Doing it for the Kids

I like many others had noticed during the season that there was a need for Celtic to make positive steps towards filling the gaps in the stadium. (see blogpost http://viewsfromthejungle7.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/filling-gaps.html)

I had been disappointed at the decision to withdraw the £50 childs season tickets last season for those applying for the first time and I feel a rushed and incorrect decision was made by the club to try and recompense for missing out on two Sevco gates. As a result I was unwilling to pay the £129 for a 3 year olds season ticket and I suspect many took a similar view.

I was delighted this year to be able to purchase the childs season ticket for £50 for my now 4 year old who has now started to go and enjoy the match day at Celtic Park. The seat next to me was available and as it costs the now reduced amount of £488 and is in a prime position I was expecting to be told if I wanted a childs seat that I would have to move to the family section. This was not the case and the purchase was made for my son, albeit he won’t attend every match -  it is his now for as long as he wants it to be, perhaps the rest of his life.

I think the move by Celtic towards offering the reduced prices to children of all ages (the £50 seat is valid for under 13’s) and encouraging familes to the ground is a focus on the long term future of the clubs support and the short term loss in seat prices is the opportunity cost of a future generation of attending fans. For many the club in the past was paying lip service to the issues concerning the fans when the ground was at capacity most weeks and there were alleged season ticket waiting lists and there lies the origins of future empty stands when the “glory hunters” disappear.

When I first started going to parkhead regularly in 1987 as a 14 year old it was £1.50 at the kids gate, we went as a group every fortnight and stood together in the jungle. Watching football was a rite of passage in which children, mostly boys, graduated from being taken to matches, to watching as young men, The conditions surrounding attending a match in those days was not appealing to the family or the younger child but the improving stadium facilities and the race to pay inflated wages for the players led to an increase in ticket prices which then began to preclude the next generation of 14 year olds. In addition to children the unemployed and the elderly became casualties in the price increases as the cost of surviving day to day rose in society.

When we go to Parkhead these days you don’t see a predominance of well healed middle class supporters; you see in the main ordinary punters who are stretching themselves every year to support their club. Last season the cost of having a season ticket and attending the home cup ties and Champions matches was upwards of £800. In todays economic climate this is a huge undertaking and if you have more than one supporter in your household it becomes even greater.

That’s one of the reasons that I get so annoyed with commentators and writers of the sport from the mainstream media who are quick to criticise and denigrate the size of an attendance for any particular game whilst sitting in the warmth of a studio having never paid for a season ticket in their life. It’s easy to shout Armageddon when you’re not contributing a penny to the sport and forget the cold hard reality of having to find the means to shell out £800 a season per person in an economic climate that is as bad as the world has seen in decades.    

The decision by the club to reduce the price of season tickets was a welcome one and a great piece of marketing, the monetary saving itself was great for the fans and it may have just been enough to encourage someone wavering to renew. It also gave the fans a bit of feeling that the club we belong to was starting to put us before blinkered pricing strategies motivated purely by profit.

One of the greatest changes in the modern day supporter is the way some have aligned their thinking with the thoughts of directors and C.E.O’s of football clubs by paying as much attention to the balance sheets and potential profits from player sales as they do to the on field stuff and origins of the support.

There is an obsession with selling kits abroad and grandstanding about how important that a pre-season friendly v Real Madrid is viewed by millions across Asia. Its not my view that increasing revenue is a bad thing, its just that its got very little to do with the heritage and traditions of why the club was set up and those groups of people in society who helped establish the club and maintain it for over a century are priced out.

I’m very, very lucky I have a steady income (touch wood!) that allows me to renew my season ticket and take my son as I know there are many who can’t afford it. I appreciate that in the current climate one of the thngs that would have to be set aside if circumstances changed would be the Season Ticket and I can’t imagine how soul destroying it must be for someone in that position to have to do so and tell their kids they couldn’t afford to take them. The Kano foundation and initiatives by the club to give schools tickets are something to be supported and rightly proud of, long may they continue.

