Date: 27th February 2026
Balls To Protests
Donald C Stewart
Okay, I’m going to admit I found it funny.
Fans’ protests are something that all of us from the outside looking in find interesting and amusing.
When Celtic fans threw tennis balls onto the pitch in their game against Stuttgart at Parkhead, it demonstrated to the Celtic board that the rapprochement that has been found between the two is still incredibly fragile.
When Brian Wilson became the interim chairman of Celtic FC, after Peter Lawwell left citing abuse and threats made against him and his family, there was a warm welcome, particularly from the Celtic Fans’ Collective.
Having listened to one of the representatives have a right royal dig at Tom English on Sports Sound, this seemed to be the beginning of the end of the discord.
However, here we have an example of just exactly how delicate that relationship happens to be.
It is interesting from outsiders looking in because it demonstrates for all of us that the relationship between supporters and the people in charge of your club is not necessarily symbiotic.
It can be fractured and we’ve seen from time immemorial the points, which people have decided not to follow their club, whether it be the merger between the two Invernesses or the demise of Third Lanark or the current problems with Hamilton Academical.
We have all seen fans protest, particularly around a manager who’s not cutting it for your club. The delicacy right now, as Martin O’Neill has pointed out, is that it could start to affect the players as they attempt to resurrect the season for the club. They are facing a resurgent Rangers under Dandy Rohl and Derek McInnes’ inspired Hearts, still at the head of the Premiership title race.
As we get to the last few months of this, and it gets increasingly exciting, you would consider Celtic, with their recent history, to be the most likely to come good and win the league.
However, with the discord within Parkhead, every time a player runs onto the pitch, at the back of their mind will no doubt be whether or not there is going to be a warm welcome, or their attempt to get the club into a winning position is going to be supported or criticised.
Getting the Celtic Fans Collective, and the Green Brigade round a table to discuss with Brian Wilson how to go forward, as Wilson has attempted, and been successful in so doing, needs more tangible results.
In fact, his disappointment at what happened is palpable.
Whether or not fans are going to continue this form of action is debatable, but one thing it does do is it brings focus, as it ended up being a headline in a BBC News article.
It highlights a revision of the tenure and departure, of Brendan Rodgers. When he left, the incendiary statement from Dermot Desmond hit the headlines, and Rodgers was cast as a villain.
People are suggesting that Rodgers was attempting to communicate directly to the fans that there was something wrong and rotten in the state of Paradise. And with fans being increasingly hostile, the Desmond “truth” bomb seems to have had some blowback on the board.
What will happen next? Who’s to know, but we can only hope that the incremental moves towards rapprochement between board and supporters, club and fans continues.
If there is a decision by UEFA that Scotland will lose its second representative in the Champions League as of next season, then the riches of the Champions League will be lost to the runner-up this year.
As Celtic chase the double – Scottish Cup and League – the biggest success is the way supporters and club combine to march in one direction.
No matter what you thought of the protest, it has managed to get headlines and perhaps get people back round the table which outlines there are real challenges for the board because supporters have power and that is why they protest.
IMAGE: Homes of Football
Posted in: Fan’s Blog, Latest News
Tags: Celtic, fans blogs, Scotland, Scottish fans, SFSA, SPFL