This story is allegedly true. I repeat allegedly. In fact, I emphasise the word allegedly.
The scene is a Glasgow court and a witness (a ned) is being questioned by a rather plummy mouthed Advocate Depute (AD).
AD: ‘You say you went to your friend’s house that night. Why did you go there?’
WITNESS: ‘Tae get a tap.’
AD: ‘Is your friend a plumber?’
WITNESS: ‘Naw.’
AD: ‘Are you a plumber?’
WITNESS: ‘Naw.’
The witness is a bit bewildered by this line of questioning and the AD realises it, but notices that the court police officer is rubbing his fingers of one hand together in the universal gesture of money. Daylight apparently dawns on the AD and he changes his line of questioning accordingly.
AD: ‘So you went to the house to borrow money?’
WITNESS: ‘Naw.’
AD ‘Ah. You went to the house to lend money?’
WITNESS: ‘Naw.’
In exasperation the AD says, ‘You told the court you went to your friend’s house for a tap. What kind of a tap was it?’
WITNESS: ‘A Sellic tap.’
Well true or not it’s a cracking tale nonetheless. And on the day Celtic announced the lights had been kept on at Celtic Park during a grim pandemic landscape through a mixture of a huge increase in the sale of Celtic ‘taps’ and other fine adidas branded merchandise, alongside 60,000 fans purchasing said merchandise AND a matchday feed for their laptop at £600 a pop on top, it has to be said the Celtic support have well and truly given this Celtic board a significant tap over the last year and more.
The headline says it all – “The Fans Spent their Thousands’…
This was simply a no questions asked devotion to a cause that all hold dear and that’s despite the misgivings many would have had in the people who were handed such vast sums of hard-earned cash, dispensed with despite for many the actual reality, or at least the very real threat, of job losses, redundancies and furloughing hanging over many like an executioner’s sword.
And the amazing thing is, they did this last season, and despite a shambolic failure to supply a competitive product on the field by those who took that cash, they’ve only gone and done it again this season. This with no guarantees they would have got into grounds, and even now there are no promises of anything other than seeing how it goes week to week when it comes to the possibility of future lockdowns and being back in front of laptops watching their empty plastic seat on their Pass to Paradise feed, and once again wondering if their work coat is on a shoogly peg.
With an £11.5m loss in the accounts announced by the PLC in the annual results to 30 June 2021, you shudder to think what financial state this club would be in was it not for the faithfulness of the Celtic fans – a support quite literally like no other.
Not that you’d know it from the Chairman or acting CEO’s statements of course. There were a couple of wee thank yous in there of course, but I guess the wee text message – you know like the one you get to remind you there’s 5,4,2,3,1 days left to secure your ticket for your Europa League package – will wing its way soon enough. Oh, you hadn’t thought of even that? Well, there’s still time.
Or maybe a wee box of Quality Street to say ♫thank you very much, for saving our backsides, thank you very much, thank you very much♫. And just in case anyone from the club is reading this neither of those things is necessary, no really, they are both not good ideas! But it wasn’t such a good idea to go quite so understated either.
If you do want a good plan, let’s just repay the significant tap the Celtic support has given this club by talking to us, giving us a vision and convincing all of us you see where we’re going wrong and you know how to fix it. Go on Celtic TV if you must or show the cajones (can I say that, Ed?) the 72-day CEO displayed by fronting up to fan media and convince us all the hope for modernising this club didn’t leave with Dominic McKay’s black cab.
Because in all the bleakness, the darkness and general uncertainty, those figures ae incredible. And as much as some of the back slapping the board undoubtedly did to each other for negotiating this grim landscape was also welcome, the true saviours were not simply from player sales or returns from clever asset management alone, it came from fans parting with money many would have been under an inordinate pressure to keep in reserve in case worst happened during this pandemic. Instead, the support kept the club going with a tap. Now it isn’t much of a payback to open up those lines of communication is it – and stop taking a lend of us all?
That headline again – “The Fans Spent their Thousands’…
Niall J
All may be true.. However as this covid period has proven, football fans are stupid, brain dead, deluded half wits.. Not all but vast majority..
Celtic fans ( I am one).. Continue to go, spend money and behave in a way that is detrimental to celtic..their choice of course but don’t moan
I vote with my feet and won’t return until kennedy, g. S have gone..