There are some football matches you look forward to with excitement. There are some you look forward to with nerves. Then there is Celtic against the Ibrox club, a fixture which seems to carry the weight of an entire footballing universe on its shoulders.
This weekend, Celtic travel to Ibrox for the Premier Sports Cup quarter-final.
Normally I would already be counting down the days, imagining the noise, the colour, the songs, the tension and that wonderful, horrible feeling in the stomach which only this fixture can produce. But this time something will be missing.
Us. There will be no Celtic supporters inside Ibrox, and I still cannot quite get my head around how wrong that feels, although I appreciate that our club is in the right.
This is the first huge meeting of the season, the kind of game where every tackle matters, every mistake becomes enormous and every goal feels like a small earthquake. Normally Celtic supporters walk into that stadium carrying a little piece of Paradise with them.
This time, we won’t. And I hate it.
I know why we are here. I know their club is petty and spiteful after what happened in March. There was serious disorder following the Scottish Cup quarter-final at Ibrox, including pitch incursions, fireworks and clashes which should never have happened at a football match. The independent review followed.
But the decision not to have fans came after their nasty little club offered us a mere 300 tickets. The arrangement has been described as temporary and can be reviewed if circumstances materially change. But will they?
I understand the argument about safety. That’s the argument our club made. But understanding it does not mean I have to like it. How can the Ibrox club be so cavalier about this? As a Celtic supporter, I feel absolutely gutted.
For years, we have argued about allocations. We have argued about whether Celtic should receive five per cent, whether the traditional away section should return, whether supporters should get more tickets and whether the atmosphere was being deliberately diluted. Now we have reached zero.
A Celtic team will walk out at Ibrox without thousands of Celtic voices behind it. It disadvantages us. I worry about that. The team is better with a passionate support behind it, and this time we won’t have that.
That feels completely wrong.
The players will still have to do their jobs. Martin O’Neill will still have to prepare his team. They will still have to deal with the pressure, the noise, the hostility and everything else which comes with this fixture.
But football is not played in a vacuum. Football is emotion. Football is memory. Football is belonging. Supporters are part of that.
I have watched enough Celtic football to know there are moments when the crowd becomes something more than a crowd, when the noise changes the temperature of a match. I have seen Celtic supporters turn difficult games into extraordinary occasions. I have seen our fans travel in their thousands, fill away ends, sing for ninety minutes and make the players feel that they are never alone.
That is what the players will miss most. Not simply Celtic supporters being physically present inside Ibrox. Our presence.
That moment when the players look towards the stand and see green and white. That eruption when Celtic score and thousands of people lose their minds together. That feeling when the team is struggling and the supporters somehow find another level of noise to drag them forward.
Inside Ibrox this time, there will be none of it.
The Celtic support will obviously still be singing in pubs, homes, supporters’ clubs and wherever else people gather to watch the game.
But inside the stadium, our end will be empty. That makes me incredibly sad.
The immediate controversy began when the Ibrox club proposed giving Celtic just 300 tickets for the Premier Sports Cup quarter-final on 13 September, rather than the previously agreed allocation of around five per cent, roughly 2,500 seats. Celtic rejected that proposal and asked the SPFL to make a determination.
The eventual outcome was much more drastic.
No away fans at all. And this is where my feelings become complicated. I did not want 300 Celtic supporters. I did not want some pathetic little gesture which allowed everybody to say, “Well, Celtic were given tickets.”
No. I wanted Celtic supporters to have a proper allocation. I wanted our fans treated with respect, not as some inconvenient nuisance to be squeezed into a tiny corner before everybody congratulated themselves on finding a compromise.
But I did not want this either. I did not want zero. I recognise that it was the likely destination, and I know it wasn’t Celtic’s fault. But it’s terrible nonetheless. The answer to problems surrounding football supporters cannot always be to remove football supporters.
Surely Scottish football should be capable of something better than that. The SPFL should have done its job and guaranteed us the right allocation.
This is the biggest fixture in the country and one of the most famous rivalries in world football. Generations of supporters have lived and breathed it. Children grow up understanding what these games mean long before they are old enough to attend one. And now the safest answer anybody can produce is complete separation.
I understand the security argument. I still think something precious has been lost. Perhaps that is why this particular match feels so strange already. Normally when Celtic go to Ibrox, you can almost feel the occasion before a ball has been kicked.
You wake up knowing. You go through the day knowing.
People are talking about it everywhere. You see shirts and scarves. You hear songs. The tension builds until eventually the match arrives and the whole thing explodes into life. That will still happen on 13 September. But there will be an enormous hole in it.
No Celtic end. No wall of green and white. No Celtic songs coming back across the stadium. I hate that because I do not want this rivalry sanitised into something neat and comfortable. I do not want football to become a television product where two teams take turns playing in front of entirely home crowds.
I want rivalry. I want atmosphere. I want passion. I want Celtic supporters travelling. I want our players to hear us. Obviously, I do not want violence and I abhor bigotry. Something should have been done about that years ago. I do not want supporters attacking each other. I do not want pitch invasions. I do not want fireworks thrown at people. I do not want players, police officers, stewards or fans put in danger.
There is no argument from me there.
But surely, we can want safety and atmosphere. All except the Ibrox club, who seem to prefer it when our voices are silent.
Surely, we can want responsibility and passion.
Surely, we can punish unacceptable behaviour without destroying the very thing which makes football special.
Despite all of that, Celtic still have a football match to win.
And this is where Martin O’Neill comes in.
Whatever I think about the circumstances surrounding the fixture, I want Celtic to go to Ibrox and behave like Celtic. No excuses. No fear. No distractions.
Go there and play football. Go there and show them what this Celtic team is made of. I want that to be the story afterwards.
Not the empty away end. Not the arguments about allocations. Not the politics of Scottish football. Not another week of everybody arguing about who did what and when.
I want the football to speak. I want Celtic aggressive. I want Celtic brave. I want Celtic hungry. I want the mentality we saw against Aberdeen. I want the players to understand exactly what that badge means when they walk into that stadium.
Because even if we are not physically there, we are still there.
That is what I want them to remember.
There may be no Celtic supporters sitting in an away section on 13 September, but there will be Celtic supporters everywhere. We will be watching. We will be shouting at televisions. We will be singing in pubs. We will be suffering together.
And hopefully we will be celebrating together.
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I’m hoping the players feel the injustice of it all and that it spurs them on to produce an inspired performance, with a collective effort that defies and overcomes the hateful situation they find themselves in. Of course every last one of us will be there in spirit, but we really do need the players to play out of their skins on that day.