-iron. When you look at what the Ibrox club did over Collum, you cannot say that what Rodgers did was worse merely because he used his own name and that of the ref.

The Ibrox club leaked their demand through fan media.

That it’s been effective only increases the strength of our case.

But in giving us Don Robertson straight after that hearing they are telling us where we can go. We’re going to lose our case, nothing is surer. Rodgers will face a sanction, and will almost certainly not be on the touchline for the Ibrox game. That’s what we’re looking at.

In terms of the Rodgers ban, there is precisely nothing we can do to change, or even challenge, the verdict if it goes against us. That might be the worst and most shocking element of this. There’s no court of appeals here; I’ve heard talk of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but it’s a dead end as both sides have to agree to that process and it takes six months on average.

But we cannot accept a negative verdict as something we just have to live with.

The head of referees is leaving, and that can’t come quick enough, but I think our concerns about what havoc he might try to wreck on our club on the way out the door are more than justified, and this is the start of it, this insult of giving us Don Robertson so swiftly after Tynecastle whilst Collum hasn’t even appeared as an assistant at a game involving the club across town since their very sinister demand that he not get any more of their matches. You couldn’t get a clearer signal.

This is the moment, Celtic. Prior to these next two games, matches we will almost certainly lose our manager for, we have to stop being so passive and we have to come out swinging.

This club prides itself on fighting the good fight in the right way, professionally … but whilst we’re observing the Marquis of Queensbury rules the other side is gearing up for trench warfare with a knife clamped between their teeth.

Our method does not work. Theirs does.

At the very least we have to highlight the double standard and demand reform.

If there was a time for it, the time is now.