So the Man from Dens Park is going to say YES after all and Scottish football’s very own Easter Rising will, if it is true, have failed. Operation Null and Void, a last gasp effort to prevent Celtic achieving Nine-in-a-Row will have ended in a desparate defeat for the Axis powers – Hearts, Inverness with their blue-nose CEO and of course the ringleaders, the Rangers.

Yesterday we compared their campaign to the Christmas 1944 Axis Campaign in WW2 which was known as the Battle of the Bulge, an all-or-nothing offensive that took the superior forces of the Allies entirely by surprise and looked like achieving its objective. But the further they pushed into the Bulge in the Allies line, the more desperate they became for fuel and the more time the Allies had to get their act together.

The Axis Forces got bogged down trying to capture the strategically important Belgian town of Bastonge but the Americans who were there – the famous Screaming Eagles of the 101st Division Parachute Regiment who had been fighting since D-Day – weren’t prepared to surrender when faced with vastly superior forces. The Germans offered to accept their surrender and were given a famous one word response – ‘NUTS!’

The eventual result of the Battle was fatal for the Axis hopes and they had to abandon their tanks and start marching again – back to the Fatherland, routed, defeated – out of fuel.

In Scottish football there will be essential fuel (funding) for the Scottish teams in the SPFL as a result of Dundee’s YES vote. Parks of Hamilton will be wondering if the Poll on The Celtic Star – with our very own thread on Follow Follow – will have an impact at Celtic. Peter Lawwell reads all this nonsense we write too, allegedly!

How did that Poll work out? We asked “Should Celtic terminate the contract with Parks of Hamilton to supply the team bus?”

So far 7369 readers have voted (you can only vote once on our Polls). the results are as follows:

YES – 90%, 6646 votes

NO – 10%, 723 votes

Now we all know that Peter Lawwell, who has previously resisted changing the Celtic bus supplier at an AGM, isn’t easily swayed to follow the views and opinions of the support. But he’ll see this and he’ll have his own thoughts on Operation Null and Void and how close Mr Parks and his Axis friends came to succeeding.

Maybe, he’ll conclude, that it is time for Celtic cut the ties once and for all with Parks of Hamilton. And it’s not just the Celtic Board who have to make this call.

Celtic Supporters clubs who use Parks of Hamilton also need to ask themselves if this is a relationship that they wish to continue.

Hit where it hurts.

Yesterday we carried a story about plans being made to resume football in Italy, Germany and perhaps Spain over the summer, with a view to getting this season completed. Last night President Macron announced that the French lockdown – which is tighter in France than it is in the UK – will start to be lifted by 11 May. French football could also be back in the summer, presumably played behind closed doors.

Accordingly there should be a possibility at least that the Scottish Premiership and indeed the English Premier League will be played to a conclusion this summer, also behind closed doors.

That would be the best way to sort out the 2019/20 Scottish Premiership season but if that can’t happen and the league is ended early we know that Operation Null and Void ran out of gas and was routed on Easter Monday, so Celtic are today the Scottish Premiership’s Provisional Champions.

Here we go. Ten in a Row.

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