Celtic Trust backs the Green Brigade and calls for return of Season Tickets
Soccer Football - Champions League - Group E - Celtic v Atletico Madrid - Celtic Park, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - October 25, 2023 Celtic fans wave flags in support of Palestine amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas REUTERS/Russell Cheyne
The Celtic Trust has called on the Celtic Board to reverse their decision to withdraw the Season Tickets belonging to Green Brigade members.
News emerged yesterday with Season Tickets wouldn’t be valid for tonight’s match against St Mirren with a lengthy ‘crime sheet’ sent out to the club’s messengers.
Nothing has been said on the record, on the club website or on their multiple social media platforms.
All sorts of interpretations have been put on the ‘crime sheet’ with action just happening to take place when very visible support for Palestine is being undertaken by the Celtic support at large.
Palestine flags were prominent in the away matches at Hearts and Hibs with no allocation given to the Green Brigade.
At lunchtime today The Celtic Trust announced:
The Trustees of the Celtic Trust wish to comment on the decision of Celtic PLC to withdraw, for an indefinite period, the season ticket rights of a section of the Celtic support. From the information now available on social media, it is abundantly clear to us that this action has been motivated by the the flying of Palestinian flags at Celtic Park in protest against the continuing wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians, including over 3000 children.
This show of anger and solidarity with the Palestinian people was supported by thousands of Celtic supporters around the stadium and not for the first time. Why then was only one group singled out and targeted?
The facts, according to various communications from Celtic which are now freely circulating, are that the away ticket allocation for the Green Brigade was stopped because of alleged conduct issues at Feyenoord (19/9/23), Motherwell (30/9/23) and Lazio (4/10/23). The withdrawal of away tickets was not implemented for a full three weeks after the Lazio game for some reason, but we can only assume that this ‘punishment’ covered all the incidents up to that point.
After that point the only games we have had were the Atletico Madrid home game on 25/10/23 and the Hibs away game (for which this group of fans were not allocated tickets) on 28/10/23.
Further, we know that there were no Celtic travel stewards in the Hibs ground so Celtic can have no credible information about any misconduct at that ground.
Celtic seem to have come to a very quick conclusion that trouble outside Easter Road was the fault of the Green Brigade. It took the club almost a year to reveal that the crushing outside of a Glasgow Derby in September 2018 was caused by a change in crowd control rather than unruly actions by supporters.
The Celtic Trust have regular meetings with the club but little support or activity across the broader support.
Today’s statement was their first comment since June which related to the appointment of Brendan Rodgers as manager.
