Tennis Balls Get 867 Words – Celtic Fans Deserve Answers, Not Condemnation
Celtic found 867 words to condemn supporters after tennis balls landed on a golf course. Perhaps the board should show the same urgency when fans demand answers about the club itself.
Phillip Cooney 
Celtic Football Club has found its voice.
Apparently, all it took was a few tennis balls landing on a golf course.
Within hours of Saturday’s protest involving Dermot Desmond at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, Celtic produced an extraordinary statement condemning supporters, attacking the Celtic Fans Collective and Green Brigade, ending engagement with the Collective and threatening indefinite Celtic Park bans.
Police Scotland confirmed there were no reported injuries.
Nobody was struck by a bomb. Nobody was attacked with a weapon. Tennis balls were thrown onto a golf course during a protest.
That distinction matters.
The speed of Celtic’s response says everything
The contrast in communication is staggering.
Martin O’Neill publicly questioned his own future after Celtic’s defeat to Rangers on September 20. He said he would reflect during the international break on whether he remained capable of turning things around.
Supporters have subsequently had precious little clarity from Celtic about that hugely important football question.
But protest against Dermot Desmond?
Suddenly the communications department is working overtime.
Celtic can produce an enormous statement within hours when supporters embarrass the hierarchy, yet communicating clearly with those same supporters about the direction of the football club appears considerably more difficult.
That is precisely why frustration has reached this stage.
“The reputation of Celtic is non-negotiable”
Perhaps the most remarkable line in Celtic’s statement is its declaration that the club’s reputation is “non negotiable”.
Fine.
Then accountability at Celtic should be non-negotiable too.
Communication should be non-negotiable.
Competent recruitment should be non-negotiable.
Treating supporters with respect should be non-negotiable.
And answering difficult questions rather than shutting people out should certainly be non-negotiable.
The supporters did not create Celtic’s recent instability. They did not oversee failed Champions League qualification. They did not construct the football operation. They did not create the breakdown between Brendan Rodgers and the hierarchy.
Yet once again, supporters find themselves being presented as part of Celtic’s problem.
Dermot Desmond must be accountable too
There also needs to be accuracy about Desmond’s position.
He is Celtic’s largest shareholder and a non-executive director. Celtic’s own corporate documents confirm that.
He is enormously influential, but Celtic Football Club does not belong personally to Dermot Desmond.
That distinction is important.
Last October, following Brendan Rodgers’ resignation, Desmond was permitted to use Celtic’s official website to launch an extraordinary personal attack on the departing manager, describing Rodgers’ conduct as “divisive, misleading, and self-serving”.
Those were Desmond’s allegations. They should not retrospectively be treated as established facts simply because an enormously powerful shareholder said them.
If Celtic believes its reputation must be protected from inflammatory public discourse, supporters are entitled to ask whether that principle applies upwards as well as downwards.
Where was Desmond when shareholders wanted answers?
There is another uncomfortable piece of history.
At Celtic’s chaotic 2025 AGM, Dermot Desmond was not there.
His son Ross instead read a statement on behalf of himself and his father. The meeting eventually collapsed amid furious shareholder protests and chants against the board.
So consider the supporters’ predicament.
They protest inside Celtic Park and are condemned.
They protest at the AGM and are condemned.
Fan-media organisations have been excluded from Celtic press conferences following what the club described as an internal review.
Supporters protest somewhere Dermot Desmond actually happens to be and they are condemned again.
So where exactly does Celtic believe meaningful pressure can be applied?
Protest is supposed to cause inconvenience
Nobody has to agree with Saturday’s protest.
Some Celtic supporters will believe St Andrews was the wrong place. Others will dislike the Celtic Fans Collective or Green Brigade. That is perfectly legitimate.
But peaceful protest which causes absolutely no inconvenience is very easily ignored.
Saturday’s protest attracted enormous attention precisely because supporters reached an influential figure whom they rarely have the opportunity to confront directly.
Tennis balls were thrown onto the 15th green. Police reported no injuries.
Celtic’s response reads as though the football club survived a major security incident.
Perspective has disappeared.
The Green Brigade issue is more complicated – but collective punishment remains troubling
Celtic also dragged the Green Brigade into Saturday’s statement.
For accuracy, the previous Green Brigade suspension followed serious allegations from Celtic concerning incidents involving a steward and police officers. Those allegations should not simply be dismissed.
But the subsequent suspension affected roughly 200 supporters.
That raises a legitimate question about collective punishment.
Punish individuals where wrongdoing can actually be established. Identify them, investigate them and deal with them appropriately.
But repeatedly treating entire sections of Celtic’s support as a problem risks deepening precisely the division the board claims it wants to end.
Celtic eventually lifted that suspension in April.
What about Celtic fan media?
