Breakfast this morning consisted of two reheated Gregg’s pies which were left in the microwave last night, and a newly heated sausage roll! I really couldn’t be arsed with all the eggs and bacon nonsense. The coffee sits near my PC as I try to fathom out the perfidious path that led to the utter mince that was laid out on the green and frankly not so pleasant east end of Glasgow yesterday.
I will drink some of that coffee only once I have had my say.
Firstly I am not one of the sad ‘Boo Bhoy’ clones who with each passing (even if the passes sometimes go astray) game seem to be procreating on a dangerously scary scale.
I have never booed a player in the hoops, an official of the club, not even Barnes and Dalglish, and have never contemplated going to the Forge to meander aimlessly around Big W or B&Q rather than experience the adrenalin rush of pleasure and pain, hopes and fears, victory and defeat that lies in wait home or away, on the haemorrhoid inducing cold plastic seats of whatever ground we happen to playing.
This Celtic is not simply a ‘Club’. The players and the officials are not ‘them’ and the fans are not ‘us’. This ‘Celtic’ is not an institution, or a limited company, or a financial commodity, or an investment in bricks and mortar, flesh and blood that one day will yield a percentage return on a material investment.
This ‘Celtic’ is all of us! It is our heart and soul, our dreams and ambitions, our laughter and tears. Without us there is no Celtic and without Celtic there is no ‘us’.
Oh there are many, no doubt some reading this, who will think this is nothing more than the emotional claptrap of a rapid descent into the early onset of nostalgic senility!
Well let me just give you a small exemplar of my rationale.
Yesterday evening I and approximately 10 other people in my direct company spent nigh on 90% of our time talking, analysing, debating and even singing about that afternoons events at Celtic Park. As the Guinness flowed and the points were made and positions taken, agreements reached or arguments solidified, no quarter was easily given. And all because the lady loved Milk Tray! Sorry I meant and all because we all loved Celtic and not just wanted the best but because we all ‘wanted’ to want the best. That is where love begins.
Extrapolate that amount of time into a lifetimes scale and then tell me that that we do not share an invisible, mysterious and life enhancing aura that is ‘Celtic’.
The other great thing about being a Celtic supporter is the ‘Special Fish Supper’.
Estadios’ household on the day of the game is probably no different to that of any other daft Celtic worshipping fanatic.
The tried and trusted routine must be followed.
The sequence of shite, shower and shave,; the donning of white socks, clean freshly pressed Celtic Huddle Boxer shorts, faded denims, leather laced deck shoes, home or away top, and for home games a couple of pints in Sharkey’s and a 37and a half minute walk to the ground along Ballater street through Glasgow Green Football centre and up Nuneaton street, has to be adhered to.
Post match the routine is less important but usually consists of getting back to Sharkey’s, discussing the highs and lows of the game, drinking more Guinness than is good for 10 men, being threatened with an anti social behaviour order by Isa for singing too loud and too often, and all topped of by my ‘Victory Celebrating Special Fish Supper’ from Anne’s Fry in Crown street in the Gorbals.
Yesterday I didn’t have my ‘Victory Celebrating Special Fish supper’!
And why did that happen, why did we not win. Let me enlighten you.
I suppose I could put it down to the fact that we threw Aiden, Ross, Craig, and Shaun into the team and expected it to gel immediately.
Perhaps it was a contributed to by persevering with Thommo when he has had one of his own self confessed poorest seasons.
Perhaps it was down to a defence that can’t consistently defend because big Stan has to repeatedly cover for for an increasingly fragile Bobo.
Perhaps even it was down to Joos who looks more comfortable breaking forward from midfield in randomly glorious but vain attempts to atone for his failure to display the basics of fullback play.
Could it even be down to moving Stan P from his central driving role into a second tier defensive support player?
Could it be that the number of formation and tactical adjustments yesterday simply left all the players confused?
Or heaven forbid could it be that all these things occurred on the same day and that our Manager (for whom I have the greatest admiration for his dragging of us out of the gutter of 1990s despondency, and will yield to no-one in that) has in fact NOT taken us as far as he can, but that WE have taken HIM as far as we can.
Most of this season we have sat, stood, shouted, swore and chanted as with one or two notable exceptions a fairly unpalatable fare was laid before us. With little or no professional knowledge we have quietly sighed when the opportunity to transfuse the side with new blood was not taken, when the chance to rest Thommo was missed, when we failed to play to our footballing strengths, and when safety first became a stifling and corrosive fearful tactic.
If so many of us witness this and agree, then we are all either complete fools and need to be put right, or perhaps we have a point and someone needs to talk to our coaching and managerial staff.
Or perhaps it is because I got a lift to the ground yesterday rather than walking. That’s it! Of course.
Sorry Martin, Sorry Bhoys and Ghirls, Sorry world it is all down to me. I broke my routine and we got gubbed by the Hibees.
Anyway, I’ll be there next Saturday and at Motherwell. I won’t be at Tynecastle because I didn’t get a ticket. I’ll also be there next season and everyone after it that the Lord and my life-limiting- diet allows me to .
I still won’t boo, I’ll be there for the full ninety minutes and injury time, and I will still go through my match day routine.
Here’s to the oldest white sock wearing Celtic supporting fanatic in the Universe and even more
…………….Here’s to a lot more Special fish suppers
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