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John Kennedy Celtic newsWith the football season officially over, what can we now do? Go shopping with your good lady ? (or good other half I should write to make sure I am being politically correct). Take up watching golf, tennis or some other sport ?

No thanks.

In the past, I’ve been asked why I don’t care about Scotland matches & international football.

First up, as a Celtic fan, I would be quite happy if our players did not play international football. Some people might read that and think why not ?

The players are tested in a new environment, work with different players, different coaches play in different stadiums and play against different opposition – surely all of that can only broaden their footballing horizons and make them a better player?

From the above paragraph, I have given quite a few good reasons as to why players maybe go off to play for their countries.

Overall, it may help them become a more experienced player but I just think the risks and my lack of having a national team to support outweighs those benefits.

Is that a selfish way to look at it? Probably, but for the reasons that I will give below, I really don’t feel that I have a national team to support, therefore, it’s something I don’t really care about.

First up I will single out the Scottish players. The reasons for not wanting them playing international football is different from non Scottish players.

Like a lot of Celtic fans, I have lived through several instances of the SFA intentionally working against Celtic so my thought is why on earth would I want Celtic players to play for such an organisation?

In my lifetime, I remember the SFA intentionally holding up the registration of Jorge Cadete, this year we’ve had Celtic staff (Neil Lennon) given punishments for something that other people do not get punished for. Ally McCoist got away with his part in the same incident. Craig Brown certainly never got a long suspension for his altercation with Motherwell owner John Boyle.

I, like most, could write thousands of words, if not pages, based on perceived injustices against my club from the SFA (note that I do write my club instead of Celtic as I am certain that other supporters of other teams could do the same thing) but that’s not the point I’m making.

It’s merely to highlight what I feel is a valid reason for me thinking ‘why should Celtic risk our players to play for an organisation that doesn’t do very much to support us’?

One that springs to mind was the John Kennedy incident – now before his injury, I was one of the many who thought that he would have been able to go on and become our main centre half for years. I even went so far as to say that I thought he was future club captain material (the last person I thought that about was Stilian Petrov in his first season and most folk thought I’d lost the plot back then).

Whether or not Kennedy was / wasn’t good enough to go on to be a Celtic great is irrelevant but when I mention John Kennedy, the SFA didn’t seem to be doing very much to help the player or Celtic after his injury.

Yes, it’s only one incident, but I feel that if something similar were to happen, the SFA would just do the same. ‘Thanks for your player but he’s injured and no good to us, have him back’.

I guess the point I’m making is the general attitude towards Celtic & us, the supporters, just makes me think that I couldn’t really care less about the SFA and it’s football team. I do have to say writing that isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

I am a football fan so I want to have a national team to go and support but I feel that the SFA has robbed me of such a thing. I enjoy watching the Euro championships, World Cups etc but it’s just not the same when you have nobody to support in it.

Yes, you can adopt a national team but supporting a team is something that is in your blood, like being a Celtic fan. You don’t just wake up one day and decide that you will become a hoops fan, it’s something that runs through generations of your family & it can’t just be switched on and off.

These are things that make me a Celtic fan, these are the things that make you sit out in the freezing cold weather in the middle of winter to watch your team play (think last winter and some of the home matches).

So on a personal level, there are reasons as to why I have no interest in the Scottish national team but what about other countries.

More so now than any other time in the past, we have players who are from all over the world.

On a typical international break, we could have players going to Asia, middle east, South and Central America plus all over Europe. Each one of them risking injury, tiredness etc.

As I touched on above, I feel it’s quite important to support a team when you are watching football so whether or not the Honduras, for example, do well isn’t something that I particularly care about and the same applies to any other national team.

The other thing is the injury potential – how many times have we had a player come back injured from international football ? Yes, every club with international players can answer that but again, I only support Celtic so don’t care about other teams and their injuries.

Even tiredness these days. Using Cha and Ki as examples, if they have to fly from Glasgow to wherever their connection is to get back to Korea, then train and play football, travel some more then do the reverse journey back, they will tire.

Most football players will no doubt fly first / business class but for anyone who has travelled through a few different time zones over the course of a day or so, it does get tiring.

I know Cha and Ki are only two players from a large squad but the same applies to all of them. Travelling long distances is tiring.

Ok, so now that I have single handedly scrapped international football, I need to go back to the question at the start. What do we do instead? Does anyone know the Braehead centre opening hours?

