The Sound of Bowels Collapsing

You’ve got to take your hat off to Peter Lawwell, he moves fast and decisively whenever thunder clouds rumble on the horizon of Celtic’s reputation. Take this weekend for example, someone from Strathclyde Police broke ranks and reported Celtic fans for offensive chanting at the Rennes games and before you could say horse-whip, Lawwell had swept over the Scottish media in a wave of blackmail, inducements and violence.

Of course I wasn’t going to report anything and neither would anyone else on the Times (a newspaper some wag suggested had a superfluous ‘e’ in the title) where they don’t wear poppies at this time of the year as there’s no room on their lapels for all the white feathers. The Herald? Don’t make me laugh, they were all down at Whitehill School with the Green Brigade complaining about the proposed new legislation threatening their God given right to sing songs about terrorist organisations before realising there were more Rangers fans there than there were of their own and scampering down the street like skelped dogs. The red top journos were all hanging from meat hooks in the bowels of Parkhead so they weren’t in a position to do anything and the Scotland on Sunday decided to put on a show of parity by reporting it but gone was the outrage and demands for something to be done (even suggestions in some cases as the Scottish football press donned their Celtic scarves and put ideas into the heads of UEFA) that accompanied similar pieces about Rangers and instead we had a thinly veiled accusation that there was nothing to the story but we better report in anyway lest anyone suspect anything, Celtic had no case to answer and we should all move onto the convenient anti-Rangers story which any old inky worth his salt would recognise as the real nothing piece, the smoke screen so to speak.

Another story which should have been doing the rounds but wasn’t thanks again to Lawwell’s iron fist, was Stewart Regan’s misjudged joke about the number 11 on Armistice Day. You can say many things about Lawwell but at least when he takes over the SFA, he looks after his own. For anyone of responsibility be drawn to a social media like Twitter in the first place indicates that they're not right for the job. I get away with it because since no-one reads the Times in Scotland anymore, if I didn’t use it then I wouldn’t be able to get the message out there. Then again Regan’s been compromised from day one considering how he was head-hunted by Celtic, appeased Celtic by throwing Dallas to the wolves and then invited Lawwell and Celtic to blitzkrieg into the SFA and annexe the place with Hampden now echoing to the sound of jackboots marching up and down the corridors.

His comments were hardly offensive, we've all said worse, I know I have but his 'joke' was inane, unfunny, uncalled for considering the sensitivity surrounding the day (hey, 9/11 - there's another opportunity for a joke, Regan old boy) and had the faint whiff of nudge nudge to his pal Lawwell.

All of this was going through my mind when I bowled up to work today to wink at the post boys and make sure they’d got my column for tomorrow which I’d just had passed by Lawwell but as I handed it over, the subby told me they already had my piece, it had been approved and was being printed as we spoke – I’d been fraped b’gawd! It turned out it was actually the janitor who’d heard I was down at Celtic Park and figured I’d be hanging up with the rest of ‘em and so wrote my column for me as he does when I’m off adventuring or being held captive somewhere so who can blame him? Not being important enough to warrant a cry of stop the presses, I loafed off home and bit my nails, wondering what I was going to be saying to get me into trouble this time.