Of the group of five us who used to go to the games together as teenagers only two of us are still season ticket holders, two are either non-attenders due to financial / commitment reasons and one is what we would term a “glory hunter”. The reality is after 15 – 20 years away from attending football you are not going to be able to entice these guys back. Going from not attending football and paying nothing to watch live football to paying £450 a season is not an easy sell. It is not the 40 something guys that you need to target to fill the stadium it’s the 40-Somethings’ kids you need to hook into. If you want to fill the stadium you get the kids hooked – if you want to sell merchandise you get the kids hooked.

Children have this amazing skill of getting what they want – eventually!, their parents want to please them if they have the means; so if a child wants to go to a game the family will most likely decide to go to a game; if they have been at a game and the kid wants the merchandise then they will eventually get the merchandise. If the kid becomes hooked on Celtic then Birthdays and Christmas presents will be Celtic Strips; balls and books rather than Ben 10 or spiderman. A person in their forties will rationalise their decisions when purchasing, they will not buy two new kits a season for themselves but for their kids? You bet and Celtic know this.

For many of the kids today getting along to parkhead courtesy of reduced season ticket prices or because the Kano foundation have made it possible, they will become Celtic fans and consumers for life – cradle to the grave. Miss them when they are younger and you may not be able to entice them later on and Celtic will be well aware of the amount of money a lifetime fan will contribute to the club. The disenfranchised; disinterested and long time abstainers will be brought back to Celtic, not by the club directly but by their kids.

One of the most pleasurable aspects of last season for me was taking my son to his first dozen matches and seeing how quickly he has been bitten by all things Celtic – he can’t yet read but he collects the programmes and flicks through the pages on a daily basis. He has over 20 programmes which I bought for him last season at a cost of £2.50 each that’s £50 spent as a result of him showing an interest and me wanting to encourage it and make him happy. See – it works.

The best way you can get families to buy into something and commit finances is to market to them as a family. Families always want to make decisions that will benefit the whole and not just one person in the family. Attracting families and children is one thing, but maintaining their loyalty requires the club to keep a close relationship with its fans and make concessions towards giving something back to the support is important; the free admission training day was a great example of this.

 I suspect as part of the match day experience next season we will start to see some form of pre or half time entertainment to make the memory of a matchday last in peoples minds and demonstrate to them why their tight budget for family entertainment should be spent at Celtic and not at other competing outlets.

So I would commend the club greatly for the initiatives they have put in place and hope that in maintaining this strategy and keeping connected with the support the benefits will flow back into the club in future years through the lifelong supporters of the club and full stadiums.

Doing My Compulsions in the Champions League

I watched a movie a few weekends ago titled “Silver Linings Playbook”; it was pretty good but this isn’t a film review and I’m no Mark Kermode so I will leave it up to you to decide if you watch it. One of the characters in it played by Robert Di Nero is an NFL nut and borderline gambling addict running a bookie sideline and suffering from obsession-compulsion. His compulsions revolve around creating the right “juju” whilst watching his favourite team on TV, for “juju” read superstition or good luck charms.

It was made obvious in the film by his actions that he suffered an obsessive compulsion in relation to the way he watched his team – so why am I writing about this? The reason is that I found this perfectly normal as I suffer from my own “juju” habits when watching Celtic – come on, we all have them don’t we?

However I cover mine up and disguise them. You see I am seven years clear of my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which gripped my life to a greater and lesser extent for a same amount of time. My compulsions were brought about by unwanted thoughts triggered by stresses in my life and thus by completing my compulsions I was counteracting these thoughts.

It would start mildly by having to say things under my breath for a set number of times; turning my pillow over 17 times before I put my head on it at night. It evolved into more obtrusive compulsions, I would be half way down the stairs then have the thought that if I didn’t go back up and start my descent again that someone close to me would be run down crossing the road – on occasions it took me half an hour to make it down. My eventual diagnosis was an anti-climax as I already knew what was wrong with me and during the period of treatment I would lie that I was getting better rather than go through with it any longer and became adept at hiding the compulsions, doing them at night as bedtime rituals or when no one was around.

I now have the disorder under control and don’t feel the need to combat negative thoughts with counter-actions as they aren’t there anymore but I know I will never be completely cured and that I run the risk of seeing them return. There is one element of my life where they do exist and where the negative thoughts come in to play albeit in a less consequential way and that is when watching Celtic. 

