This morning, I posted about the Union Brats and their proposed protest. It went ahead as planned, and it was every bit as chaotic, stupid, self-defeating, and moronic as I had expected.
If you’re going to stage a protest and want others to join in, if you want it to serve as a show of force, you need to win hearts and minds. They organized this too quickly to mount any kind of campaign to achieve that. They also failed to adequately explain what the plan was.
As I said in the piece this morning, these people haven’t even considered what happens afterwards. They staged their protest, and it was a complete flop. Their fellow fans booed them. Even if the protest had been deemed a success—with no booing and many supporters also leaving the ground, creating large empty spaces in the stadium—what then? When the board refuses to resign or sack the manager, what comes next?
What they’ve shown is that they can’t carry the rest of the fans with them. Straight away, the board of directors has won a major strategic victory. The Union Brats attempted their little show and were humiliated in the eyes of both their fellow supporters and the people they want to remove.
Reports suggest it wasn’t just booing. Many say coins were thrown at the Union Brats members. I find that slightly ironic, considering the history of objects being thrown at people from Celtic supporters at that ground. This is a glimpse of the future, a preview of what that ground will look like if these people continue their protests and tantrums, flying in the face of many of the club’s other fans.
There will be division. There will be hostility.
You only have to look at the forums tonight to see the absolute carnage and toxicity this has caused. In the meantime, the directors won’t budge an inch. Philippe Clement will continue to have the board’s backing. What these protesters demonstrated today is their own weakness, which only entrenches the board’s position.
I read a comment on Twitter tonight from a fan who said he is grateful that the “Celts for Change” group had a plan and a strategy. They knew what they wanted to do and how to do it. They put time and effort into organizing, held meetings, and won hearts and minds. They made sure their movement had support across the fan base.
The Union Brats, on the other hand, haven’t considered something important: Ultras are not the most popular people in football. They hold an overblown sense of their own importance, acting as if they are the heart and soul of the fan base. They’re not. In fact, support for Ultras among the wider fan base is usually not very high. Ultras can’t lead a fan revolution because many supporters see them as more trouble than they’re worth. That simple fact didn’t even occur to them.
The ironies from today are piling up. What is clear is that this is not an episode they’ll look back on fondly. It has damaged their cause—if we’re calling it that—of ousting the board and forcing a managerial change. It has also damaged their standing with their fellow fans, which for many of them might be the worst part of all.
Tonight, they don’t look like heroes or revolutionaries sweeping in to save their club from the so-called naughty people running it into the ground.
In the eyes of many fellow fans, they look like a joke.
To others, they are the ones who have divided the support with their entitled behaviour. Yes, there are fans who understand the point they were trying to make and stand fully behind them.
But not enough of those fans made their support clear today. Not enough of them joined the walkout. What today revealed is how difficult it will be for any fan group at Ibrox to unite supporters in a common cause.
This hasn’t lessened the crisis over there; it has extended it. Instead of rallying supporters together for change, they’ve divided the fan base and entrenched opinions on all sides.
It’s a disastrous development, and one that we on the Celtic side are eminently grateful for.
Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images
I wonder then if tonight they will go around smashing windows or chucking incendry devices / Pyrotechnics into pubs full of Sevco fans seeing as they allegedly got pied, coined and ‘liquidated’ (How appropriate is that from fellow Sevconians)…
They are not very popular on Wallow Wallow and very much weren’t long before today’s disaster for them !
The only thing that unites those who attend Sevco matches is their total hatred of Irish Catholics, Scottish Catholics, basically any Catholics!
Come on James…
‘ ..sewing division’,
FFS, we look at them and go ‘ ..Ahh blame the schoolz ‘.
Must have suffered brain fart from surfin all that bile on the staunch, tru bloo interwebby thing.
Gie yir heid a wobble. We’ve got standards to maintain.
Thanks to the guys who GENEROUSLY – pointed out that my spellchecker had ONE AGAIN screwed up some spelling by putting the WRONG spelling of a word into an article. To the guys who tried to sound like smartarses, no thanks are in store. I do need to be a bit more careful but some nights you just want to get an article up and posted and forget about work. And so I miss stuff sometimes.
Oops…
Aye St Johnston score in the 54th minute then on the 55th minute the self believing most staunchest walk out in their wee black puffer jackets like some sort of righteous militia group, truth is more than half of these klowns probably don’t even shave yet .
An utterly bunch of embarrassing fannies who even the klanbase mocked them ,then apparently threw whatever in their direction. (BRILLIANT).
Undoubtedly these same self righteous klowns will be back in their seats for the next home game , smug in thinking that they are superior and the more staunchest of the other clan supporters, hopefully this backfired stunt causes a civil war within the klanbase.
It is the most toe curling embarrassing incident I’ve seen yet from the boo boo bears .
Yeah I heard there was coins thrown at their own fans, nothing changes. They’ll beat Aberdeen and Fraserburgh but then Dundee United will force them to sack Clement. The race for 2nd isn’t done yet
It must have been a bit bewildering for them when they gut outside, looked around and not the colour blue showing anywhere, a bit like a mass wake with only black on display, they must have thought it was St Valentine’s Day.
‘They gut outside’ – Are ya implying they’re fat bar stewards now Johnny ! (He He)…
Plenty of their women are for sure…
While The Hoopy-etts in The Emerald Isle play Camogie 24/7/365 The Bare-eats are swigging Lager on their Bonfire collecting…
Not to ma ‘Pallet’ !!!!
Oops, spelling mistake, I’m in trouble now…..got not gut, silly me.
The guys tidying the stands at the end must be worth a fortune…. It was reported thousands left, I would say more like hundreds. Plenty of empty seats at the start of the game also.
I personally do not think Clemente will go this season I think the new leaders are taking this on the chin, bad season move on and rightly targeting the financial woes of the klub. I wonder how long they will last under that policy when the warchest becomes a war wee box. They know the price of disposing of the Belgian waffler.
I saw some bear slapping action in the stands also and those giving it sack the board being ousted from their seats.
I look forward to their draw with the Dons at Ibrox, have we ever witnessed scenes of the club’s own fans ripping up seats and destroying toilets? Could be a reality this season.
Bliss and harmony at Ibrox.