SINCE I AM repeatedly being told by fellow members of the Sports-writing Brigade of the Tartan Army: “Your trouble Socrates is – you've nae filter”, I have a large degree of sympathy for Celtic's Green Brigade in their eternal battle with the High Heid Yins in the Celtic Family.
Some of the GB's wilder outburst seem almost to have been dreamed-up simply to shock, but, even stunts such as their legendary banners regarding Douglas Ross have simply shown, they are prepared to say what others are only ready to think. In their support for sometimes unpopular causes such as an Independent Palestine, the GB has shown, at the heart of the collective are a cadre of serious young men, who are capable of rational thought.
I should add, at this point, their shadows across the city – The Union Bears – whilst not perhaps as yet having reached the level of evolutionary progress of the GB, are also showing, by such moves as their re-writing of Caledonia as a Rangers' anthem, signs that knuckle-dragging is (albeit slowly) dying out among Ra Peepul.
In their latest initiative, organising that open letter to the Celtic Board, however, I feel the Green Brigade has upped the ante in a huge way. Difference of opinion, bordering on outright hostility, between the club board and the wider “Celtic Family” is nothing new. Legend tells us, Celtic Football and Athletic Club, as envisaged by Brother Walfrid and the Founding Fathers was a club with a Socialist/Philanthropic cause; but, historically, tha original ethos was hijacked by some better-heeled fans, which brought about the long and often derided reign of The Four Families.
I remember a rail trip to Pittodrie involving a platoon of Football Writers in which the journey from Glasgow to Aberdeen was enlivened by one of our number's tales of writing a Celtic history book. He had been given hitherto unprecedented access to the club records by the Four Families and as he told the tale, one day, anxious to double-check an entry in the official Celtic FC club minute book, he was told it was stored in a huge, old-fashioned safe in the Secretary's office and he should simply look in there.
He opened the safe and was hit on the head by a pile of rolled-up bank notes, which fell off the top shelf. This apparently was the club's petty cash. He said the amount certainly changed his view of the club's finances – the legnedary “biscuit tin” approach and immediately baptised him as a member of that section of the wider Celtic Family who were convinced the Families had been skimming off the top for years.
It was customary in the world of Scottish Fitba writing, for instance, to take the published attendance figures for games at Celtic Park with a grain of salt. The faithful would be shoe-horned into the Jungle, and an attendance would be announced which seasoned press box observers knew to be several thousand shy of the actual crowd.
In this 21st century world of computers, all-ticket games and an all-seated Celtic Park, it is clearly much more difficult to skim off the top as in days of yore, but, there are Celtic fans today who believe, and from outside looking-in, I sense with some justification - the current management have taken lessons from their much-derided predecessors.
But, perhaps the greatest difference between the two current fan bases is:
The Celtic Family is unhappy, because the team is not playing football in the swashbuckling “Celtic Way”
The Rangers Support is unhappy, because the team is not winning
They are doubly unhappy, because they are coming second to what is not a particularly good Celtic squad
The rest of us – we followers of “The Diddy Teams” - Ach! We're just enjoying the squeals and complaints of “The Glory Hunters” who follow the Big Two. Since we have rarely known anything different over the 150 years of organised fitba in Scotland, we lang syne learned to stock-up on the buzz we get when our oft-derided heroes turn over one or other and to relish the squeals of anguish from their followers which ensue.
I say: more power to the Green Brigade's elbow in their efforts to bring about change at their club, but, I fear the current Politbureau, having learned from the lessons of the Families – who needed Wee Fergus McCann to rescue the club from a fate equivalent to that suffered later by The Other Lot – will be harder to oust than the Families. Mind you, for all the things they got wrong, I think the Families were more “Celtic Minded” than the current lot.
Rangers, I fear, may well be a lost cause – it seems that bad down Edmiston Drive way. I recall a piece in The Sunday Express – a lifetime ago now, when the Express Group ruled the roost in the Scottish media and Beaverbrook Publications – the then publishers - was a respected outfit. This particular article was about safe places to invest and after praising Marks & Spencer, the other suggested places for any spare investment capital were listed as: “The Four Rs – Rangers, Rolls Royce and Rover.”
Given, less than two decades later, the Government had to step in to rescue Rolls Royce, Rover went tits-up early this century and we all know what happened to Rangers, the article simply proved: the stock market can go down as well as up. At the time of the articles, as I understood it, £1 Rangers shares were changing hands at over £8, the club was winning everything domestically and there were half a dozen Rangers players in the Scotland team. Those really were different times.
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