Celtic and the infrastructure of apathy | OneFootball

The Infrastructure of Apathy: Why a Railway Engineer is Calling Time on the Parkhead Suits…

Brian Wilson, Dermot Desmond and Michael Nicholson overseeing 2 x £40m Champions League misses…

Let’s clear the tracks before we go any further. If you’ve spent the week plugging my name into a search engine or an AI tool to find out who wrote my last column, you’ve likely been fed a complete work of fiction. According to the algorithms, I am either a Chartered Accountant from Strathaven or a retired restructuring partner from Ernst & Young.

Colin Dempster, biog pic

Apparently, because my author bio features me wearing a sharp suit—taken when I was out celebrating a wedding anniversary with my beautiful wife—the digital world assumes I must be a bean-counter.

I am not an accountant. I am a railway engineer

Let the record show: I am not an accountant. I am a railway engineer. I spend my working hours dealing with physical infrastructure, logistics, and real-world mechanics. More importantly, I am a proud, active trade union member of the RMT.

My day job is about keeping a massive, complex network moving, and my union background is rooted in fighting injustice in the workplace and standing up to corporate suits who think everything in life can be reduced to a column on a balance sheet.

So when I look at the current boardroom setup at Parkhead, I don’t see an accounting problem. I see a broken mechanical design.

Celtic supporters at Celtic Park for the 2026 title showdown with Hearts. Celtic 3 Hearts 1. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

Like a lot of Celtic fans, you quickly realise that you can educate yourself on these issues. If you see a problem in a physical system, you ask the basic questions: How do you fix it? What is wrong? What are the actual processes failing behind the scenes?

The board loves to hide behind a wall of corporate jargon, financial metrics, and executive buzzwords to make the running of our club seem like an untouchable science. But when you look beyond that elite vocabulary, it is usually entirely understandable. It is common sense.

It’s why I previously wrote a column comparing the transfer window to buying a car—if you walk into a dealership needing a reliable vehicle to move you forward, but you come out with a compromised model because the salesman was over-calculating the long-term depreciation, you’ve been short-changed. It’s a basic transactional failure, whether you’re buying a player or an engine.

Michael Nicholson, CEO of Celtic and Brian Wilson Celtic’s ‘interim’ Chairman look on from the stands during the UEFA Europa League 2026/27 League Phase MD1 match between Celtic FC and Ferencvarosi TC at Celtic Park on September 17, 2026. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

We are a club built on community, charity, and working-class solidarity, yet we are being managed like a stagnant savings account by executives who gamble on fan fatigue.

Landing my commentary onto celticshorts.com, and seeing it fire straight into the global syndication pipes on Yahoo and LiveScore right as the board released their latest annual accounts, exposed that exact corporate hypocrisy.

As they confirmed a crushing multi-million-pound drop in revenue and a predictable pre-tax loss, the cold mathematics of the “actuary tables” became the undeniable reality of our season.

3rd May 2026; Easter Road, Scottish Premiership, Hibernian versus Celtic; Brian Wilson, Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay of Celtic. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

The response from the boardroom is always the same: a patronising corporate spin that asks the support to remain passive, pay their money, and accept European regression as a mathematical certainty.

But what infuriates me even more than the suits is the growing list of excuses from our own support.

This week on X, I laid it out straight, and I’ll say it again here: We can flawlessly coordinate 60,000 phone lights at the exact same second. We can build jaw-dropping, stadium-wide tifos that capture the eyes of world football. We can harmonise complex chants across four separate stands without missing a beat. Yet, the moment someone suggests a coordinated, 67th-minute match walkout to hit this board where it hurts, the excuses flood the timelines. Suddenly, walking out the gate is “too logistically difficult.”

Celtic v theRangers – Scottish Premiership – Celtic Supporters hold up a Let Celtic Flourish banner during the match at Celtic Park on Sunday September 1, 2024. Photo Steve Welsh\

“Up the workers, support the RMT,” The Green Brigade

As an engineer, I tell you that’s absolute garbage. As an RMT union member, I tell you it’s a failure of solidarity.

I remember clearly when we were last out on strike, taking on the government in a brutal dispute. Right in the middle of that fight, the Green Brigade unfurled a massive banner in the stands: “Up the workers, support the RMT.”

Standing on that picket line, seeing our fans bring our struggle into Parkhead gave us an incredible lift. It was an overwhelming wave of encouragement and support that reminded us exactly who we are as a fanbase.

That is what true solidarity looks like

That is what true solidarity looks like. It is reciprocal. But right now, our resistance inside the stadium is fragmented. We have too many different protest groups, all pushing different agendas and pulling in opposite directions. The board loves that splintering because a divided workforce is an unthreatening workforce.

8th March 2026; Ibrox; Scottish Cup

Rangers versus Celtic; Celtic supporters celebrating. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

It is time to stop the internal bickering and amalgamate every single dissident group under one single banner. We need a proper Union of Celtic Supporters. Just like a real trade union, it should feature individual branches for different groups to maintain their identity, but operate under one centralised leadership with one clear message.

When we take on a corporate machine, fragmentation fails. Unity is our strength.

Organising a withdrawal of presence isn’t a logistical impossibility; it’s a choice. The board relies entirely on the fact that your love for the team will always override your anger at their complacency. They count on you staying in your seat, buying the merchandise, and grumbling quietly on the journey home.

25/05/1967 European Cup Final, Lisbon. Glasgow Celtic v Internazionale (Inter Milan) Billy McNeill lifts the European Cup Photo: Offside / Archivio Farabola

The 67th minute belongs to the Lisbon Lions—the absolute pinnacle of our club’s sporting ambition. Turning that specific minute into a visible, undeniable stand against modern boardroom mediocrity is the most fitting tribute we could pay to our history.

Stop making excuses for a system that is failing under pressure

Stop making excuses for a system that is failing under pressure. Get up off your backside, stand with your fellow supporters, and walk out.

Colin Dempster

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