With Celtic being in such amazing form, it’s been a bit more difficult for me to find something to write about – thank God for that some might say ! ! !
It’s far easier to write about Celtic when the team aren’t playing so well as it’s easier to be negative than it is to be positive about a certain subject. Or maybe that’s just me, I’m not really sure and I suppose it probably doesn’t matter.
Anyway, with Celtic having such a massive support, we will always get people who disagree on various subjects. And quite often, as part of a football related argument, one party will tell another party that their opinion is irrelevant because they’re not a real fan.
So, that’s got me wondering, what makes a real fan?
Is it someone who goes to every match, home and away?
I would suggest that people who are able to and chose to do so are hardcore fans. The chances are that these supporters will support Celtic because family members before them also supported the club. These hardcore fans wont have a second or third team that they are likely to support either.
I think it’s important to differentiate between a real fan and a hardcore fan too.
Celtic will be their number one thing in life. Some fans will arrange their social life around fixtures too.
While there’s no doubt that these people are true supporters, what’s to say that someone who cannot afford to go to every game isn’t also a real Celtic fan?
Can someone, for example, who works most weekends or lives a fair distance away be deemed any less of a fan just because they don’t go to as many games?
There’s a couple of guys from the US that I can think of who are fairly active on Twitter and some podcasts and you can tell how much Celtic means to them. They’ve probably not been to a large number of games but they are still passionate fans.
What if a person lives far away but still goes out to watch the games on TV or they subscribe to Celtic TV and watch the re-runs of every match while getting to as many games as possible ?
At the moment, I’m quite lucky in the fact that I live in Glasgow and I can walk up to the games when we are playing at home. However, I’ve recently started a new job and I will be covering a 24 by 7 shift rota which means getting to some matches will be impossible.
I’ll still have my season ticket but for a lot of these games, the seat will sit empty unless a family member or friend is able to use it and sit with my Dad. Since the start of the season, I’ve been working Mon – Fri which meant that I could go to all games but am I now less of a fan because of my new job and new shifts ?
The point of this is that I have no ideas how to define what makes someone a true supporter. In the past, I’ve had people telling me that I’m not really a Celtic fan because I don’t particularly see a need for us to sing Irish rebel songs at the games.
I don’t have a great amount of knowledge on Irish politics and history so I don’t really see the need to sing the songs inside the ground. Others will argue that I should know about it given that we were founded by Irish immigrants.
Does having a superior knowledge of Ireland or even being from Ireland make someone a better fan ?
I like the fact that we have supporters from all over the place. Not so long ago, I was in Jakarta and a few teenagers came over to speak to us. Often Indonesian kids are told to stop tourists and talk to them so that they can try and practice their English.
When I told them I was from Scotland, one of the kids asked me about Celtic. He said that he liked Celtic and where possible, he would watch our games on TV. He has also spent many hours watching footage of us on Youtube.
There didn’t seem to be any real reason as to why this kid was a Celtic fan, he didn’t really know himself. He had no Scottish or Irish family connections. He just saw one of our games on TV and said that he liked the green and white hoops.
When he started researching a bit about the club, he liked what we stood for and he liked the fact that our fans can be so passionate when supporting the team. He mentioned a few of the bigger teams and said it’s like watching a theatre audience whereas watching Celtic is what he thought football should be like.
His ambition is to be able to come to Glasgow or travel to Europe to watch Celtic play one day. While that may never happen, he’s also a fan that I feel the club are lucky to have.
I’m not in a position to tell anyone how they should support the team, when they should go to games, how many games they should go to etc. I’m just grateful that we have such a large and diverse fan base and that I am struggling to come up with something negative to write about.