It’s predominantly when watching Celtic on TV that they appear as somehow when I’m at the game I get this sense that there really is nothing I can do to influence the match. Watching them on TV is another ball game all together and my compulsions manifest themselves and develop on a game by game basis.

With OCD you know you are the one in control of the thoughts and the resulting compulsions are purely irrational but you do them anyway. It’s exhausting and never-ending and extremely embarrassing. An example of one that started off mildly but developed into one that was just plain ridiculous was when I read a newspaper. If my eye caught an article about someone then whether or not I was interested in it I had to read it all the way through until I found the ages of the people in the article and where they came from. This developed into me having to read every column inch of every story or report in any newspaper I came across whether at home or at work or I convinced myself a person close to me would be hurt. This was very time consuming and obtrusive in my life especially with the broadsheets!  Eventually we had to stop bringing newspapers into the house.

The Champions League run has been the breeding ground for my compulsions whilst watching Celtic, however as a consequence you have me to thank for us getting to the last 16; at least that’s how my irrational mind works.

With OCD you believe you can actually influence and control outcomes of things that are out you’re your control and feel responsible when the outcomes of these things go against you. The way I had the objects set up in my living room and the people I had gathered around and seated in my living room was the reason we beat Spartak Moscow 3-2 away to record our first champions league away win. I did of course keep this to myself, the people in the room weren’t aware that I switched seats deliberately on the 55 th minute or that I moved the window blinds 3/4 of the way down on the 80 th minute.

 Nor would they have noticed that instead of using the downstairs toilet during the first half and second half (twice) that I used the bathroom up stairs so that I could count the steps and confirm to my doubts that there were indeed 16 treads and risers and not 15. Because in my mind had I not done that Samaras would have headed over instead of finding the net to make it 3-2. As ridiculous as this reads and sounds it made perfect sense to me.

For the Barcelona match at the nou camp everything was in place, same people – same seats, the thank you card which had perched on the side table for four days was removed so that there was nothing different from the Spartak match (I had taken a photo of the room post match). First half completed and all was going to plan holding Barcelona 1-1 away, but then it happened the one thing that brought it crashing down, my son who is pre-school age was only allowed to stay up for the first half had been put to bed. I continued with my rituals; I moved seat ten minutes into the second half, the blinds, running up stairs but even as the clock ran down the messages I was getting was that something had changed and Barcelona would score as a result of it and the nature of the cruel defeat compounded this. I was drained and felt in my mind somehow responsible for the loss. Again this must sound incredibly stupid but it made perfect sense to me.

Going into the away game against benfica I had already decided we would lose this one and that we would go to the last game at Celtic Park needing to win and Benfica to drop points because this was (A) the Celtic Way and (B) Prime breeding ground for the ultimate in compulsions. However I kept things the same and again at half time we had the result we were looking for and again my son was off to bed and again we lost the match whilst keeping the rest of the compulsions going. My mind was running through everything and working out the stat that my son had a record of one away win and two away draws whilst watching the champions league and whilst this might be chance was I willing to take that risk?

Now you will recall that I had mentioned concealing all of the little habits and superstitions from those close to me as they would have recognised these as triggers for me returning to my old ways so I had to tread carefully in the lead up to the final game against Spartak at Celtic Park. I managed to gently persuade my wife over a few days leading up to the game that she should let my son stay up for the whole match with it being a special occasion and a one off match. As I would be at the match I was not going to be able to do the usual routines but I had narrowed it down to the most important factor being that my son watched the whole match - a point I reassured myself with when I texted four times during the first half and half time to make sure he was staying up.

