Tomorrow’s Celtic Park should be alive with noise and colour and joy.
Once again, it is the leadership of this club that has sucked all of that out of the atmosphere, and it is disgusting how many times they have done this over the past couple of years.
But tomorrow Celtic Park will reverberate only with Celtic songs, and I know this is not a popular view among some sections of the fanbase, but that is how I prefer it.
If we had won last Sunday, and if we had got any kind of positive performance on Thursday night, tomorrow would be a party.
It would be a celebration of Celtic, and that to me is a much better atmosphere and a much better vibe than all the hatred, all the bitterness and all the bigotry that usually surrounds these fixtures when we are playing away from home, and which comes from a small section of Celtic Park when they are allowed in.
We don’t define ourselves by that club, so we don’t define ourselves by this fixture.
I know from growing up that this fixture was never clean, but it has now become grubby. It has become ugly in a way that is much worse than it ever was before. There is real menace in the air which, for years and years, simply wasn’t there to the same degree.
A lifetime of hearing the bigotry of the Ibrox supporters has left me tired and weary of all of it. I don’t want it in our house. It shouldn’t be in anybody’s house. We have governing bodies that don’t want to govern, which should have got a grip of this a long time ago, and the fact that they haven’t is why we still have to put up with it. But not in our front room.
If there wasn’t so much anger and frustration in the air at Celtic right now, tomorrow would be a great example of what a genuinely positive atmosphere for one of these fixtures should look like. It doesn’t have to boil over with hatred.
It doesn’t have to be a cesspit of deplorable views being screamed from every seat and voiced in every song. That’s not normal. It’s just that we’ve normalised it because Scottish football has tolerated it.
There will be chants about McInnes, of course there will be, and the media will highlight those chants because the media has nothing better to do than poke Celtic fans with a stick. But I’m talking about a 90-minute hate-fest.
I’m talking about something much uglier than simply shouting at one man.
Ibrox, at the best of times — and that’s a very loosely used term, believe me — is a place that brims over with intolerance. It would have been deplorable to have to attend there last week and contend not only with the usual torrent of hatred, but with it laced with supremacy and their unique form of celebration.
Because there are two ways to define victory.
You can define it by what it means to you, and you can define it by what it does to the opposition. That’s all they’re about. An opponent is not just to be beaten, but ridiculed and humiliated, and that’s what they derive their pleasure from: lording it over a beaten rival.
We derive our pleasure from simply winning, from seeing Celtic at its best, from seeing us triumph even against our so-called biggest challenger. Those are two separate mentalities and they cannot be reconciled.
And so tomorrow should be special. It won’t be in the way that I would have liked because the club is in a place of extreme pain and torment right now, and we’re pulling ourselves apart again because of the failings of a handful of people.
People who, as I said earlier, won’t be held accountable for their failures.
But a win tomorrow will still be greeted as an expression of joy for its own sake, not for the sake of what it does to someone else. It will be a celebration of Celtic rising from the ashes, not simply that we pummelled McInnes and his team into the floor.
The atmosphere will be degrees of magnitude different from Ibrox.
A Celtic Park full of Celtic fans, singing Celtic songs in praise of the Celtic team. That’s what tomorrow should be.
That’s what tomorrow was all set to be before our latest travails, and although the board deserves the hardest possible time tomorrow from the fullest number of people, I hope that from kick-off until the final whistle Celtic Park is a happy place.
Because there’s nothing ugly about happiness. There’s nothing sinister in a whole stadium full of supporters taking pleasure in seeing their team win, as opposed to taking pleasure in seeing someone else lose.
It will be degrees different from the atmosphere last weekend, and even if there is anger and frustration it will not be a 90-minute hate-fest. Indeed, if we score early, the whole afternoon could turn out to be a festival of joyous celebration, and that’s how these games ought to be from now on.
It’s not a popular view. It’s not a view that people are necessarily going to agree with.
A lot of our fans feel deprived by not being able to go to Ibrox. A lot of our fans miss the fact that their fans won’t be in our ground. I’m not speaking for anyone other than myself here, although my views do reflect those of plenty of other people.
I prefer it this way. Our house, our fans, and not a noisy, nasty neighbour in sight.
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…but will the team and tactics be any different.
I’ll be honest and say I prefer none of their fans in our ground !
One of the best ever atmospheres inside CP was the Hatate inspired 3-0 midweek win.
That was a sensational evening and we can only have fond memories about those two seasons under Ange.
No Sevco fans and just pure unadulterated Celtic delirium.
Not sure with the present unrest that the same atmosphere can be recreated tomorrow…but why not ?
We can talk all day about the failings of certain players, criticise the manager and coaches, but tomorrow should be, first and foremost, a Celtic team , in front of 60,000 fans, displaying a passion, fire and workrate that has been missing thus far !!!
We really need the win and I think we will get it !
I’m not going to contemplate any other option ! HH
Seriously!! ‘Once again, it is the leadership of this club that has sucked all of that out of the atmosphere, and it is disgusting how many times they have done this over the past couple of years.’ 2nd sentence – forced myself to read the rest of the article because I love your work but I hope and pray you’re in the minority today otherwise we’re beat before we even start?
James l have just found out that Daizan has requested he come to the game to thank the fans for the support that they gave him when he played.
And he also wants to give a big “Thank You” to the people of Glasgow for the support they gave to him and and his family for his 4.5 year stay in the city MON claimed “it is hard to get players to move too Glasgow” at a meeting in Ireland.
Like all polite and “Gentle Samurai” he did it with deadly precision.
Remember Nakemura!
I hope and Pray that 60,000 Tims can stand up For The Champion who never gave up and secured the league almost single handedly.
Let’s hope this can set the stage and mood to inspire the team to wipe the floor with the Scottish Establishment team of choice!
When Daizan eventually returns to Japan with all his wonderful memories he will give a big smile when he listens to his children speaking English in a broad Glasgow accent!
Let the spirit of our Samurai destroy the Huns today.
COYBIG
I think it was Nicolson who was quoted as saying it was “hard to get players to move to Glasgow” not MON.
The press will be there today as usual listening for any chants or songs against McInnes that they can use to do their usual false equivalence job after the sectarian abuse of Martin last week. A few dozen, a few hundred, will be made equivalent to an entire 50000 stadium. If they don’t hear any they’ll just make it up.
Been going on all my life.