It appears rather than leave his politics at the door, chairman John Reid, the former Armed Forces Minister and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Defence, has forced his onto the first team jersey.
I've been talking to a mate about how we'd feel and would react if the league/club decided to add a symbol to the Villa shirt that seemed offensive and/or inappropriate to us. Again, I don't want to underplay the stupidity of these Celtic supporters but there's no denying their historical political affiliation to the Irish repuplican movement, the general antipathy towards the British army within that community and their view that the poppy is as much a political symbol as anything else. My friend posed the question, "What would you do if the government/league decided that the global appeal of the EPL presented an opportunity to improve the economic situation in the locality of football grounds and imposed a rule that the football shirts should occasionally carry the name of the town that a club came from. How would Villa and Everton fans react to having the word Birmingham orLiverpool on their shirt?"When I argued that it was unthinkable, he said it is no more unthinkable than the idea of having the poppy emblem on the Celtic shirt would have been to those supporters a few years ago. I had to admit that it wasn't entirely impossible.How would we react?
Quote from: Villadawg on November 10, 2010, 08:55:40 AMI've been talking to a mate about how we'd feel and would react if the league/club decided to add a symbol to the Villa shirt that seemed offensive and/or inappropriate to us. Again, I don't want to underplay the stupidity of these Celtic supporters but there's no denying their historical political affiliation to the Irish repuplican movement, the general antipathy towards the British army within that community and their view that the poppy is as much a political symbol as anything else. My friend posed the question, "What would you do if the government/league decided that the global appeal of the EPL presented an opportunity to improve the economic situation in the locality of football grounds and imposed a rule that the football shirts should occasionally carry the name of the town that a club came from. How would Villa and Everton fans react to having the word Birmingham orLiverpool on their shirt?"When I argued that it was unthinkable, he said it is no more unthinkable than the idea of having the poppy emblem on the Celtic shirt would have been to those supporters a few years ago. I had to admit that it wasn't entirely impossible.How would we react?I think your friend is simply trying to deflect the blame from Celtic; as the topic of this thread states they are "classless".If Celtic fans do not like being Scottish or a part of the UK then I think it's about time they moved to South Ireland. The very assumption that they think themselves more important than the thousands who have died serving the UK is an absolute disgrace.This is a perfect example of why FIFA should never allow those two bigoted teams from Glasgow anywhere near the PL.
Does anyone else suspect they threw references to Afghanistan and Iraq in there as comparative red herrings whilst what they were really on about was Ulster?