Steven Naismith has offered his thoughts on the Hearts vs Celtic ticket situation.
The Jambos boss will lead his side into battle this weekend at a Tynecastle featuring just 576 Celtic supporters.
Gone are the days when the Hoops faithful would receive the entire 3,396 Roseburn Stand in Gorgie. Now, our allocation is around one-sixth of that, with the hosts wanting to look after their own fans. It has rightly caused a fair bit of an outcry amongst the Celtic fanbase.
As we spoke about on Wednesday, the pressure is now on the Jambos not to have gaping holes in their home support for Sunday’s game. Naismith backed his club’s decision and then actually went on to make a good point about the overall picture in Scottish football.
“We will first look at our fans,” he told The Herald on Thursday. “If we have built a following that is continuing to grow, we need to give them the opportunity to watch hopefully a successful Hearts team. The question is not individually to each club, it’s about the collective: Are you willing to make a change to better Scottish football?
“We could learn a lot from other leagues but we tend not to. It tends to be individual agendas. When I was at Rangers, there was congestion of fixtures when we got to the UEFA Cup final. This season, every team struggled through the start with Europe but the league doesn’t help you. That’s not the league’s fault, it’s everybody in Scottish football’s fault.
“The back and forth between fans when a goal is scored, the elation and the anger among the fans, it does bring something. At this moment in time, with the structure as it is, it isn’t going to change. That’s why we, as a club, need to look after Hearts.
On the fact that Hearts still give Hibernian an entire stand for Edinburgh derbies, he said: “There is an understanding there that it does create a much better atmosphere and the intensity is there. The spectacle is a better thing.
“Nobody can say that just having home fans is good for the game. It’s not. But until everybody accepts that and comes to a collective, it won’t change.”
While Naismith did get a little lost in the middle when bringing up Rangers’ run to the 2008 UEFA Cup final, the point he is making is relatively clear. There needs to be a one-size-fits-all approach to the allocation stuff in Scotland. Proper regulation needs to come in.
Premiership clubs are said to be considering a new allocation rule that would guarantee a fixed percentage of stadia to away fans for matches. For example, we may have to give up 5% of Celtic Park to away supporters, but we would be entitled to the same at other grounds.
We’re certainly getting far less than 5% of Tynecastle for Sunday’s game so that would be viewed as positive news. If Hearts’ gripe here is that they’re not getting 5% for Celtic Park, Ibrox and other grounds, then maybe it would be best for all parties to at least give them the option to sell those tickets.
I’m a firm believer that it’s the fans who are the lifeblood of Scottish football. The more of them at games, the better. It’s such a shame we seem to be doing everything in our power to stop some of them from doing that.
Meanwhile, we can probably look forward to a good few empty seats on Sunday.
In other news, Celtic’s own ‘Super Sunday’ live on Sky Sports this weekend
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