Earlier, I wrote about how this has nearly been the perfect international fortnight—aside from AJ’s potential injury scare and the little bit of unwelcome news that dropped yesterday from another club in our domestic league.
That news is that St Johnstone has become the latest SPFL club to cut ticket allocations for our supporters—and for the supporters across town.
Frankly, I care less about them because their club, and its pettiness and stupidity, as we’ve pointed out on this site before, is the cause of all this in the first place.
There were clubs who flirted with the idea of cutting ticket allocations for both sets of fans for years, and might never have done so had their club not put the cat amongst the pigeons by doing it to us, which forced us to do the same. I wonder how many other clubs would have taken such action if their spiteful board hadn’t done it first.
The St Johnstone ticket cut is unwelcome but sadly not unexpected.
This is the norm now: clubs would rather lose money than welcome our supporters, which I think is a shocking indictment of the state of our league. Our association has failed to protect the experience of away fans and seems clueless about how to handle this.
We’ve seen game after game played in front of half empty stands because clubs are turning away paying customers at a time when most of Scottish football is pleading poverty. It’s not just how it affects us; it’s a sign of the small-minded mentality prevalent in the game. Scottish football is failing, and perhaps it deserves to, with attitudes like this.
This isn’t about prioritising their own supporters either. St Johnstone, in the press release informing the wider world of this ridiculous decision, are practically begging their own fans to fill the seats they’ve cut from our allocation.
So, this isn’t an egalitarian measure—far from it.
At best, it’s petty and selfish; at worst, it’s an attempt to neutralise the power of the Celtic away support, an infringement on sporting integrity. That’s precisely why most European associations and UEFA itself have regulations on minimum ticket guarantees.
Our association has utterly failed to protect supporters from this deplorable behaviour by clubs. It has also failed to protect these clubs from their own daft actions, allowing them to inflict damage upon themselves with such policies. It begs the question of what our association is actually for when the supposed governors of the game refuse to govern, protect away supporters, or uphold the sporting integrity on which the game is supposed to be based.
It’s embarrassing that in a league without a major TV deal, where every club outside Celtic Park complains endlessly about the financial gulf, they are willing to leave money on the table simply because they don’t want our fans. And people who behave like that, in such a self-destructive manner, also threaten the future of the away match experience. They do not deserve to escape the fate they’ve tied themselves to.
For a club like St Johnstone, the money our fans traditionally bring to their ground could be the difference between a top-six finish and a relegation battle. It could even determine whether they stay up or go down.
When Hearts did it, when Ibrox did it, and when other clubs did it, they could at least hide behind the excuse of protecting their own supporters.
But St Johnstone has no such excuse, nor do other clubs like them. So, I do not wish them well; I just can’t bring myself to. I do not hope for their survival in light of this action. I hope it proves costly because a club of their size cannot afford to leave hundreds of thousands of pounds on the table over the course of a campaign without it having a profoundly adverse effect on their team, and they’ve done it anyway, knowing that to be the case.
They would rather risk those consequences than welcome our fans; so be it.
Only in a game as warped as this, with such skewed priorities, could something like this happen—and be allowed to happen by a governing body that sits back, watches, and does nothing.
Only in Scottish football do people behave so stupidly, so counterproductively, and with such flawed motivations, and I do not exclude us from criticism here because we deserve some stick ourselves.
For years, we have propped up this incompetent regime and allowed this nonsense and other ridiculous situations to proliferate. We have failed to assume a leadership role and prosecute that role on behalf of the common good, and we have allowed spineless no marks to run the game.
Until we get serious about reforming Scottish football—no organisations anywhere in the game are more in need of it—this is the sort of garbage we will have to endure over and over again.
Hi James, been reading this too and not sure the actual cut is factual. Seems it’s more of an adjusting of where fans are seated
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/football/st-johnstone/5079101/st-johnstone-rangers-celtic-ticket-numbers-mcdiarmid-park/
And when a Coy looks at half empty stadium and thinks why the hell are we shelling out advertising revenue to these clubs who are clearly not intent in giving us the exposure we are paying for. From a TV perspective it looks like a 3rd division English game with the place looking deserted.
Maybe the rest of the Premier league are looking to follow the Sevco example and close one side of their grounds!!!!!!!!!!
They appointed Craig Levein as manager. Tells you all you need to know about them.
A joke of a club that deserves to fail and no sympathy when it does.
Agricultural fannies. Oo Arr!
What if we refuse any away tickets unless and until a solid agreement is in place for a fair allocation. Maybe a bit nuclear but it might sharpen some minds
I’ve been saying the same thing for ages now. No Celtic fans attending away games and no revenue from us will soon panic them into an about turn. We need to take a firm stance on this by going to the bully.
I would have thought that those clubs cutting our allocation and then not selling all of the tickets would leave board members on a rather sticky wicket. It is one of the fiduciary duties of a director to ensure that the organisation (football club) maximises its income and therefore the dividend payable to shareholders. It would take just one disgruntled shareholder to open up this can of worms.
I guess most Scottish clubs’ shares are held by fans who are happy enough to go down this road so that they don’t have to sit in the stands as a minority at their home games.
Tell them To SLING their hook and Get to Fuck that should be (not slipping their hook as it reads) !
Apologies Jimmy R… That was supposed to be a correction to my own text further down…
Arrrrrgh – Old age, getting blinder and a few drams of whisky are a bad mix these days !
Who wants to listen to the Ugly Sisters songbook every other week?
If it works for them and their fans make it up to a full house v Celtic and Sevco then fair enough…
But somehow I simply cannot see that happening at all…
So if they hit hard times thereafter then what…
Beg us (and The Sevco Huns) back –
Not that I did many Celtic away games in ma hey day of being a season ticket holder, but if they begged me back I’d tell them to slipping their hook and to Get to Fuck !
This isn’t really much of a cut, TBH, it’s simply saying they won’t return to the bigger allocation we occasionally got there which had meant displacing home season ticket holders to elsewhere in order to accommodate visiting fans, which as you can imagine went down like a cup of cold sick with their supporters – most Celtic season ticket holders wouldn’t care for it if the shoe was on the other foot. St Johnstone are also under new American ownership and this is part of their strategy to get bums on seats by home fans. Time will tell of course, but personally I think visiting Celtic fans and Sevco enthusiasts were less of an inhibitor to home fans attending than the prospect of watching ‘Leveinball’, a style of fitba’ which belongs as firmly in the ‘90s as Oasis – although unlike St Johnstone they can still fill stadiums!
@ CS. Haha. Liked that comment and quite true. Tho tbh, ah fail tae see how a ‘cup of cold sick’ would be any less ‘acceptable’ than a warm yin. Ah’ve never tried either, so ahm just sayin
I think the idea is based on its similarity to soup… warm sick would be more like soup – unpleasant, but probably borderline edible. Cold sick on the other hand, has been vomited, left to get cold or chilled and would be a bit congealed, probably more lumpy. Might not even be your own sick either!
This is truly head scratching. Someone has to take the St Johnston Board to court. The Board I assume have a fiscal responsibility to do the best they can to ensure the financial success of the club. This is clearly not in the “best they can” park. Like other clubs they may think it gives them some kind of sporting advantage. That seems to be failing too. We spank them and they earn less money while being spanked. Turkeys voting for Christmas again in Scottish football.