GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MAY 16: Celtic manager Martin O'Neill during a William Hill Premiership match between Celtic and Heart of Midlothian at Celtic Park, on May 16, 2026, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Paul Devlin/SNS Group via Getty Images)
There have been times over the last couple of days when I genuinely thought I must be going mad. I’m sure a lot of Celtic supporters feel the same way. You read stuff so far removed from reality as you understand it, and from the world as you have seen it with your own eyes, that you start to wonder whether we are the crazy people after all.
Maybe everyone else is seeing things as they are.
Maybe we are the ones looking through bias.
Because it is hard. It is hard when the narrative in the media and in the wider world feels completely at odds with your understanding of reality.
It is always good, therefore, when something drags you back out of your own head and reminds you that no, in fact, we are the sane.
That’s a quote from 1984. So is “sanity is not statistical.”
We are the sane.
It does not matter how the rest of the world looks, or acts, or behaves, or thinks, or wants you to think. We are the sane.
What brought me back out of it was reading a Twitter exchange yesterday between Johnny McFarlane, the former Ibrox blogger who now works for a mainstream national title, and Tom English. It was about the interview Martin O’Neill gave yesterday on TalkSport.
What amazed me was that they seemed to think Jim White had come out of it better.
To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know how anyone reaches that conclusion. Even straining every mental sinew, the only people who could possibly reach that view are those not looking at it from a logical standpoint at all.
Martin O’Neill reminded us in that moment what an outstanding individual we have in charge of this club. He stood up for supporters and spoke up for common sense. Apparently, English and McFarlane didn’t like what he had to say. That does not surprise me, since I know which perspective they are approaching the whole thing from.
Nobody can realistically believe White came out of that looking even competent. He asked a question. When he didn’t like the answer, he got rattled and upset, then tried to get O’Neill to reverse himself. O’Neill pointedly refused to do so.
They think that was some superb example of journalism on White’s part, but that only proves they would not know journalism if it bit them on the arse. Either that, or they are too lost in their own bitterness to recognise that what White did was not journalism at all.
We benefited from seeing the live video feed of it, and the look on White’s face was not that of a man in control. It was the look of a man who had lost control of the interview and was struggling to stay in control of his emotions.
He was the one who was rattled. You could see it a mile away.
I don’t know if he expected Martin O’Neill to echo the statement from the board and immediately condemn our supporters, but Martin did nothing of the sort. His characterisation of the entire narrative around this as nonsense was 100% right.
To have that aired on national radio was the closest any outlet in the mainstream media has come to actually telling the truth here.
It took our manager to do it.
Of course Hearts’ statement is nonsense. It is hysterical. No one seriously believes Hearts players left Celtic Park because they felt threatened or because they thought their safety was at risk.
As I pointed out, Celtic players stayed behind at Ibrox after both sets of supporters were on the pitch, with one set of supporters, the home supporters, intent on harming as many of our fans, players and staff as they could. Police Scotland did not pack Celtic players and the manager into a dressing room and advise them to leave the ground.
I’ve watched the footage of Hearts players getting onto the team bus. Not a single one of them looks like someone who has suffered an assault. There is no wound visible. There is no blood visible. In fact, their players look like any other team that has just lost a major game.
Some of them were feeling aggrieved enough to have a go at Celtic fans who were giving them a bit of a slagging, and I have heard the events outside the ground characterised as ugly and intimidating.
That is absolute rubbish when you watch those scenes.
Over on the KDS forum, someone hilariously and sarcastically described it as being like the last chopper out of Saigon.
They took a bit of a ripping. Nothing more. It was not anything we have not seen a thousand times from teams leaving Celtic Park. The Ibrox club is subjected to it every time they visit the ground. It is normal. It is absolutely standard stuff.
For anyone to claim that it was somehow an intimidating, hostile or dangerous environment, well watch the footage for yourself and you will laugh at how risible that claim is.
O’Neill knew exactly what he was saying, and he knew he was right. In the end, he told White that he would go away, look at the footage and come back on the show. I have no doubt that he will. When he does, he will again brutalise Jim White with facts and truth.
Yes, I know it is not strictly kosher to use fact, truth and logic against these folks. I know that to some people that’s just another version of cheating.
Martin will do it all the same.
So I owe English and McFarlane a debt. It is not one I will ever repay them, because I frankly don’t like either of them. As I said on Twitter, I find their pain, and the depth of it, absolutely hilarious.
