MORONIC PROTESTS ACHIEVE NOTHING AT ALL

HAD THE Green Brigade been the self-appointed guardians of Celtic’s conscience in the 20th century, some of the biggest names in the club’s history would have been cancelled. Two of their oldest trophies would have been dumped straight in the skip. The Willie Maley Song is a mainstay of Parkhead matchdays. A colossus who played in the first-ever game and served the club for 50 years, Maley was a walking contradiction. A practicing Catholic, he was also the son of a sergeant in the British Army and a committed royalist.

A biography claims that Celtic’s first manager spent 1936 ‘genuinely distressed’ at the death of King George V and ‘bewildered and upset’ by the abdication of King Edward VIII over the Wallis Simpson scandal. Maley’s last silverware was the Empire Exhibition Trophy of 1938 when Celtic beat Everton in the final at Ibrox. After that, they added the Coronation Cup — another one-off tournament to mark the ascension to the throne of Queen Elizabeth II. The same Queen, incidentally, who knighted Celtic’s chairman Robert Kelly for services to football in 1968 then pitched up at Hampden to shake hands with Kenny Dalglish and a posse of Parkhead players taking part in a game to mark her Silver Jubilee. Celtic might claim they’ve been open to all since 1888, but the evidence of the last two weeks tells a different story. The hostility shown towards Queen and Crown at games against Shakhtar Donetsk and St Mirren displayed all the tolerance of a Taliban tribunal. Republican sentiment is hardly restricted to one fanbase. Tributes to the Queen at Scotland, Dundee United and Hibs games have also been disrupted by moronic behaviour. Look, if supporters want to have a grown-up debate over the future of the monarchy, it’s a free country. But spare us the idea that a football stadium is somehow an appropriate place to have it. Maybe the fans kidding themselves that a sweary banner might be just the thing to topple the King from his throne think the Russian Revolution was the brainwave of Spartak Moscow ultras.