CELTIC AGM: SELF-SERVING COWARDICE PERSONIFIED
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 2 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Anyone who watches my appearances on both the ACSOM Bulletin and Celtic Down Under will know that, for all my numerous and obvious flaws, being lost for words is seldom one of them.
And yet, here we are, a few hours after the most chaotic, catastrophic embarrassment of an AGM to befall Celtic Football Club in our long and illustrious history, and I truly am at a loss as to how to even begin talking about it. I guess I should just say what immediately comes to mind. Apologies for strong language that follows:
Bastards! Cowardly, two-faced, self-serving bastards!
I tried really hard to think of some witty retort, some kind of colorful riposte to nepobaby-in-chief Ross Desmond’s cheap and needless attacks on the Celtic support, but I’m sorry, I couldn’t.
The anger runs too deep and the wounds are too raw. However, I will try my level best to pick through this utter sh*tshow and see where we go from here.
The Celtic AGM Should have been a Time for Healing, but our Board Chose Confrontation
Celtic AGMs aren’t usually headline grabbers. It is usually just a rubber-stamping exercise. Those who want to remain in-post on the board, and who haven’t upset our wannabe emperor Dermot Desmond, usually do so unopposed.
However, this year was supposed to be different. Fan resentment and disenchantment with the Celtic Board are at their highest point now since the dark days of 1994. Unfortunately, there is no sign of a Brian Dempsey or Fergus McCann riding in to save the day this time. Fans will have to force change on our own. Today’s debacle makes it clear that the current board will do everything they feasibly can to resist this change.
I think it’s only appropriate that I offer a word in support of The Celtic Trust’s Jeanette Findlay, who took a stand against the board’s attempts at whitewashing today, and will no doubt be vilified in our sycophantic press over the next few days for doing so.
While the Celtic board wanted us all to sit quietly like good little lemmings and watch their self-congratulatory PR reel, Jeanette, rightly, raised a point of order, which as a shareholder, she is fully entitled to do at a Celtic AGM, that the time would be better spent answering questions from the floor.
The board’s contemptuous reaction to this reasonable request once again highlights their total inability (or is it simply an unwillingness?) to “read the room” as it were.
Look, I’m not going to lie, Jeanette Findlay is not someone I always agree with. Indeed, I penned an article on this very blog back in September outlining exactly why the Celtic Fans Collective felt that the Celtic Trust, under her leadership, was not the right vehicle to bring about change.
However, her actions today were legitimate, and reasonable, and I will gladly challenge anyone who tries to assert otherwise. We’re talking about basic accountability here. That’s all. Jeanette effectively asked, in the politest way possible: “Can we cut the b*llshit please and get down to the important business?”
Shareholders didn’t give up their free time today, or in many cases take leave from their jobs to attend the Celtic AGM just to be patronized by yet another serving of one-sided PR slop from the club. They came to have an honest and frank discussion about the current state of the club, and the people charged with leading it.
Unlike those sat at the top table today, we don’t all have the luxury of getting a 6 or 7 figure salary just for showing up to a board meeting every now and then. We do so because Celtic is our life blood. This football team and all it represents, means the world to us. That’s why we make these sacrifices. That’s why we go without basic necessities in order to have the money to make it to that away game, to get the kids those over-priced Adidas Celtic strips they want for Christmas and so on.
It's not just a football club to us, it is a fundamental part of our soul. People like Michael Nicholson, Peter Lawwell, Dermot Desmond, and his nepobaby showed today that they have never understood this emotional commitment, and they most likely never will.
The final insult, in my opinion, came courtesy of the aforementioned Ross Desmond. I assume his dad, the one who actually should have been there today, was too busy on the golf course, or acting the bigshot somewhere else.
Desmond Jnr said: “We will not be railroaded by those whose only vocation in life is to be anti-establishment and by those who try to degrade the club.”
Degrade the club? Are you f*cking serious?
Such ignorance could, I guess, only come from the mouth of someone who has never done an honest day’s work in their life. Someone who never has, and never will, know the meaning of sacrifice in the name of following Celtic.
For the hard of thinking, like Desmond junior and senior, let me just make this clear one more time. Celtic’s very existence is predicated on being anti-establishment. We were set up to be a vanguard, a rallying point for Irish immigrants, forced to move to Scotland thanks to a genocide manufactured by the British, and who were almost universally rejected by the Scottish establishment at the time.
“From immigration to domination” isn’t just some pithy slogan Celtic supporters slapped on a banner. It is the embodiment of who we are, the legacy we carry forth and the responsibility we have to honor those who have come before us, and those who will follow us long into the future.
Such ignorance of our great football club’s past and its position in society is what truly degrades our club, not a bunch of people shouting sack the board, and waving red cards in protest at a bunch of fat cats who have ignored them for years.
I said yesterday that Celtic’s Board had, through alleged collusion with Police Scotland, effectively declared war on the fans. Today saw them double down on that.
Make no mistake, we are now in a battle for the very soul of our club.
As my dad once taught me: “Son, don’t start fights unless you have to. But when you do, make sure you finish them.”
That would be my message to the wider Celtic support today. We didn’t start this fight, but it now falls to us to finish it. This board needs to go, and they need to go now.
