Since the news broke about Celtic’s participation in The Sydney Cup in November I’ve had an opportunity to sit in a room at Celtic Park and listen to Ange Postecoglou argue the case for this Homecoming Tour. Yet this controversial announcement was certainly greeted with a negative response from the Celtic support.
John Paul Taylor, the highly respected Celtic CEO immediately announced that the club would be running with this one and he’d be taking a back seat. Given he fronted up on anything and everything that was being thrown at the club last season (when others were hiding behind hastily erected fencing) that said plenty.
Yet no other was accusing JP of losing his own battling qualities, rather they simply regarded this as a Bridge too Far for the Celtic SLO, who I had a quick chat with outside of Tannadice ion Monday night ahead of kick-off.
Ange’s argument was forceful, convincing, sensible and it’s all the right things we should be doing – although my own point about an additional game in Japan would have ticked even more profile enhancing boxes. Yet involving theRangers in this just seemed to be needlessly controversial.
Unconfirmed claims that Celtic are making more money from participation in the Ange Homecoming tour certainly touches one stop – increasing the anger levels across the city and it has to be said that their is something in this.
After Monday night there was post-match controversy surrounding the old sectarian add-on to On the One Road – ‘Soon there will be no Protestants at all’ and the cringeworthy ‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ and Jim Spence – always a friend to Celtic – was correct to call out the former while the support itself called out the latter, and not for the first time has this been mentioned on here.
Previously a young Ultra supporter pointed out that the current younger generation of the support will take no morality lesson from the Celtic Da’s – you know the generation that threw bananas onto the pitch, racially abusing Mark Walters in the 1980s.
Yet it was just a few scumbag neds in the Celtic support who committed this horrible racism that tarnished the Celtic support to the extend that the modern day young support even used against the entire Celtic support who were around at that time. ‘No morality lessons from you’ as an argument works both ways and when these young supporters are of a Celtic Da’s generation themselves they will be getting reminded about their disgraceful add ons to ‘On the One Road’ – where the original words are so brilliant anyway – and ‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin” a sectarian chant that when sung at Celtic Park tells thousands of fellow supporters that they’re not really welcome in Paradise. Our seats at Celtic Park are close to where The Bhoys base themselves on match days and they are particularly guilty of adding Roamoin’ in the Gloamin’ to their match-day songbook. Please cut it out.
Hopefully we won’t hear either today or ever again from the Celtic support.
And while we’re talking about this chanting at Tannadice, this brings me back to the Sydney Cup. Here’s a wee video from Monday night which shows where I was sitting – just next to the Green Brigade.
The young Celtic Ultras were all around us, they were friendly, polite and they certainly got behind the team. Most of the atmosphere started up at that corner and spread long the entire length of the pitch in the stand housing the Celtic support.
Yet one chant I noticed didn’t get much of a response – the one about telling Celtic to stick the Sydney friendly where the sun don’t shine. It was ignored by the rest of the support.
Why? Possibly because the Celtic support is seeing that carnage it it causing across the road. Maybe it’s because the Celtic support recognises that their evil minded fixations will harden minds in the Celtic boardroom but perhaps the support has decided that collectively it’s best to be passive and allow this to play out.
There are numerous Celtic fan media sites and podcasts and there has been little coverage on these outlets, certainly had theRangers not been involved we’d have covered this is a much bigger way and probably that’s the same elsewhere.
The rumour from yesterday that theRangers are now looking for a way out and they could be hit with a penalty for breaching their contract is most welcome on many levels. The ideal scenario is that they do pull out and a suitable alternative is found and there are plenty of European clubs that would fit the bill who would also attract their own supporters in Australia.
So the Celtic support’s decision to await developements is spot on. Hopefully their board blinks first and pays the price with a large financial penalty imposed as a result of their fans protests.
Celtic can then get on with the Ange Homecoming Tour and the support can fully get behind it.