But they also reminded me that we are the sane.
We are not the ones behaving irrationally, unreasonably or irresponsibly.
In fact, we are the only people who can see this with a clear head and who are willing to say, in blunt terms, what is surely obvious to some of the people banging on the war drums and making all this noise.
Over on the Hibs forums, they are calling Hearts the team who ran. That is exactly what they did. Not from intimidation. Not from any physical threat. Not from a belief that they would be harmed.
They ran from having to confront their own inadequacies as footballers and their own inadequacy as a club. They ran from having to stand there and do the sportsmanlike thing by watching their opponents take the prize.
I hope the SPFL decides to bring Hearts to Celtic Park for the opening game of the season. Then we’ll see whether they have enough decency about them to give us the guard of honour we deserve, and which they were determined not to give us on the day.
When you make extreme allegations, they are going to get extreme scrutiny. When you use inflammatory language, other people are going to call you out for it.
I am sure White expected a different answer from O’Neill. When he didn’t get it, you saw the look on his face. You saw the bitterness and the anger. The more he pressed, the more our manager pushed back.
What reminded me of how crazy the debate around this has become is that McFarlane and English thought White won that exchange, which is so far outside the boundaries of reality that it became impossible to ignore where reality actually is.
Reality is exactly where we are standing. We are the sane.
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McFarlane is a hun and English is a soup taking quisling who sucks up to his masters at BBC Scotland.
No chance of getting impartial judgement or analysis from them.
Tony B. Calling someone a soup taker isn’t cool. For historical purposes they were Irish that had families that needed to drop the o from their surname to get soup/food whatever to feed themselves and their families. My name is Flynn, my family are proud of our ancestry. I’d rather be called a fenian cunt than a soup taker Tony fucking B
Sorry to change tack but has anyone read this madness from their ‘CEO’. This is quality trolling: ‘Leading club’? They finished third in a two-horse race and have the same number of trophies as St Johnstone: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cwy2x382yy4o
James, you mentioned that “sanity is not statistical.” But maybe we should look at the fallout from Saturday’s match from a statistical standpoint. I am not entirely sure how many tickets Hearts received for the match. Let us assume from the 59079 fans in attendance, that Hearts received 2000 tickets. So, approximately 57000 home fans in attendance.
– Arrests, police confirmed 4 at the stadium 0.007% of our fans (assuming that all of the arrests were Celtic fans)
– Police estimated that 300 fans came on to the park at full time. That is 0.5% of Celtic fans in attendance.
A ‘mountain out of a molehill’, would not be appropriate here, the press and media are creating a ‘Mountain out of an Anthill.’
On another blog today there is a video of when Kilmarnock gained promotion to the Premier League four seasons ago, after defeating Arbroath with a late winner. There was a pitch invasion of approximately 300 Kilmarnock fans and their manager, one Derek McInnes, can be seen celebrating with them and having selfies taken, The point that MON made is that some fans coming on to the pitch in these circumstances is not uncommon. He did say he would be concerned if Hearts players were accosted. There is not a lot of evidence of that, despite the camera coverage. He said it was nonsense to suggest it tainted Celtic’s win or disgraced Scottish football, He was right.
I put a similar YouTube link to that event on here, on a previous article. And it was a lot more than 300 Killie fans.
I don’t find their bitter bigoted views funny in the least. I want arseholes such as English, White and Keevins etc challenged at every opportunity. I want these fannys asked to produce the evidence. I want them asked why their views of Killie fans invading the pitch celebrating with bigot McIness is different from Celtic fans on the pitch. Ask these fannys why they never condemned McIness and the Killie fans at the time? These utter incompetent bigots masquerading as journalists and presenters need to be named, shamed and called out at every turn. Their hypocrisy needs to be exposed every single time.
And i noticed today that BritNat Tory Hun rag The Daily Express headline :
“Celtic face potential points deduction as ex-PGMOL chief weighs in…”
What utter fricken bullshit. Utter wishful thinking.
Aye! Clickbait is alive and well in the BritNat media.
Just because other clubs are invading the pitch doesn’t make it right. Slavia Prague had the result overturned due to a recent pitch invasion in stoppage time. There stadium is to be closed for several games and a big fine in punishment. Of course there were no Hearts players attacked, but if you normalise fans going on the pitch it only takes a couple of nutters to go for an opposing player to fuck it up completely, to actually fuck the whole season up!
