A Grand Old Team To Play For?

It’s hard being a Celtic Supporter in Australia. Unless you have cable TV to the home and are subscribed to Celtic TV, you get to see very few games. If you are a shift worker, it’s even worse.

The build up to Sunday’s semi-final was excruciating. The massed ranks of the Brisbane Celtic Supporters Club got together, as they always do, at O’Malleys, Queen Street along with a couple of hundred backpackers, passers-by and occasional visitors who were, almost to a man, adorned in the green of Celtic FC.

The talk was not whether we would win, but by how many “even if we didn’t turn up.” What wasn’t expected was the tactical suicide that was employed for the game.

In my case, I couldn’t understand what I was feeling about the way we played it. I think it was a mixture of anger, confusion and despair. I remember thinking at one point in the first half “We’ve parked the bus. We are not pressing the ball, we are inviting them to come at us and not offering anything like the attacking football I expect to see from the Hoops” – and this was when we were already 1-0 down. It was painful and embarrassing to watch.

The pain was bad enough, the embarrassment palpable, but the anger – too much for me, I am afraid. After 106 minutes of watching the worst Celtic performance I can remember ever witnessing (I missed the Artmedia debacle), I left the room. For the first time in my life, I walked out of a Celtic game before the final whistle! My pals were asking me where I was going, I was telling them I had seen enough – that to watch a Celtic side go out to face the pretend Huns without an ounce of commitment, composure or competence was too much.

I saw my first Celtic game in 1959, my Granda and my uncles took me to Paradise and I chose Celtic, not because of my Irish Catholic heritage, not because I lived within a long stone’s throw from Celtic Park, but for the most logical of child’s reasons: I loved the jersey. And to see the jersey sullied by the mess that Ronny Deila has made of the way Celtic play is unacceptable to me. Even Tony Mowbray didn’t stop them playing football. The players are not donkeys. They proved themselves at other clubs and under other managers. Scott Brown is a case in point and a good analogy for the whole team – he is a shadow of the monster that terrorised the spitter and elbows a few of years ago. What I saw reminded me of turgid days under the management of Brady, Macari and co. When there was no heart, no passion and no ideas.

On the 150km drive home after the game, I found myself talking to the ghost of my dear old Maw. I asked her “What have they done to my team, Maw?.” She didn’t answer.

The fact that Deila, Collins and Kennedy are still employed 48 hours after that tells me that there is no one in the board room that cares about the beautiful football or the lionesque quality of a Celtic team under pressure.

The fact that they are still employed tells me there is no hope of ten-in-a-row. No hope of Champions League night’s and that being punted out of Europe and Cup semi-finals by second rate teams with a bit of grit is the norm for Celtic.

It’s sad to see us go this way, but it never has been easy supporting Glasgow’s green and white.