The game for me was not one of enjoyment or pleasure until well after the final whistle as the stress of the game brought on doubts and thoughts that if it all went wrong I would be partly to blame for it. The false cheer from the crowd in the second half was a stressful point as I had agreed (with myself!) not to find out how the benfica game was going. When we got the penalty like Neil Lennon, I crouched down into a ball and put my hands over my ears as I didn’t want to hear the referees whistle blowing to take it. The rumble of the stand and noise penetrated my hands and I knew we had scored – not long to hang on now. Then a Huddle started from the GB section, moved along the Lisbon lions stand and up into the north stand where I sit, the game wasn’t over, the benfica game wasn’t over and as everyone turned to do the huddle the thought came – “If you do the huddle Benfica will score whilst you are doing it” and so I had to sit it out, I was the only one around not doing it and must have looked like a killjoy but I couldn’t dare go against the thoughts and take a chance. The final whistle at both games brought great relief – relief that we had made it through to the last 16 and relief that for now I could park up my compulsions until March at least.

Being at the match on Tuesday I felt no real anxiety as I was just happy we had got to the last 16 and was aware that we were coming up against a ruthless team – lets not forget they are the Italian champions and league leaders. I was satisfied that as a team we had performed to near our best and had played some really high temp passing and pressing. I actually felt more stress at the Helsingborg qualifier than the last 16 as the consequences of being knocked out were so great.

I am grateful that the only thing that seems to bring on my compulsions these days is critical Celtic matches and the fact that the worst outcome of this is we get beat and knocked out of a competition makes it totally manageable, unobtrusive and trivial compared to how it can take effect and impact on your life.

Going Radio Ga Ga over Pierce O’Leary – an Eighties Cup Shocker.

Sundays dismal result at Hampden lead to a lot of debate, disappointment and a period of reflection of what might have been for the second year in a row in terms of the domestic treble. It can prompt you to look back into the volumes of back catalogue memories in your head of previous cup heartache and one such league cup horror show from 1985 is somehow fresh in my memory.

September 1985 and I was in primary 7, life was as good as it gets in school terms; you were the oldest group in the school, in the school football team, the wonders of high school were in your sights and Celtic had an exciting team playing some attractive football. We had players who were Celtic legends like Danny McGrain, established Celtic men like McStay, Provan, Burns and Aitken and you had up and coming exciting stars like Johnstone and McClair. You also had guys like Paul McGugan and Pierce O’Leary!

The previous season we had left hampden in May with the Scottish Cup after the memorable 100^th cup final in which we beat Dundee United 2-1 coming back from a goal down. It still remains one of the most memorable cup finals in Celtic History and had wetted my appetite for more of the same when the next cup competition started in the 1985/86 season. After playing well in the opening matches of this season we were drawn away to Hibs in the Skol Cup Quarter Final on a Wednesday night in early September. A Hibs team who had lost all of their four opening league games that season – I was in a confident mood.

This game sticks out really clearly in my head – I wasn’t at the match, I was still at the stage of supporting Celtic were I required an adult to take me to games and these were still few and far between. I followed Celtic through the radio commentaries on Radio Clyde and I loved it; sometimes I would set up my subuteo set and play along to the match reconstructing the incidents I had listened to.

At a time when the only games you saw live on TV were cup finals or international matches the radio was your way into the matches. Unlike today when the pundits and washed up ex-players with a tenuous link to Rangers see themselves as the centre piece, in those days the commentaries and football took centre stage. It was genuinely exciting listening to Richard Park commentating on the games on a Saturday afternoon or Wednesday night.

In the same week at school we were doing a project where we had to work in groups to prepare a radio news report, which we would write and then record into a huge double tape deck ghetto blaster. I immediately claimed the sports desk slot, I had no interest in news of any type apart from sports news and to be exact football news.

Every lunchtime I would run home which was about 3 minutes at top speed from the School for my lunch and would always just catch the sports desk after the 12.30 news and always thought what a great job that would be. So when it came to the task in hand I was an expert on how this sports reporting should be done.

There was a sketch from the only an excuse guys back in the day when it was just an audio tape and they were still funny, where they took off the radio clyde sports report and it had Hugh Keevins reading out the headlines from the newspapers, you hear him turning the pages and he finishes by telling you of Angus Ogg’s latest adventure (For Younger readers Angus Ogg was a cartoon strip in the Record). This was pretty much how I was going to do it for the radio recording at School, take my Dads Daily Record in, read out the headlines the scores and any other sports news – stopping before I got to Angus Og.