It’s an extremely foolish habit to be getting into.
I predict we will have no fans at Ibrox or Tyncastle next year and even if we do there is no chance of a decent allocation in the foreseeable future.
So stay off the pitch ffs!
In europe we will not get away with this!
Of course I agree with O’ Neil here and generally he is right.
Mr Mojorisin – completely agree that fans need to stay off the pitch, but I would suggest a false equivalence with what happened in Prague – see the link here:
https://youtube.com/shorts/AaSAiAcZMV0?si=gogftfkNP1uQwVfe
(if the link doesn’t work there is footage on the BBC website)
I rewatched the 2nd half last night just to clear up a couple of things for myself. Based on the Sky clock, when Osmand rolled the ball into the net there were 30 seconds remaining (given that there wasn’t a Hearts player in site he could probably have stopped the ball on the goal line and ran down the clock…).
Looking at the Sky pictures, the pitch was largely clear within 2 minutes of the 98 minutes being up (helpfully the Sky game clock was still running) and from what I could see completely clear of fans after 3 minutes.
Don Robertson could have brought the players back out if he so wished but as Dermot Gallagher explained on Sky Sports he was under no obligation and made a completely sensible and pragmatic decision to end the game.
Should fans go on the pitch – no and those that did should get banned. Is the outrage over the top because it’s Celtic – absolutely.
Yes mostly agree Porto, regarding overturning the result but all it would have took was a wee ned like the arsehole who tried to attack mbappe or the clowns making a tit of themselves in the Trongate and we could have no argument about a stadium closure.
On this blog and comments we need to stop normalising pitch invasions. Ffs!
Your comparing us to slavia ?? Your fucking mental. Get your eyes and brain tested you maniac
We need to cut out pitch invasions eldraco or it could all go tits up. We wont get away with it in europe. It only takes a couple of fuckwits to get us in serious trouble. Remember the imbecile that tried to kick Mbappe?..remember Rapid Vienna at Old Trafford?
Remember us playing in any empty stadium v Atletico Madrid?
No I guess you dont know anything eldraco!
We can blame whoever we like for these events but dont pretend it is impossible for it to happen.
Stay off the fucking pitch you clowns!
HenrikJinkyLubo @ 5.26pm…
Incredible really is that but anyway as James says bring it on…
We are actually with him all the way in his truthful ascertations (Officials and VAR needs improving)…
For once I’ll actually PRAISE a Sevco executive for telling a semblance of truth in fact more than a semblance of truth…
But it wasn’t long until the Liebrox Lies began…
“We are the leading club in Scotland”
Nah yer no Mr Gillespie Celtic are then either Aberdeen or Hearts…
Trophy count = Celtic 123 v Sevco 3 !
Ah fuckin LOVE IT !!!
I nearly fell off my couch when I just read from James that Jim White beat MON in that debate.
MON absolutely wiped the floor with White, who thought he’d caught Martin on the back foot, only to be met with the response of a master of the spoken word. White didn’t have a prayer.
Any “Celtic” fan who calls for Celtic fans who went onto the pitch against hearts to be banned are the ones who should be banned.
Get a grip and stop being a sanctimonious tw#t, perhaps you’ve never done anything spontaneous or daring in your life but plenty of us have and enjoyed it.
Ban this ban that …ban yourself!
Volp, that’s what the huns would say about their fans. Get a fucking grip of yourself.
Most of the fans were booing the pitch invasion, I guess you were one of the clowns cheering it on like the huns a couple of months ago.
Get off your self imposed moral high horse you absolute arse blast.
He does go on does he not. A hun in disguise never has a decent word to say and couches a positve with a negative.
I see you mojorising, i see you.
On another thought that hearts ran off, what about the runners up medal and the media commitments to that? .
Surely the spfl cant let them off scot free there? A fine on they way methinks
Maybe MM is overdramatising the issue but his underlying point is correct – fans should never come on to the pitch (outside of being ordered to by the police etc due to some unforeseen emergency!)
Obviously certain individuals, clubs and journos have VERY selective memories and are two-faced hypocrites in the extreme about the “invasion” and they can GTF with their sanctimonious rubbish but that doesn’t mean it should be allowed going forward. Let’s draw a line under it and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
https://www.thestar.co.uk/sport/football/sheffield-wednesday/simon-jordan-weighs-in-on-sheffield-wednesday-pitch-invasion-after-thousands-ignore-warnings-4150804