Last week, I was a virtual guest at a meeting between the Celtic Trust and the Celtic fan media sites. Nothing dramatic happened during that meeting; the Trust wants Celtic shareholders to help get them to 5% of the shareholding so that they can “hold the board to account.”
I’m in favour of it, although it’s a long-term plan which won’t help us in the here and now.
There was an open meeting last night in Grace’s. I decided not to attend it. I already knew exactly how that meeting was going to go.
Because in the interim, a senior member of a support’s group went on Twitter to suggest that fans at Motherwell attempt to down a police drone, a section of our support wrecked seats and plastered stickers all over them at that game, and on Wednesday night at Celtic Park a fan group put up a banner attacking Police Scotland and making sure that it slandered every single serving cop in the country, including those who are Celtic fans.
This on the day that the club sent them an open letter warning them of their conduct. Again. There’s almost certainly another conflict between the club and those fans coming and at the worst possible time. The whole thing is taking on a depressingly familair shape, and we simply cannot afford that to happen with the league race this close.
There was no point in attending that meeting last night in any capacity or form.
Because the point was to find a way to put pressure on the board, and a lot of these people are too busy waging their private wars against the police and the council and UEFA and anyone else who tells them that they have to obey the same laws and rules as everyone else.
And so the idea of pressuring this board to make meaningful changes inside Celtic will be lucky to see the light of day again this season unless things unravel in a big way. If we win the league, there will be no concerted fan campaign against these guys and the summer will bear a striking resemblence to the last one. Nothing changes, at least not for the better.
The focus on targeting the police is worriesome if I’m being generous.
I think policing at away games is becoming increasingly draconian. The video footage of a fan being physically held on the ground which was passed around the internet in the aftermath of the Motherwell game looks distrubing on the surface of it
But this Mexican Standoff with the police and the increased security at games was not only a predictable outcome, but this blog and others did predict it when flares became commonplace in the stands, which is to say nothing for other crazy behaviour.
A large police presence and the heavy hand that goes with it it is the all-too predictable consequence of people breaking seats, fighting with stewards, trying to enter without tickets and sneaking in flares. Act like hooligans and you give the police no choice. Overcrowding a section of a stand is dangerous even without flares and fireworks and nobody should be defending any of it.
The people responsible for that behaviour are a menace and I am sick and tired of writing about them because it only panders to their attention seeking.
I mean how do you expect Police Scotland to respond to some of this stuff? These guys don’t want a Hillsborough on their hands, and the more behaviour like this happens the more aggressive they have to be in trying to contain it. This thing is ugly and getting uglier and I am mystified by those who would seek to make matters worse.
I just don’t understand that at all.
And in the meantime, the people who run our club like it belongs to them and they can do as they please, and who have jeopordised this title race and are taking huge risks with the next one, sit in comfort and feel no pressure at all.
Where is their pressure on the board over the shameful state of the football department?
Are our fans really content with the cronyism and nepotism, or does that stuff matter less to them than other things, most of them nothing to do with Celtic? Why are our fan groups more interested in fighting with the authorities than gutting out their own club?
The worst of it is, this will damage any attempt to reform Celtic from the inside. It will stop smart, capable people from wanting to get involved in any campaign because of the very genuine fear that it will be hijacked for other purposes and in pursuit of other goals.
And that does worry me an awful lot, based on the reports back from last night’s meeting.
That endeavour will take serious, credible people and some of those who were the loudest voices at that meeting last night aren’t that, and any campaign which wants to elevate their cause as one of its objectives is not one that the club will take seriously.
There are good and dedicated people who want the things the majority of the fan-base want, and aren’t interested in seeing Celtic Park as a forum for geopolitics or picking fights with the council and the Scottish Government and certainly not with the police.
They just want Celtic to be all it can be.
And some of them were at that meeting last night, and some of them want to move forward in a positive and grounded way. I will do whatever I can to assist those people in that endeavour. I will keep on beating on this board when they deserve it, and for the things they’ve done wrong.
Some of the people at that meeting want to defend neds and even encourage ned behaviour; I’m not cool with that and I want no part of it. If you’ve ever seen Succession, you’ll understand what I mean when I compare them to the spoiled offspring of Logan Roy.
In other words, “not serious people.”
The other day, I wrote about how Hibs fans demanded their club cut our allocation for Easter Road at their AGM in part, they said, about the behaviour of our supporters.
And as I wrote last night they did that only for it to blow up in their faces when their fans made a spectacle of themselves at the derby.
