Celtic’s Callum Osmand puts the hacks to shame with his honest take on Saturday.

Today, after Martin O’Neill had already dismissed Hearts’ ridiculous comments as “nonsense” Callum Osmand became the second person at Celtic to say the quiet part out loud, and I was absolutely delighted with him for it.

Asked about the Celtic fans coming onto the pitch after his goal, he did not reach for the approved language. He did not give the answer the media class probably wanted. He did not stand there and pretend that a moment of pure emotional release was something darker, uglier or more sinister. He told the truth.

He said he could not see for about 30 seconds. He said everyone was ecstatic. He said it was a joyful moment. He said he did not blame the supporters. In fact, he said he probably would have been one of them running on.

Beautiful. Stripped of the BS, that is what football passion sounds like. That’s a guy who remembers what it was like to sit in the stands. That is what honesty sounds like before it is squeezed through the machinery of modern football PR.

And that, really, is what this whole argument has been about for days.

Paulina wrote earlier about pitch invasions mostly manifesting as statements of joy, and she was right to do so. Because that is the word that has been almost entirely missing from the coverage since Celtic won the title.

Joy. Not disorder. Not chaos. Not crisis. Not shame. Joy.

A young player scored one of the biggest goals of his life in one of the biggest games this country has seen in years. Celtic Park erupted. Supporters lost themselves in the moment. The league title was effectively won in a burst of noise, disbelief and emotion. People did what football supporters have done for generations. They crossed the line between watching history and becoming part of it.

That does not mean pitch invasions should be encouraged. It does not mean there should be no consequences for anyone who behaved badly. It does not mean anyone sensible wants players put at risk. But there is a difference between recognising that and pretending the whole thing was some sort of national disgrace.

Osmand understands that difference because he was there.

He was not sitting in a studio trying to manufacture outrage. He was not writing a column from a position of sour-faced resentment or dripping with bitterness. He was not trying to turn Celtic’s title into a morality play about everything supposedly wrong with Scottish football. He was in the middle of it. He lived the moment from the pitch itself, and his instinctive reaction was not fear, anger or condemnation.

It was understanding. That matters because it cuts straight through the nonsense we have had to listen to since Saturday. The attempt to portray Celtic supporters as uniquely disgraceful. The attempt to turn celebration into criminality. The attempt to make the aftermath of a title win more important than the title win itself.

This is what we have been saying across several pieces now.

They cannot stop Celtic winning, so they try to stop Celtic enjoying it. They cannot take the trophy away, so they try to poison the memory around it. They cannot rewrite the league table, so they try to rewire the emotional architecture around it.

That is why Osmand’s comments are so useful.

They drag the whole thing back to reality. A happy moment. A joyful moment. A moment where emotion got the better of people. That is football.

It is what the pitch-invasion piece Paulina wrote this morning was about as well. Football history is full of moments like this.

Lisbon. Wembley 77. England in 1966. Hibs in 2016. Supporters crossing that boundary in moments of release, shock, triumph and disbelief. Some incidents become ugly, and when they do, they should be dealt with properly. But not every pitch invasion is a riot. Not every emotional eruption is a collapse of civilisation.

Sometimes it is just people being overwhelmed by what they have witnessed.

That is what happened at Celtic Park and maybe that is what annoys some people most. Because this title was not supposed to end in joy. It was supposed to end in our humiliation. Hearts were supposed to complete the fairy tale. The Ibrox club were supposed to have exposed us earlier. The media had spent weeks preparing itself for a different kind of story.

Instead, Celtic did what Celtic so often do.

We found a way. We won the big moments. We stole the fairytale out from under them. Then the supporters celebrated like people who probably had not believed they would see moments such as those.

Osmand got it because he felt it. His comments do not excuse everything. They do not need to. What they do is restore proportion, and proportion is exactly what has been missing.

The media can keep howling. Hearts can keep nursing their grievance. Pundits can keep pretending this title was decided by anything other than 38 games of football. But one of the players at the heart of the moment has told us what it was.

It was joy. Pure, human, uncontrollable joy.

And no amount of hand-wringing can make that something shameful.

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