The morning of the recording was to be the morning after the Hibs match at Eater Road, so in the preparation for the show I had explained to my group and the teacher how I would be focussing on the league cup ties from the night before in my sports desk. I would be listening to the match the night before so I would dedicate the majority of my 45 second slot to the Celtic match report.

It’s funny that I remember small details in my life leading up to a match that I didn’t even attend but I remember we had a game that day for school team at home. I remember after it was over and we were getting changed on the stage behind the stage curtains (we didn’t have changing rooms) I was just so excited about getting home and listening to the match.

There was a lad in the school team who was a bigger Celtic fan than me; he went to all the matches or at least he claimed to and I remember him saying he needed to get changed really quickly as he leaving to go to Easter Road and his dad was waiting for him in the car. I never doubted this at the time just as I never doubted a few weeks later when he came in on the Thursday and said he had been at the game the night before – in MADRID….

I also never doubted him the day the year previously when he said he had rugby tackled the guy in the jungle who had thrown the bottle on to the pitch during the Rapid Vienna match and lay on top of him until the police came. You see at this age you weren’t really used to the cult of the Bull-shitter.

My next memory of the game was pacing around my bedroom with the radio on listening to the match. Celtic had taken and early lead through Maurice Johnston but had surrendered an equaliser and then a second goal just as half time approached from Gordon Durie. However it was one of those games and before the break Davie Provan beat Allan Rough to send the teams in 2-2.

Tom McAdam was to blame for the 3^rd Hibs goal in the second half and you had a horrible feeling this Hibs team were not going to be beaten that night, however straight from kick off Maurice Johnstone again scored to tie the match at 3-3 and send me jumping around the bedroom.

Extra time was required and this was tuning into a late night for me but the fact I was out of sight from my parents meant they were either engrossed in watching Minder or too lazy to come up and tell me to go to bed. In extra time we got the fourth and surely the deciding goal with a rare strike by Roy Aitken – Feed the Bear Feed the Bear I chanted over the crackling of the radio, mightily relieved and leaving me thinking what a report I was going to have for the show in the morning.

Then it happened and Richard Park was shouting “ Durie -  deflection – its gone past Bonner !” The ball had taken a wicked deflection off McGrain and changed direction to trundle past Pat Bonner.

The game would be decided on a Penalty shoot-out. I think this must have been a new introduction to finish ties on the night because I think it was the first time I had ever remembered Celtic being in a shoot-out so this was taking excitement levels on to a new scale.

After the allotted penalties of five each both teams had missed two so it was headed for sudden death. It’s strange you never really remember who missed the previous penalties but you always remember who missed the decisive one and with HIbs scoring their penalty it all rested on Pierce O’Leary – The brother of Arsenal and Ireland Legend David, the similarity was in name only. Richard Park was drowned out by an almighty roar that meant one thing – he had missed and we were out. He hadn’t just missed he had ballooned it about 5 yards over the bar.

It was getting on for 10 O’clock when the ball sailed over the bar and I was totally devastated as only an eleven year unaccustomed to cup shocks can be, I just couldn’t believe it – just like I couldn’t believe it later in the season when on the same venue we lost 4-3 in a Scottish Cup tie.

The next morning the result was still hanging over me like a dark cloud; it was to be a feeling that would be repeated many times in my life as a celtic fan where outstanding highs would be peppered with spectacular lows. I didn’t take that days paper in to school instead when it came to my slot in front of the mic I read out the results of the horse racing from the previous days paper for 45 seconds much to the bemusement of my group members and teacher. Blocking out the scoreline – a practice I would adopt many times over in years to come.

And as we discussed the previous nights result in the playground at playtime you will never guess who caught the ball when Pierce O’Leary ballooned the ball over the bar?

Even though the penalties were taken into the Hibs end…..

Its life Jim but not as we know it..

The world was taken by surprise yesterday by the return of a Sexagenarian who hadn’t published a piece of work in a long time; it was unannounced and fittingly out of the blue. Many had thought his career had ended long ago but he has come blustering back in his trademark style to entertain us all again. Yes on the same day ziggy stardust again played his guitar; Jim Traynor proved that there is indeed life on Mars and its populated by sevconians.