But whilst I found that funny and I think their stance has got as much to do with them trying to gain a sporting advantage as anything else, the conduct of some of our fans doesn’t make our argument against that cut easier to sustain and in fact it runs counter to any attempt our club makes to negotiate a settlement on minimum allocations.
We will get nowhere with that whilst a section of our fan-base behaves as it does. Why, for example, would Motherwell entertain the idea of a minimum allocation guarantee after the pictures of all those broken seats from the weekend?
In their eyes the less of Celtic fans they see the better.
Try convincing them otherwise whilst this nonsense is going on; it’s a losing battle, and it’s not even fair to ask the club to fight it when they themselves know that there is a section of our support which is bang out of order.
All of this is to say that until folk get real there’s no point in having public meetings or anything else, and the idea of giving certain people actual power to dictate the policies of this club is even less appealing than leaving the current incumbents in charge, and regular readers will know full well how unacceptable I consider that scenario to be.
We badly need a Celts For Change 2 campaign. It’s imperative.
But you have to care who leads such a campaign, you have to care who you might be putting around that table and I cannot imagine some of these people in those roles, and before anyone makes the giant leap I’m certainly not suggesting that I should be because that is the furthest thing from my mind and I have exactly zero interest in assuming such a position.
We need leaders of gravitas, intelligence and a streak of pragmatism, people connected to reality, and who understand what’s possible and not.
When we have some, count me in and I’ll follow wherever they lead.
No matter what, some of our support will never take a telling.
They are more interested in their political actions rather than what is happening football wise.
Now this has led to us losing a player who has done well for us. Will this have any input into players joining us if there is any political issue at hand? If they had been around 30 years ago we would have had no Di Canio or Thom, I cannot remember anyone referring to anything but their football qualities. A club for everyone as long as you toe the political line according to that faction
The worst element of our support is the section that suddenly appeared in what used to be the family stand adjacent to the Jock Stein stand. Whoever gave these young neds the space to spout their idiotic and sometime sectarian chants have made a big mistake. As a retired active Trade Unionist and an Independence supporter I don’t mind a bit of thoughtful politics, supporting persecuted and discriminated against populations, but this should be kept to outside the ground.
Inside the ground should be all about supporting the team, and let’s face it this team really needs our support from now until the end of the season.
Good leadership in any enterprise is essential.
I am a firm believer in “cometh the hour, cometh the man (or woman).
Until this happens I am afraid that we are simple hostages to fortune and will have to endure the noises off of so many personal axes being ground.
At LONG last. You have come out and said it in the plainest terms possible. We need organisation away from the pond life who use Celtic as their soapbox to spread their message of “It’s all about us”.
I know you’ve hinted at things going on behind the scenes but eventually someone is going to have to put their head above the parapet and lead.
This needs to happen now.
Following on from your article about Hibs’ fans’ behaviour, it’s hugely important that our team gets undivided support between now and when we hopefully retain this title.
It’s disturbing and disappointing to hear about more issues at away games, with the fallout, potentially and negatively impacting our season again.
Surely not …?
Kick the green brigade out for good, and send out letters to the entire season ticket base asking for people who prefer to sing and create an atmosphere to relocate to the standing section, you wil then have 2,000 people sing Rather than 200
And whilst there is a lack of leadership and focus across the support,
there will remain a lack of diverse, astute leadership on the Board.
Our CEO is paid the big bucks, but he is not a leader.
Our ‘Non-Exec’ Charmain is the de facto leader of the club,
who likes nothing better than being in the limelight.
Yet, even Lawwell is aware that he has to curtail his public utterings,
due to him being loathed by most of the support.
Just don’t think either Lawwell or Nicholson could remotely cope with a
concerted, supporters’ action to force change?
I’m voting for Scud Missile to lead us forward, he can be the forum’s champion.
Bwahahahahahahahahaha
Brilliant piece James. Our club is being driven by self indulgence. The self indulgence of a Board that thinks it knows best- and with that self indulgence comes complacency -witness the transfer signings – and we have a group of fans who are self indulgent – they seem to think that Celtic Park is a venue for their world view first and foremost. The Green Brigade are an indulgence and a distraction. I am a socialist republican and proud of it – but when i go to Parkhead I go to support Celtic not anything else. Frankly I am tired of these 90 minute revolutionaries- their pyrotechnics and their self indulgence – they are more like the board than they are prepared to admit – for both it is all about them and not all about the club
Good points well made James. It’s beyond embarrassing now. We’re giving those who hate us plenty of ammunition to attack us. I do like the Green Brigade, but they overstep the mark far too often.