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  • John says:

    Agree with most of what you say. I have no interest in international football at all except to see England get beaten. Scotland I could not care less about. Too many times Celtic fans have been told to ‘go home’ and most Scotland fans make it abundantly clear that Celtic fans are ‘outsiders’.

    Don’t understand why anyone would support them. The international breaks are torture. Also, the Champions league is more important than the World Cup, even the EPL is more important than the World Cup (for me so is the SPL). Why are more and more players retiring early from their international teams when they are playing for longer.

    Countless numbers of players retire from internationals at 30 yet play on until they are older than 35! This is because it is just not as important as it was.

  • dansleftpeg says:

    Your reasons for not supporting Scotland are not genuine, but contrived through the obvious lies and myths that have been fed to us as a Celtic Supporter.

    I’m like you, a Celtic supporter. But unlike you I’m an avid Scotland fan. I want the best national team we can get, and if it’s full of Celtic players, even better.

    Also, unlike you, (and what seems to be a sizeable majority) my view on what the SFA have done (or not) isn’t polarised onto Celtic, it’s tempered by a combination of “our” behaviour and also how the SFA behave towards other member clubs.

    So, just to pick you up on a couple of points…

    1. The SFA did not withhold Cadete’s registration out of a desire to screw us over and help Rangers. There was a feud between Fergus and Farry, and Farry saw an opportunity to get one over on him. Farry was dictatorial, and didn’t take to criticism well (as levied at him by Fergus). It was personal. And to balance the fact they (and Farry) were equally full of their own self importance, what about the Duncan Ferguson headbutt incident? Where they invited the law onto the park (the only time this has ever happened) to deal with an incident that saw him jailed fo 10 weeks and denied Rangers the use of a quality player, not only that (but worse) is the fact that they waited unti he’s served his jail sentence before instigating their own 6 match playing ban. And worse was to come, Ferguson was so angered by the way the SFA treated him, he never played IN Scotland again (and Rangers had lost a potentially huge asset), and worse, Scotland lost the best centre forward of his generation. As a Scotland fan, that was unforgiveable. So, yes, Farry tried to screw Fergus over Cadete and Celtic suffered as a result, but Farry’s and the SFA’s treatment of Ferguson, the Scotland team and yes, Rangers, was much worse. The SFA might have been incompetent, but they’ve never been biased.

    2. I’m still staggered that people cannot open their eyes to the fact that in that incident between Lennon & McCoist that the SFA showed any favouritism whatsoever. Simply put, McCoist said something (what? we’ll never know) and Neil became an aggressor as a result, with McCoist remaining quite passive. That’s undisputable!!! We’ve all seen it. To say “McCoist never got punished” is wrong too. He got a two match ban, but appealed, and based on the evidence I just explained it was difficult to see what he could be charged with. Sorry, that’s just the facts. Neil could easily have appealed too but on the advice of his QC and on finding a loophole to be exploited he decided not too. I believe his four match ban would have been halved, and given his previous and with him being an agressor in the incident, we could have had no complaints. So again, don’t distort the facts to pain a picture that’s not really true.

    I’ve always thought that us as Celtic fans let ourselves down by the continued manipulation of many incidents and facets surrounding Celtic (including the ignoring of many other incidents that affect other clubs) and forget what we’re actually about, and that’s winning football matches and titles. When we take our eye off the ball and get distracted by sideshows that really don’t exist, then we mess up, a la ICT, oh and when people see/hear you continually whinge about things that simply aren’t true or try to paint a contrived picture, they shut down, ignore you and effectively laugh – or worse. And then you’re not taken seriously. You’ve heard of the boy who cried wolf??

    If we could only focus on what we’re good at, and flag up REAL injustice when it happens (e.g. managers being lied too by officials – and even that’s nothing new, officials have got their stories alligned for as long as they’ve had to supply a match report, it was just exposed at Tannadice) then we can focus on events ON the park and be taken more seriously off it too.

    Hail Hail

    • lenny4myth2 says:

      Jimmy Mcgrory – 7 Scotland caps.
      Jinky – 23 Scotland caps.
      Bobby Lennox – 10 Scotland caps.
      Tommy Gemmel – 18 Scotland caps.
      Billy Mcneil – 29 Scotland caps.
      Jimmy Quinn – 11 Scotland caps.
      John Mcphail – 5 Scotland caps.
      Bertie Auld – 3 Scotland caps.
      Bobby Murdoch – 12 Scotland caps.
      It would only be right that Celtic as a club, and all of the above and their families are apologised to. What do you think?

      ps why were bougherra and doof not punished?