This waste of space oddity hadn’t been heard of since his embarrassing last column in the Daily Record which left no doubt as to where his next post would be. Since taking up his head of communications role at Sevco he hadn’t popped his considerable sized head above the parapet in an official capacity but anyone who watched the car crash Charles Green Christmas Message would have detected the familiar tone and content of a script written by Traynor. My body has only now dis-contorted itself two weeks after viewing the video such was its cringe inducing qualities.

I don’t class myself as a regular blogger, just as when I feel like putting something down as time dictates, if it passes 5 mins of someone’s journey on the bus or the train or whilst skiving at work then I’m happy with that. I don’t claim to be grammatically correct but would class myself slightly above semi-literate; I have a first class honours degree and a masters degree in my chosen field which isn’t written English; however I don’t feel that in any way inhibits my or anyone else’s ability to note down some thoughts and opinions on a game which I have contributed heavily to financially now and over the last few decades.

In a general swipe at internet bloggers / bampots Traynor suggested Celtic bloggers were no better than semi-literate; that is -  “having achieved an elementary level of ability in reading and writing” [oxford dictionary].

Aside from the cheap and inaccurate generalisation, only having a basic level of literacy doesn’t preclude someone from holding intelligent, balanced and well thought out views. The history of the world would have been a lot different had society ignored the views of those labelled as semi-literate – Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison to name but two.

Jim Traynor has had a career in journalism, he’s never challenged for any literary awards as far as I know, his writing has always been motivated by trying to sell more copies of a newspaper which has taken the form of pandering to the largest demographic of his readership. Nothing then therefore has to change with this transition to his new role apart from adding the two pre-requisite ingredients to get the hordes on side – threats and a quote from struth.

His first blog post was rambling, disjointed and without any tangible content on the subject he was meant to be addressing which was league reconstruction. The Dadaism movement of avante garde poets in the early twentieth century would write a collection of words on separate bits of paper, throwing them into the air and create poetry based on the order the words landed. This seems to be the style of writing Jim Traynor has adopted in recent years going by the quality of some of his Daily Record opinion pieces and this first Sevco offering.

The main theme of the article was not addressing the subject of restructuring; the overriding context of the blog was threat; misplaced triumphalism and demagogic.

Threatening contributors to radio Scotland for doing exactly what Jim Traynor used to do himself – giving opinion.

Misplaced Triumphalism in the claims that Sevco are the biggest club in Scotalnd? A six month old club playing in the fourth tier of Scottish football? Juventus must be glad they didn’t draw them in the Champions League.

Demagogic in inciting a sense of injustice and victimisation amongst the Sevconians by alluding to the unseen hand of Celtic and its supporters somehow being to blame for the position they find themselves in. Repeating the paranoia that main stream media are maligning their club and that they are being locked out of talks (ignoring the fact they are only associate members – new club and all that Jim, but then you know that)

Despite Jim claiming that Sevco have no wish to see a quick restructuring process that would see them fast tracked to the top division this is at odds with the share prospectus which noted that restructuring could see them fast tracked to the SPL a lot quicker.

This would have been a more enticing prospect to would be investors if this were the case and the fact that the new league proposals would not hasten this will no doubt have motivated the tone of the blog. I wonder how many re-writes of the piece he had to do after Charles Green had red penned it?

The gulf at this moment in time between Celtic and Sevco can not only be measured by leagues and finances but also it seems by professionalism and dignity. Dignity used to be the preserve of the Rangers however it would appear the brown brogues have been consigned to the bin and dignity seems to be the one commodity Charles Green didn’t buy in the fire sale.

To add to the embarrassment of this statement we were informed by RFC Dickson that Traynor was on the phone to Radio 5 live awaiting his cue to come on and spout forth his wisdom. As the sevconians tuned into their radios in anticipation it became clear that Traynor had been dropped for an item on a pensioner from Milton Keynes who had been using the same toaster since 1953.  

If Traynor keeps producing pieces like this on a consistent basis then it is going to keep me laughing for a long time to come – just like bowies laughing gnome.