Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Celtic apologise to Dundee after 'disturbance' at Boxing Day game


http://news.stv.tv/tayside/207661-football-fans-reported-after-disturbance-at-dundee-v-celtic-game/
Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell has apologised to Dundee after trouble in the away end during their Boxing Day game.
During the tie at Dens Park, Tayside Police dealt with a "level of disturbance primarily within the Celtic section of the stadium".
The trouble at the Scottish Premier League match included a series of bangers being set off in the away end during the first-half.
Police confirmed that five supporters, one for the home side Dundee and four following away team Celtic, will be reported to the Crown following the disturbance.
A force spokeswoman said: "There was a level of disturbance at the match, primarily within the Celtic section of the stadium.
"Five people are to be reported to the procurator fiscal for alleged football-related offences. Officers responded to the incidents quickly and took appropriate action."
Celtic Chief Executive Peter Lawwell responded: "We are very proud that Celtic supporters enjoy such a great reputation and it is therefore extremely disappointing that the behaviour of a small minority has tarnished the good name of the club and our fans in this way.
"Clearly, we apologise to Dundee Football Club - we will work with them and look into any incident which is raised and if we can identify any individuals involved, we will obviously take the strongest possible action.
"We have received a number of complaints today from our own supporters about the conduct of this minority - we cannot allow our supporters' enjoyment of our matches to be affected in this way and we will not sit and allow the club's reputation to be damaged. Our supporters over many years have earned such a fantastic repuation for positively supporting the club, we will not allow this to be taken from them. It is time for all our true supporters who care about Celtic to unite with the club and find a solution to this problem."
Celtic won the tie 2-0 with goals from Georgios Samaras and Gary Hooper.
Dundee FC operations manager Jim Thomson said that his staff were shocked at some of the behaviour by an element of the travelling support on Wednesday night.
He added: "There was widespread drunkenness, and I mean widespread, within the Celtic support. We were confiscating drink from supporters in the concourse leading to the turnstiles. They were clearly drunk coming in and we had a decision to make on whether we let them in and we took the decision that we had to let them in because we would have had other consequences if we didn't.
"Once in, they were abusing our turnstile staff, our canteen staff and even fighting among themselves, and I mean serious disorder within the concourse. All in all it was just not a nice experience. In the 20 years I've been organising games here at Dens Park I have never seen anything like that - it was a throwback to the 70s that we are all probably ashamed of.
"I would say that the scheduling of the fixture (it was televised on ESPN with a 7.30pm kick-off) didn't help. Nonetheless, I don't want to make light of it, but I can have a skinful but I'm not going to go and behave like people did last night. It's just not acceptable."
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