SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

We are all proud to be Celtic supporters,proud to turn up to support The Bhoys in whichever way we can-whether that be at the stadium,in the pub or even in our living rooms. Some of us even do so in the canteen at work when an evening match is on the cards. Or our phone!

Jock it was who made us the biggest club in the country,after years of being dominated by others. It didn’t last very long though,thanks to backstabbing pygmies in the boardroom who weren’t fit to even be in the same postcode as him.

Who has a statue outside the ground? Who has a stand named in his honour? I’ll give you a clue,it isn’t Desmond White! Yet,that domination by others was a fairly recent thing when Jock arrived. Celtic were the biggest club in the country by a margin between our foundation in 1888and WWI in 1914. It was only after that cataclysmic event that the world order began to change,and Scottish football was no different.

We surrendered our supremacy back then to Rangers,only challenging occasionally-mainly in the 30s and 50s-alongside intermittent efforts from the Edinburgh clubs,Dundee and even Kilmarnock. And then came Jock. With the belief that his club would be second to none,he set out to prove it.

Sacking him led to nearly two decades of being not even second best,until the arrival of a thrawn wee bugger with big dreams and a business plan. To make us top dogs,self reliant,and most importantly in the vanguard of change within the game.

He did everything he said he would,sailing off into the sunset with a tidy profit-which was entirely ungrudged by me,at least. Leaving behind a better side than we had seen in decades,and the biggest stadium in the country which was sold out every season.

Yip,we were where we always thought that we should be,and with the looming financial bust south side,we were in pole position to be the driving force to bring the game into the 20th Century,with eventual promise to drag it into the current one over time.

And then we come to two of the biggest sponsorship/tv deals that the national game has seen,that by Cinch last season,and the current offer by Sky to increase the money on the table to £150m over a five year deal.

Are we getting fair swap in exchange for selling our game? Well,probably not. Not when you compare it to down south. But that is hardly a fair comparison. Look at the global deals which their game achieves via TV and sponsorship as a guide,and compare it to ours. Sky actually gives us a higher percentage versus what they offer in England than is achieved by the Scottish game on a global comparison. It is like comparing apples and oranges,and just about as useful.

It also builds resentment,and offers room for mischief-making for those so inclined. Like Sevco,who simply refused to honour their part in the Cinch deal-while inadvertently offering them more publicity than the company could have dreamt of-and are now refusing to ratify the new Sky deal.

In the latter,they are joined by Livingston. And neither has given a reason for their stance. Nor,it seems,do they have to. Like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the US Democratic Party,their refusals count for more than the acceptance of the majority of their peers. They have achieved a far greater importance than their status would otherwise indicate.

So,as the biggest club in the country,it surely falls to us to speak out about this,to point out that the majority are being railroaded by an insignificant minority? Well,yes. Of course it does. So why has it taken until now for someone to do so?

And why was it an American-based owner of a provincial club?

My congratulations to Aberdeen’s Mr Cormack. Prairie Oysters,I think they are called in your neck of the woods. We only have shrinking violets over here.

<><><><><>

Above article by BMCUWP