SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all. This morning is a wee treat for us. A guest article from JIMBO67.

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A few weeks ago, on this site The Gombeen Man (TGM) replied to a post  here that had been made in wee small hours by a lost soul. It was a typically thoughtful and honest attempt, I thought, to reason with the earlier poster who, eventually, replied in his usual confused manner. 

I have no wish to dwell on that lost soul save that I do now wonder whether he could or would describe himself as a Celtic supporter or even whether he could remember whether he had ever derived any pleasure from his interest – which in his own way remains intense- in Celtic. TGM’s reply pointed out – and I paraphrase here ( as well as apologising now if I have misunderstood him) that for all the romantic idealism of Celtic’s founding the club as well as some of its leading, even revered, figures have either spectacularly fallen from grace or become mired in controversy or both. And that posting made me wonder why people do support Celtic. As TGM’s post made clear it cannot be because the club was or is perfect. 

I must set out my own stall. I am in my early 60s and have been attending Celtic matches regularly since early in 1968. I think my background is fairly typical for Celtic supporters- of any era- in that although born in Scotland I had ancestors from Ireland- specifically Donegal and Athlone -and was brought up as a Catholic. My dad and mum supported Celtic and, especially as I was a wee boy who showed great interest in football, it was hardly unexpected (except for me !) that I would get taken to a Celtic match when I was considered old enough. [My wee sister went through a similar initiation in April 1969.] But I don’t think my mum and dad ever forced the issue and if I’d not enjoyed the experience of my first few games, they would not have insisted I keep going.

But I loved it from day one even on the days we did not win -though it was, I think, April 1970 and the infamous cup final versus Aberdeen before I saw us lose in a game I was at. The team I watched in those days was good and a joy to watch but being part of a crowd all supporting the same team was something that I liked too.

There have been some hairy moments at games (and even more so on the way to and from them) but generally I’ve found being part of the Celtic support a comforting, safe experience. People argued about players and how the team was playing, hurled abuse at referees and the supporters of the other team but I seldom felt threatened. The team has had lulls – the mid to late 70s was patchy and of course the period from the autumn of 1989 until May 1998 was mainly barren for Celtic on the pitch but I still enjoyed going. Indeed, occasions like the last league game of the 1990/1 season when walking out the ground it was discovered we had qualified for Europe was one of the happiest memoriesof supporting Celtic I have.

My one reply to TGM’s comment was that I think all of us buy in to the mythology of Celtic even though we know Celtic is heavily flawed. As a child I loved reading about the humbleness of Celtic’s inception and its raison d’etre. I probably knew when I was still at primary school that Celtic had rather strayed from that original project not long after 1888 and for me by the summer of 1983 following the shabby treatment of Billy McNeill much of the belief that Celtic was still in some way true to the idealism of Brother Walfrid et alhad evaporated. But not all of it disappeared and there is still part of me in which that idealism has not quite gone.

I have had my ups and downs with the support – especially around the time of that match in May 1999 when Rangers clinched the league at Parkhead – and from the point Ronny Deila was appointed in the summer of 2014 a disconnect with those who ran (and in many instances still run) Celtic began to grow in me. I found that because I could not go that I did not get caught up in the misery of the team and its manager’s performances during the 2020/1 season as much as many did– other than having the misfortune of being in central Glasgow on the morning of the last league game of that season it all seemed rather artificial to me- but, and I think I may be unique in taking such offence at this, the most dismal aspect of that season was not that the team was crap or that I could not go but that the one ground in the UK which did not display any supporters banners in the otherwise empty stadium and instead preferred to show only things it was paid to display by sponsors seemed to be Celtic’s. 

But three months later I was able to go to see Celtic losing 6-2 to West Ham and I was hooked once more. That one of my two all-time Celtic bogeymen has recently returned as chairman [The other being Desmond White.] is a warning sign that the path of true love is never smooth and there are things about Celtic that could transpire that could kill that love but I am still fairly confident that for better and worse Celtic is a life sentence for me. 

So, being amongst Celtic supporters and a certain amount of friendly family coercion is why I support Celtic. Yes, these are reasons but there is another reason I shall come to shortly – one which people either do not realise exists or are reluctant to acknowledge. But I think I should mention some of the  reasons I think others support Celtic. 

An old friend of mine, one I have been going to matches with since 1988, is of a different background to mine, a background usually considered one of the less likely to produce a Celtic fan.  Born in Lisburn into a non-Catholic family which decamped to Tarbolton in Ayrshire in the mid-70s, his dad was more of a cricket and rugby union fan than a ‘soccer’ man and my mate said he himself only ever really had a casual interest in football until his late teens. The games which did much to turn him towards Celtic were, bizarrely perhaps, the last two matches with Rapid Vienna in late 1984 which he saw in person. The thing that struck him about Celtic was that it was, somehow, the underdog and he likes those who are such. I am not sure I have ever seen Celtic as an underdog but, as is regularly discussed here, we are not the ‘establishment’ club. So, I can accept his reason for trailing round Europe to watch Celtic even if it is not my own. 

