"The Atmosphere was great, but don't miss the real message from the Green Brigade"

[Joe O'Rourke]

[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]The atmosphere in the second half on Saturday was the best this season so far; and probably one of the best ever at Celtic Park, but the real message came in the first half; not by the lack of singing; but by the different messages displayed in the banners unfurled by the Green Brigade.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]While I don’t agree with everything the GB do; it cannot be denied they have been very good in their vocal and visual support of Celtic; which was their objective in the first place.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]The main message from Saturday was very clear; we will not accept being criminalised for supporting our team; not by the Scottish Government; nor by the Police; that message needs to get through to the powers that be; and going by the amount of comments in the media after Saturday; they can hardly say they didn’t know.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]The game was given away a couple of weeks ago by the chairperson of the Justice Committee Christine Graeme when she said that the present legislation for offensive behaviour tended to convict Rangers fans but not Celtic fans.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]The simple reason for that is; most of the songs sung by the Evil Empire are racist and sectarian; while the songs sung by our fans are not; therefore they are committing a crime; and we are not; it’s not rocket science.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]The tactic of using cameras to film the fans in the GB section is another worrying trend; my understanding of the use of cameras was for evidence gathering when the police believe a crime may be about to take place; they should certainly not be trained on any section of our support as a matter of policy.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]This action by the police is both intimidating and inflammatory; the statistics will prove that there is very little criminal activity by the Celtic support at Celtic Park; so why the need for cameras stuck in people’s faces?[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]I have attended several meetings with representatives of the GB; in fact I set up and attended the first meeting they had with Peter Lawwell; they don’t need me to fight their battles; they are more than capable of doing that for themselves.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]But I would say this quite categorically; the Celtic Supporters Association will support 100% any supporter who is wrongly arrested; or who is punished in any other manner for doing nothing more than supporting our team.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]I have already written to Alex Salmond, Kenny Mac Askill, Christine Graeme, and Roseanna Cunningham; they know our thoughts on their proposed new legislation; the Scottish Government and the Police appear to be the only people who see a need for new legislation.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]I have no problem whatsoever with the laws of the land; but I do have a problem with laws which are put in place to criminalise a certain section of Scottish society; we are more than happy to support the Green Brigade in the manner in which they are highlighting this fact.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]There will be many battles to fight in the coming weeks and months; the unification of the Celtic support will be crucial in facing those battles; not only at Celtic Park; but at places like New St Mirren Park in Paisley; where every Celtic supporter is searched before entering the ground; we will need to have a common approach to how we tackle that.[COLOR=#000000:652861f9]Finally, let me congratulate the Green Brigade for the way the organised their protest on Saturday; the sight of the whole support responding to the prompting was really special; let’s hope that we can show the Italians on Thursday night what a great support we have; one which is not steeped in racism and bigotry.

[Guest]

The Green Brigade are not a problem for Celtic, they are the future, without them we’d be in the hands of the pie munchers and naysayers who would have celtic park like a morgue.

The harassment of the Green Brigade and Celtic supporters in general is appalling and the attempts to establish this anti celtic/ catholic/ irishness in law is something we should all be very worried about.
As composer James McMillan has recently stated, Gaddaffi would have a better chance of a fair trial in Scotland than a tim.

We need the club to support US on this and we need a united front from the broader Celtic supporters groups, the trouble is that there isn’t a united front from the fans.
Many, as we know, are only too keen to go on boards/ blogs and put down the green brigade… usually these attacks focus on the GB’s songs and the clear irish/ nationalist content. For some celtic supporters it seems like the very mention of anything irish makes them faint - this of course plays right into the hands of those that seek to undermine celtic - they do so by collapsing the many variables of 'irishness' into one pot marked 'fenian' and they do this in order to destroy us. Some celtic supporters have, over the years, become our worst enemies in some ways - look at greetin faced pat nevin! These are the holier than thou brigade who would have us sat on our hands and in denial of our history and, indeed, our present whereby the clubs irishness is now milked for all its worth when only a short time ago it was all but officially ignored unless packaged and presented by the PLC.

Well, for many other tims the GB are one of the few glimmers of life in an otherwise dormant Celtic support and their ‘Irishness’ is to be applauded.
I can only remind the handwringers that had we gone down the Hibs path we would have been just about in the same place as them now – it’s our ‘Irish ness’ that has sustained Celtic through all the years of ups and downs – its our ‘Irish ness’ which has tapped into the global support that we pride ourselves in.
The Irish self haters amongst us would have it that we’re a Scottish club – well you ask a Cardiff or Swansea fan if they are English clubs and see what response you get!
It is time, and Saturday’s game gives us hope, that the GB are fully backed by the rest of the fans… if we allow them (GB) to be picked off by these new laws, if we stand back and watch them being harassed by our own stewards then we will regret it when they are gone.
The Green Brigade has restored some pride in being a tim ( I go back some way) some people, for many reasons, would prefer Celtic Park to return to it’s passivity – buy yr ticket, eat yr pizza and shut up (remember Arsenal fans goading us with ‘wheres yr famous atmosphere?).
Lets all get together on this and recognise the GB for what they have brought back to Celtic Park and at the same time resist these new laws being targeted at tims/ irish/ catholics.

One of the key web sites needs to coordinate a response to this legislation before it is too late.

keep the faith, and be proud.

[irish eyes]

I echo your comments Joe. It's good that the gb are highlighting what is happening here. Fans should not be in any trouble for waving flags, or singing songs that are not racist or sectarian. It is disgusting that fans are being treated as criminals when they are not.
I support the gb and hope their highlighting of this leads to fair and just treatment of fans. My only wee concern on Saturday was that while the "silent protest" was going on the players were not getting the support they should have. Many of our players have commented over the years that they played better and ran faster when the fans were behind them and because of the result of our game at ibrokes I felt the players in the first half must have wondered if they were not getting the support of the crowd. I want to stress that I do support the gb in this quest but when the fans are distracted watching banners being unfurled it kind of disrespects the players a wee bit. It's not a criticism but just a suggestion to perhaps protest before the game, at half time or after the game but to always give our teams the fantastic backing that was shown in the second half.