      • dansleftpeg says:

        Around the times of the Lisbon Lions Scotland had a wealth of talented players, not just at Celtic Park! Rangers also reached European finals and other teams such as Dunfermline and Dundee also went to the latter stages of European tournaments. Additionally, there was a wealth of talent playing in the English first division as well. As an example, this is the team that beat the World Champions on their own patch in 1967.

        1. Simpson (Celtic)
        2. Gemmell (Celtic)
        3. McCreadie (Chelsea)
        4. Greig (Rangers)
        5. McKinnon (Rangers)
        6. Baxter (Sunderland)
        7. Wallace (Celtic)
        8. Bremner (Leeds)
        9. McCalliog (Sheffield Wed)
        10. Law (Manchester Utd)
        11. Lennox (Celtic)

        Other top quality players of the era that were non-Celts and didn’t get many caps included Carr, Morgan, Harper, Callaghan, Cruikshank, Ure, Gilzean and many others.

        These are all top drawer players and you’ll notice that Celtic are rightly the best represented team. But I think it’s a tad disrespectful to the others to say that they’re not as good as Celtic players just because they didn’t play for Celtic!

        • lenny4myth2 says:

          So Jinky and Mcgrory couldn’t get into the scotland team because there were better players or players just as good?

          YEAH RIGHT!

        • dansleftpeg says:

          Do you remember football in the 60’s then Lenny4myth2? A couple of points, there were a lot of good players around, as good as Jinky was, he was in direct competition with a few others for that particular place, including Willie Morgan of ManU and Willie Henderson of Rangers.

          Believe me, they were good and could lay equal claim to the position. Also, there were many less international games, meaning caps were rarer.

          Here’s another stat. 3 of the top 5 Scotland capped players of all time were Celts. The other two are ex-Aberdeen!

        • lenny4myth2 says:

          Get a grip of reality, this is the problem, you can’t even face up to bias that happened 50 years ago, what’s the chance you can accept it’s still going on?

          Why did Bertie Vogts say in his autobiography Tommy Burns would have got the Scotland job after him if he was a gers man?

        • lenny4myth2 says:

          If you really believe Jinky was left out because he wasn’t good enough that’s up to you, your entitled to an opinion no matter how laughable it is.

  • dansleftpeg says:

    Forgot to say, as far as JK’s injury, sad as it was, the fact the SFA just “handed him back to the club” is sadly the way it is in international football…for all clubs in all countries. However, there are insurances taken out by associations and clubs DO get financial recompense. But that will never get the player back.

    I truly hope you can find a way to get behind your country again.

  • paranoidandroid says:

    I hate the SFA as much as anyone. But Scotland is my country not there’s.
    I didn’t choose to support Scotland, and nobody told me to do it. I was born here and it’s in my blood.
    If you were born in Scotland your Scottish- end of.

  • Greenjedi says:

    When I was younger I used to go to the Scotland games at Hampden, but I walked out of a game against Bulgaria when John collins got booed coming on as a substitute shortly after signing for us.

    So F the SFA and the Tartan Arses

  • Frank McGaaaaarveeey! says:

    Dansleftpeg,

    Quote- “The SFA might have been incompetent, but they’ve never been biased”?
    Ain’t u ever heard of George Graham? And please explain the reticence to get involved in the filth that emanated (and still does) from Ibrox throughout their sectarian signing policy years? If not biased, then surely turning a blind eye (and a deaf ear) is as bad as condoning such behaviour? Apart from that, you did make your other points rather well!

    Paranoidandroid,

    Quote – “If you were born in Scotland your Scottish- end of.”

    Sure thing, so you’re advocating that anyone who doesn’t dance drunkenly in fountains whilst wearing C U Jimmy wigs should perhaps, for want of a better phrase, go home?
    Ethinicity and National origin can be a complex matter. Nice to see you have simplified it for us all.

    • lenny4myth2 says:

      Exactly, i will decide who i am. Im born and bred in london to a scottish father and irish mother, i am not english, i am a half scottish half irish londoner, simple as that.

  • paranoidandoid says:

    You can be Scottish and still celebrate whatever ethnic heritage you have- Irish/ Asian/ English/ Martian. It makes no difference to me.

    All I’m saying is that we shouldnt sit back and allow Scotland to be run by the bigots and incompetent numpties that currently run a lot of things. The ones that would tell you that there’s only one type of true Scot.

    It’s our country as much as it’s theirs, no matter what they try to tell us.

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