Alex Ferguson, obviously one of the great football managers, made a career of firing up his teams by instilling a sense that everyone was agin them and although I personally don’t particularly like the emotion pejoratively described by the media and others as ‘Celtic’s Paranoia’ I do think that quite often the sense that we are outsiders, underdogs and that the ‘establishment’ is not for us has helped us- and that feeling sustains many supporters. 

That the club’s supporters are seen as rebels- a historically,rebels of a particular type- has attracted many to it. Supporting the club because of its Catholic-Irish origins because you yourself have a similar background seems fair enough to me – and I think that if you become a Celtic fan, you accept that aspect of Celtic is inbuilt, ingrained and cannot, certainly should not, be ignored, denied or forgotten- Celtic would not be Celtic without it. That becoming a Celtic fan as a means of promoting Irish Republicanism ( and your own support thereof) is quite common and its something I have been less easy with since the early days of the Troubles of the late 60s through to 1998.

Celtic as an institution – a PLC for feck’s sake- seems in its own way to be rather Conservative, Unionist even, and probably not pleased that so much of the Celtic fanbase identifies with a cause that the majority on the island of Britain detest. I would describe myself as being in support of a 32 county Irish Republic but remain conflicted as to whether support for republicanism [or any other political cause such as Scottish independence which I would always vote in favour of ]  is a valid reason to attach yourself to Celtic. And I really do dislike the rote singing of ‘the rebs’ during matches – it reminds me of those interminable hymn practices in the hall the schools I attended all specialised in.

Remembering the past is important but I find that it can seem like those who sing so much about it are unwilling to look forward and instead wish to remain bitter. But that’s what I think this morning as I prepare to go to this afternoon’s match with Kilmarnock- my mind has never been completely set on this topic. But the way the songs are sung now does seem really joyless to me and Celtic is not, for all its many imperfections and its repulsive new chairman, a joyless thing. That brings me to what I think is one of strongest reasons I and everybody else supports Celtic- emotionally it is a very easy thing to support a successful team.

Celtic has been good at playing football in Scotland for much of its history. Many of us wish that the team had been -and is now- better playing matches against teams from outside Scotland but even in Europe good nights are not so far in the past to be hard to remember whilst at home we have won a lot of trophies – 73 of the 183 completed major tournaments competed for in my lifetime domestically. We think we have had some tough periods as I alluded to earlier but although the period between May 1989 and May 1998 when we won nothing seemed long, compare that with Hearts who won nothing for almost 36 years between 1962 and 1998, Hibs who never won the Scottish Cup for 114 years and just three league cups between 1952 and 2016- and both clubs were until several years into this century seen as big clubs and serious rivals. 

We, the supporters, do have high expectations of our team and most of us would be happy enough to admit that . We’d be less happy to admit that we have a sense of entitlement- subconscious in most perhaps- but I think it is there. This last-named quality has, however uncomfortable we are with it,proved useful in the early 90s when we experienced teams that rarely threatened to win anything far less actually win a trophy , were frequently dire to watch, drifting to a state of permanent mediocrity if it could avoid financial calamity. And fans, most of whom had experienced all or at least some of the successes of 1965 to 1989, did not put up with it.

There was much talk then – as always – about how Celtic had been sustained by the loyalty or faith of its supporters and what a source of pride it was to that part of the Irish Diaspora that had settled in central Scotland and especially Glasgow. But the thing which had sustained the support was not just that the support was mainly of Irish/Catholic extraction it was because the teams that they supported were usually good and we wouldn’t accept teams being less than so. History suggests that in Scotland other clubs were set up to attract Catholic-Irish followers in the wake of the original , successful, version, Hibernian, and until Celtic all foundered because they were not good at the football side of the operation- people do not stick with things which are rotten for too long. Celtic smashed it out the park from the day it played its first ever match in May 1888. 

We all have our own reasons why we support our team.

Family, our support’s predominant demographic, enjoying the experience of actually meeting fellow Celtic supporters at games , in pubs or on buses or whatever, because we like the sense that we are anti-establishment rebels sustained by a sense that we are on the side of the Angels or what have you. There probably are  ‘wrong’ reasons to support Celtic  but I cannot think of one even if I do not like or agree with all of them.

But Celtic has retained such a strong hold on those who support it not because of its traditional demographic or because we have lots of people like me who like our fellow fans. No, it is because we are good and those who do support it and really care about it are not prepared to let it be mediocre or worse.

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Above article by JIMBO67