It’s in the blood

 

It’s in the blood

I have spent the last few of days on the beautiful island of Arran having a wee break from city life and social media. I took a stroll up Goat Fell, well, I say a stroll; a nine-mile hike up and down a 2867 ft high granite Corbett is more challenging than a mere stroll. It was one of those bright, clear October days you get now and then and once on the summit, the view was stunning. Scotland on a sunny day is world class in its beauty and grandeur.

Of course, when match day comes along you feel that strange urge to find out how your team is doing. I sat in a quiet corner of the hotel Bar with my trusty iPad in front of me and found one of those free online streams that seem to offer a better-quality service than Celtic TV. A chap at the opposite table smiled and nodded at me in that way a desperate footy fans nods to a fellow traveller. Being Scotland, there’s always that moments hesitation before contact where folk fret that the person they’re about to talk football with might a fan of their greatest rivals. Celtic and Rangers fans are like Sherlock Holmes when sussing out which side a random stranger supports. Even wearing the club shirt of a completely different team is a clue. St Pauli or Dortmund is 90% certain to be a Celt whilst a Chelsea or even England top would suggest not. Tattoos are another giveaway and, as I know to well, so are certain names.

The chap in the bar played his cards well though; ‘Are you watching the Motherwell game?’ he asked. A skilful opening ploy because if I had said, ‘No, Rangers and Hearts,’ he still hadn’t declared his allegiance. His luck was in though and I said, ‘Yeh, fancy watching it?’ He needed no second invitation and in two minutes flat we were two Celts engrossed in watching our team’s comfortable win over the steelmen.

He told me about his life in selling golfing holidays and how it had taken him all over the world. He had watched Celtic games at 6am in Australia, 10am in New York and at midnight in Kuala Lumpur. ‘It’s in the blood,’ he smiled. ‘No matter where I am, I always try and watch Celtic. I even keep a clock on my phone at Celtic Park Time.’ It struck me that there will have been Celtic supporters in all parts of the globe enjoying Tom Rogic’s defence splitting pass for Jota’s opener and David Turnbull’s rocket for the second goal. Once the green and white bug gets you, it can be mighty hard to shake it off.

Celtic looked comfortable today and in the past couple of games at Pittodrie and Fir Park have managed to find a way to win. That ability to knock the ball about and play intricate passes works well on the wide spaces of the bowling green that is Celtic Park but in these difficult and often physical away matches, the ability to grind out results is what pays dividends in May. Postecoglou’s team is capable of great movement and passing but has had a couple of bruising reminders that nice guys get nothing in the physical world of Scottish football. You need to dig in and fight for every ball in the SPFL and our latest recruits are learning that.

Today’s match struck me as odd in that Motherwell closed a section of the away stand as Celtic changed there and came wandering down the stairs of the stand in an incongruous way we might never see again. These Covid days have thrown up so many odd sights, not least an entire season played in empty stadiums which I still maintain affected Celtic more than most sides. Few clubs are as well backed by their fans and I think their absence showed in the end.

One aspect of the game I was too enamoured with was the songbook adopted by a section of the Celtic support. At a time when various sections of Scottish society are waking up to the anti-Irish racism in our midst and anti-Catholic prejudice, do we really need Celtic fans singing about the IRA? I’d also be total hypocrite calling out Rangers fans for their ‘famine song’ and Billy Boys’ antics and say nothing about what we heard today. That ‘roamin’ in the gloamin’ tosh should be nowhere near a Celtic game and I’m glad the majority at the match seemed to ignore it totally. The brief airing of the song which mentions Davie Cooper, albeit sung by a very small minority, was tasteless and moronic. We could so easily inhabit the moral high ground on this subject, yet an unthinking minority seem to be happy dragging us down to the level of the very thing we claim to despise?

A lot of folk who write about Celtic don’t touch this subject with a barge pole as they feel the inevitable flak they get isn’t worth the hassle. Folk will tell you there is no equivalence between an Irish Republican song and the racist bile we hear from others. That is absolutely true, songs about a nation's struggle for independence from a larger neighbour who oppressed it for centuries can't be classed in the same category as blatant racist ditties like the famine song. But it’s 2021, will we ever move on from this stuff being heard at Scottish football matches? Of course, you pay your money and you make your own choices but when folk outside the Glasgow bubble talk about Celtic and Rangers as ‘two cheeks of the same arse’ annoying as it is to most Celtic fans, it isn't hard to see how they arrive that impression. That being said, Rangers using the tune from the Famine song on an advert on their official media channels demonstrates either breath taking insensitivity or arrogant disreguard for the thoughts of others. Motherwell fans chanting about child abuse today, not for the first time either, discredits the 'family club' identity they seek to portray and is as tedious as it is insensitive to anyone affected by abuse.

I know we tend to mellow as we get older and I freely admit to having sung plenty of political songs in the old Jungle and beyond.  I know that when boyhood’s fire is in the blood, there is a tendency to enjoy a bevy and the ‘Rebs’ and there’s nothing wrong with that, apart from maybe the time and place? It maybe an unpopular opinion but it is nonetheless how I feel about it. Celtic is a broad church these days with fans from various walks of life. There will be various opinions about what constitutes a Celtic song and we can agree to differ and still be as equally fervent in our backing of the team we all hold dear.

Celtic face a trip to Easter Rd soon and when that is past will have played all of our top rivals away from home in the first quarter of the season. Rangers have faced Celtic, Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen and Motherwell at Ibrox in the first round of games and will face them all away in the second quarter of the campaign so we are not without hope going into the autumn.

Ange is making progress with the team and Julien, Forrest and Juranovic are edging towards fitness again. The next couple of months is going to be very interesting indeed.