The ACAB banner was just so pathetic. Time for them to tone it down or gtf out of our club.
Only Celtic could find themselves in a situation like this at such a critical juncture of the season…
The Green Brigade undoubtedly bring both colour and massive vocal backing to Parkhead and there were times before they were ever on the scene that it was like a library or a cemetery even when Celtic were winning –
And then you have the Away supporters alleged issues…
They definitely need to box more cleverly for sure especially with banners at Parkhead –
The media hate us and will obviously report things – But when these things are starting everyone in the face in plain sight it’s difficult to defend it…
The only beneficiaries in it all are a young football club called Sevco who as of today are 11 years and 216 days old.
Think more of Celtic please folks with the banners and the alleged behaviour at Away matches…
(PS – I’ll not lecture them about singing songs as that’d place me as a hypocrite as I gave it laldy in my days of going to The Jungle at Parkhead and every Irish Rebel and Irish Freedom song that was aired, well I was right in there with the loudest of them) !
Fantastic piece James. Every fan is hoping for the same outcome. New modern thinking in the board. That would be great. On the subject of our away fans. Anybody that breaks seats Is bang out of order. Stickers on seats, For heavens sake please grow up that is the behaviour of 10 year olds. A total embarrassment to yourself and our club.
The abhorrent behaviour of some of our ‘so called fans’ should not be tolerated any longer, it must be nipped in the bud now. I have witnessed some of this behaviour and it makes me ashamed to be a Celtic supporter when we see the actions of this loony lot. For more years than I remember, our Supporters were well respected wherever we went, however, that is no longer the case. I suspect that their behaviour is the result of alcohol and or drugs as normal people would not behave in this manner. Whilst we all enjoy the singing and noise that that is a large part of the Celtic Park experience, it brings with it a certain amount of responsibility, including no political flags, no flares and moderate language. Remember that the Scottish press will concentrate exclusively on any bad behaviour by our fans at the expense of any good behaviour and actions. Stop giving them the ammunition that they seek to paint our club in a bad way. We are there to support the team and make it an enjoyable experience for all. HH
Welcome to the new normal, as they say, Things won`t get any better. This is the world we have all created, mainly with our silence. The type of people that`s needed for change no longer exist among the support. You could call it evolution. I have seen a lot of it happening, more than most even. Celtic started off as a charitable organisation with
catholic, christian principles and see where they are now, run by multi-millionaires with not a charitable bone in their bodies. Sadly, though, the support has evolved at equal pace.
I remember as a boy standing outside Mass on a Sunday enthralled by the talk, all about
Celtic, by the men of the parish, all miners in the local pits. On the Celtic bus it was Skibereen, The Old Fenian Gun and Isle of Innisfree type songs. I didn`t know that men swore in those days despite having six older brothers. I thought it was only the boys at
school that used bad language. Compare that to when I took my son on a Celtic bus.
The “convenor” regaled us about his marital gymnastics. Fast forward to the present and we are now equal to those whom we used to condemn. The gap has closed in the terraces every bit as severe as the boardroom. So much for the secular society we were
so desperate to join. Statistics show that churchgoers are the least likely to be lawbreakers. Even farmers are well up the list but the only churches we wish to enter now are those converted to pubs or massage parlours. Even folk like McGlone, Haughey
and Dempsey no longer exist far less Fergus The Bunnet. The violence at sports meetings all over the world has worsened over the past couple of years and it ain`t going
to go away unless we all change. The days of Celtic having the best fans in the world are over. In fact, these ratbags that are causing all the trouble don`t want to be known as nice guys because it`s looked on as a sign of weakness. No, I`m afraid we`ve made our beds and just have to lie in them. So batten down the hatches while it still unendingly evolves with the sheep syndrome speeding it up.
Very true. A fan recently told me he went to the match on a supporters’ bus because his car was being repaired. He said there was someone on the bus selling heroin.
Simple
Take the standing area away. Put in better facilities for our fans who attend the games with carers and fans who need their wheelchairs , fans with impairments and so on. The board bend over backwards every time the snowflakes have a hissy fit too They honestly are having the reverse effect now with the constant bitterness and spite on all things usually unrelated to the club and some that are.
The stadium atmosphere now on a Saturday is ruined because we all became accustomed to somebody else singing for us, no wonder they think they speak for us too.
Hail hail