Celtic supporters’ clubs have been told that Dundee will be cutting our allocation for the coming fixture at Dens by around 500 seats.
It doesn’t sound much, but it reduces the total allocation for the game to around 3200. That’s still a lot better than other clubs are giving us, but there will doubtless be plenty of empty seats around the ground … so it’s a blow all the same.
The title race is close, and this is the first weekend of it. So, any cut is not what we wanted to hear, and you can bet that Kilmarnock, if they can, will slash the allocation for that game. This will be especially bad, considering that it could be a league decider.
It really is beyond a joke that we’ve gotten to this.
There needs to be some sort of system in place for away fans; the SPFL has been absolutely shocking in their response to this evolving scandal – and that’s what it’s become. This is now a clear-cut attack on sporting integrity, with clubs now using the lack of a proper away fan guarantee to tilt home games even more dramatically in their favour.
The selfishness of some of the clubs is off the charts here.
They claim to be putting home fans first; this would stand up to scrutiny if some of them had enough home fans to fill the seats, but the number of times we’ve played games away this season with a couple of hundred fans sitting in grounds with thousands of empty seats is a stain on the reputation of this league.
The governing bodies fail to govern, it’s as simple as that. Leaving it to the clubs is nothing but a cop-out. The clubs are the ones who have brought this in and so this system of self-regulation is absolutely farcical. What do we have ruling bodies for if not to intervene in matters such as this? What is the point in these people having authority if they won’t use it?
Celtic should be very concerned by all of this, and our fans already are. There are two away games left this season, but this will be waiting for us on the back end and as we move towards the next campaign, and you know that clubs are going to make ever deeper cuts into our ticket numbers, and especially when so many of them have complained about the conduct of certain supporter’s groups. Every season is going to get harder for away fans if this goes on.
The only positive – and it’s a small consolation to those who want to watch the team home and away – is that most of our away games are still live on TV, or available on pay-per-view. As I’ve written before, if we played in England this would not happen; we’re one of the few supports on this island who can virtually guarantee seeing all our games.
That doesn’t make this any better. In fact, the whole thing stinks. It is about time it was resolved properly, but as we head towards the end of this campaign there is no sign on the horizon that it will be; in fact, Celtic confirmed in their last Fan Forum meeting that there won’t be any change to it in the foreseeable future. That’s bad news for us all.
I am pretty sure Killie will keep the Celtic allocation to the entire Rugby Road Stand as normal.
Should,nr we just offer the clubs that do this say ten seats each at Celtic Park ? Maybe bring some resolution theis nonsense ?
Most of them would still have three or four spare tickets then?????
When I was younger, I went to every game home and away to support Celtic and it was the highlight of my week. I loved the whole scenario, the bus journey, the sing songs and the camaraderie, the chance to visit pubs in the place you visited, it was just a great day out. Now having done all that, and not being fit to go anymore, maybe I am being a bit selfish here, but I think Celtic should refuse to take tickets from any of them, hit them where it hurts, starve them of cash and see what the outcome is. I don’t think their present stance would last too long before they were begging us to reconsider. It may be a bit extreme, but it might benefit us in the long run. They won’t know what they are missing until we show them, it’s time for action.
100% behind this idea – see who caves in 1st – they obviously don’t want our money , so call their bluff !
Not true. DFC are selling the main stand tickets themselves. I know at least one local supporters club/bus got 3 rows direct from DFC.
It’s mental how clubs without a pot to piss in can toss away such freely available business turnover…
But then again given that Scotland is clearly a mentally challenged football country at the top level with mentality challenged governing bodies overseeing it all then perhaps it’s not in any way so surprising after all !
What we need to do for next season is tell those clubs who are slashing our allocation that we will be REFUSING the reduced tickets available, so none of our fans will be in attendance, and we will also refuse away tickets to the fans of the clubs whose stadiums we are boycotting. THIS would be the way to cause maximum embarrassment to the SPFL and hopefully force their hand into sorting out this farce.