Then there is fan media.
Supporter outlets were excluded from Celtic press conferences from December, with the decision subsequently attributed to an “internal review”.
That deserves a proper explanation.
Independent Celtic media will naturally ask questions that comfortable corporate communications may not welcome.
That is not a weakness.
It is exactly why independent media exists.
Celtic cannot preach endlessly about “meaningful supporter engagement” while simultaneously narrowing the opportunities for supporters and independent Celtic journalists to challenge the people running the club.
Those two positions sit very uneasily together.
The fans are not Celtic’s enemy
The most offensive element of this statement is its suggestion that supporters involved have brought “shame” upon Celtic.
Generations of supporters built Celtic’s worldwide reputation.
They filled Celtic Park.
They travelled across Scotland and Europe.
They bought season tickets, shirts, merchandise and subscriptions.
They supported the club through triumph, mediocrity and catastrophe.
Boards come and go.
Chief executives come and go.
Managers come and go.
Shareholders come and go.
The supporters remain.
That does not mean every action undertaken by every supporter is automatically justified. Of course it does not.
But Celtic’s hierarchy desperately needs to understand the difference between supporters damaging the club and supporters protesting because they believe those running it are damaging the club.
Celtic should ask why this is happening
Instead of producing 867 words telling supporters how disgraceful they supposedly are, perhaps somebody inside Celtic Park should ask the most obvious question of all:
Why has it reached this point?
Why are supporters sufficiently angry that they are following Celtic’s principal shareholder to a golf tournament to make themselves heard?
Why did shareholders revolt at an AGM?
Why have relations with organised supporters deteriorated so dramatically?
Why has independent fan media been excluded?
Why does communication appear so much faster when protecting the hierarchy than when supporters want answers about football?
Those questions cannot simply be dismissed as intimidation, coercion or unacceptable behaviour.
The club says Celtic’s reputation is non-negotiable.
Agreed.
But Celtic belongs emotionally to the people who fill the stands, follow the team around the world and pass the club from generation to generation.
The board are custodians.
Dermot Desmond is an enormously influential shareholder and director.
Neither is Celtic Football Club.
The supporters are its lifeblood.
And rather than declaring war on sections of them over tennis balls on a golf course, perhaps Celtic’s hierarchy should finally start listening to why they are being thrown.
Cheers, Phillip,for the heads up on the release of the statement.
True to form,there is no signature to accompany their hand wringing missive.
Well,cry me a fuckin river,whoever spewed it into print.
There is absolute proof in that statement that there is mental illness residing in the Celtic boardroom as it contradicts itself and further proof that these parasites need to be rooted out of OUR club.
Hopefully,this is just a warning shot across Dermot the Donkey’s bows and there will be an escalation of haranguing him whenever he sets foot on a golf course.
There have been protests at sporting grounds which were more extreme in nature, notably the George Davis is innocent protest where the wicket at Headingley in Leeds was damaged with holes being dug on it and diesel oil being poured on it resulting in an Ashes Test Match being cancelled.
The protest yesterday was small fry in comparison but I wonder what the reaction would have been like if the 18th green at St Andrews was afforded similar treatment.
This is the only language that has any effect on them,along with supporters withholding their cash and affecting the club turnover figures.
Everything else,they are oblivious to but you can guarantee he was apoplectic with rage at being sullied on the golf course because that kind of publicity is never a good look in the clubhouse.
Make no mistake, the Celtic Collective better be mobilising for a long and bitter fight with these bastards in the boardroom because, as I have said many times before, this is a fight to the death for the very soul of Celtic Football Club !
A very dangerous statement and one that looks like it was drafted in a rage. The attack on the collective and the accusations levelled against them, the direct blame being apportioned to the collective and the green brigade without any proof of involvement on the day, the statements around. The threat to ban any individual involved indefinitely is and together with the refusal to engage with the collective is reactionary and only to be expected from cowards. Will they ban every organisation involved in the collective, you can get your house they won’t, but instead look for scapegoats like the Green Brigade. The people or person who wrote the statement claims the fans have damaged the reputation of Celtic FC. I’m afraid that was done long ago by executives messing other clubs around the world in transfer deals, refusing to back the club and fans when required and allowing the enemies of our club to attack us at will whilst they themselves remain silent. The claim that Celtic will will continue to engage with supporters who wish to make the voices heard constructively is nothing short of a lie when it has banned fan media. It sounds like someone with power at Celtic has lost the plot (or is it the tournament) and can’t take their dirty washing being aired in public, which is the whole point of a protest. The response from the collective to any ban has to be a massive rolling boycott. The lines will have been crossed. Now back to important business of supporting my fellow citizens on Garvachy Road.
Spot on Phillip
A total boycott of all games is now required