Celtic are a club which continues to eat itself from the inside out. The more the fans howl, the more the board closes ranks

During a long and storied existence spanning almost 500 years, the Old Course at St Andrews has witnessed some of golf’s most iconic moments.

Some of the names to have won a Claret Jug around the sport’s most iconic track roll off the tongue; Tiger, Seve, Faldo, Nicklaus.

It was also the scene as Nicklaus and his great rival Tom Watson waved an emotional farewell to the game back at the Open Championships in 2005 and 2015 respectively.

For all the allure and mystique of the Old Course, it can also bring golfers to their knees and cause a deep sense of embarrassment.

At the Open Championship back in 2010, a fresh-faced Rory McIlroy shot 63 in the opening round, before following it with an 80 the next day.

Last weekend, the Old Course swallowed another heavyweight name from the Emerald Isle and left them feeling thoroughly red-faced. Perhaps even mortified.

The Dunhill Links Championship has long been a place of sanctuary for Dermot Desmond at this time of year. Rarely, if ever, does Celtic’s major shareholder miss it.

Desmond is a golf fanatic. He moves in exalted circles, with McIlroy and Woods known to have played with him in the past.

The prevailing feeling among Celtic supporters for a long time now is that Desmond spends more time on the fairways then he ever does attending board meetings or AGMs.

As Desmond lined up a putt on the 15th green last weekend, he was introduced to a new kind of hazard. Not a bunker or thick rough, but a blizzard of tennis balls that left the green looking more like Centre Court at Wimbledon than a golf course.

Desmond looked crestfallen, standing with his putter in his hand, as balls bearing his crossed-out face rained down upon him. It was quite a scene – and one of which he clearly took a very dim view.

Later on Saturday night, a club statement landed with all the nuance and subtlety of a booming 350-yard drive from Bryson DeChambeau.

With diplomacy and reconciliation the last things likely to be on his mind, Desmond teed it up and gave it the full treatment, just as he had done with Brendan Rodgers last year.

After the Celtic Fans Collective had claimed responsibility for the protests, Desmond responded by taking a flamethrower to them and accusing them of bringing shame on the club.

Desmond also insisted that the club would sever all ties with these organisations, with bans to be handed out as and when the perpetrators could be identified.

Was it embarrassing? Of course it was. For Celtic. For the protesters. For Scottish football’s reputation when the pictures inevitably were shown around the world.

Throwing tennis balls at an elderly billionaire on a golf course is not high-stakes activism. It is the football equivalent of a toddler kicking the table leg because dinner isn’t up to scratch.

It generates headlines, a few memes and a furious club statement. But, in the grand scheme of things, it does not move the dial. And nor does it shift a single share.

It does not force a board resignation. It does not rewrite the balance sheet or the recruitment strategy. None of this will have the desired effect for these supporters. Quite the opposite, actually.

These protests are, ultimately, futile. Desmond will not be moved by tennis balls. He will double down and dig in even harder.

The club’s statement made that crystal clear. They will not be ‘intimidated or coerced’. Expect more bans, tighter control of recognised supporter groups and a further hardening of the bunker mentality that already defines the Parkhead hierarchy.

Men of Desmond’s wealth and temperament do not respond to public humiliation by apologising and offering a seat at the table. They dig the trenches deeper.

The more the fans howl, the more the board closes ranks. History at Celtic is littered with examples of this dynamic.

The support can fill the stands, generate noise and even disrupt a golf tournament, yet the ownership structure remains almost uniquely insulated.

Celtic travel to Motherwell this weekend, then face Benfica away in the Europa League, followed by Hearts at home, Celta Vigo, Hibernian away and Dundee United.

On the back of the three successive defeats to Rangers and Ferencvaros prior to the international break, it is another tricky run of fixtures.

The Benfica game, in particular, has the capacity to be messy. Very, very messy. Celtic’s efforts in Europe are now little more than a recurring source of humiliation.

They still sit top of the league despite their recent woes and Desmond would no doubt point to the dominance they have enjoyed in Scottish football over the past 25 years or so.

Yet, truthfully, Celtic are a club which continues to eat itself from the inside out. Fan unrest is not new. Last season was utterly toxic for the most part and so, too, was the botched ten-in-a-row campaign a few years back.

Throwing tennis balls on to the pitch and now a golf course, silent protests, delayed entries, banners demanding the board be sacked – these have now become synonymous with the modern-day Celtic.

The response from Desmond and his puppets on the board has often been to treat organised dissent as an existential threat rather than a symptom of deeper problems.

Cutting ties with a supporter body after a golf-course protest may feel decisive to those drafting the statements in a fit of anger and humiliation. But it merely confirms the scale of the disconnect.

There is a circular quality to the whole saga. Fans demand change and accountability. The board closes ranks and talks about protecting the reputation of the club.

Results remain good enough domestically to undercut the most apocalyptic predictions. European shortcomings then fuel the next wave of anger. Desmond stays largely silent and continues his golf.

The cycle repeats. No one appears capable of breaking it. The protesters believe they are forcing the issue into the open.

In reality, they are providing the board with fresh justification for further insulation. At this point, it is all just noise and trench warfare.

The idea that throwing tennis balls at Desmond on the 15th green at St Andrews will produce a different outcome is pure fantasy.

Desmond has weathered worse. He will weather this. The problem for fans is the lack of any realistic mechanism to force meaningful change at the top. Howling at the moon would be a wiser course of action.

The tennis balls will be cleared from the green. Desmond will play his next round somewhere quieter. The fixtures will keep coming.

Celtic will continue in this civil war with their own supporters that neither side seems able to win. That is the real embarrassment in all of this.

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