{"id":62006,"date":"2026-10-03T18:59:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/celtic-dermot-desmond-targeted-by-fan-protest-at-alfred-dunhill\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T18:59:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:59:47","slug":"celtic-dermot-desmond-targeted-by-fan-protest-at-alfred-dunhill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/celtic-dermot-desmond-targeted-by-fan-protest-at-alfred-dunhill\/","title":{"rendered":"Celtic: Dermot Desmond targeted by fan protest at Alfred Dunhill"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Celtic’s largest shareholder Dermot Desmond was targeted in a protest at the Alfred Dunhill Links golf tournament in St Andrews as tennis balls were thrown towards him. <\/b><\/p>\n

Tennis balls with pictures of the 76-year-old’s face scored out were thrown on to the green of the 15th hole of the pro-am competition, with images showing Desmond having to be escorted off the course by security. <\/p>\n

The Celtic Fans Collective have since released a statement, along with footage and images of the incident. <\/p>\n

It read: “Dermot Desmond has essentially been allowed to run Celtic Football Club whilst using his wealth to hide from supporters and accountability. Fans took the chance today to send a message that this arrangement cannot continue.”<\/p>\n

Desmond is the largest individual shareholder of the Scottish Premiership club but has been criticised in recent seasons for the club’s lack of progress in Europe and underwhelming transfer business. <\/p>\n

In the wake of Brendan Rodgers’ resignation at the beginning of last season, Desmond blamed the former manager<\/a> for much of the problems that marred the beginning of the 2025-26 campaign. <\/p>\n

Then at Celtic’s annual general meeting last November, which had to be abandoned due to fan unrest<\/a>, Desmond’s son Ross read out a statement on his behalf. <\/p>\n

He began by defending his father, a “lifelong and passionate” Celtic supporter, and vowed that the board would not be “bullied by aggressive and irrational” criticism.<\/p>\n

The Irishman defended then chairman Peter Lawwell and chief executive Michael Nicholson, claiming attempts to “dehumanise and vilify them are shameful”.<\/p>\n

Desmond went on to criticise a section of fans over a recent incident that led to the Green Brigade ultras group being banned and added: “Those people are bullies.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Celtic’s largest shareholder Dermot Desmond was targeted in a protest at the Alfred Dunhill Links golf tournament in St Andrews as tennis balls were thrown towards him. Tennis balls with pictures of the 76-year-old’s face scored out were thrown on to the green of the 15th hole of the pro-am competition, with images showing Desmond […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[8928,1426,9156,16966,16955,1912,797,4543],"class_list":["post-62006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scotland","tag-alfred","tag-celtic","tag-dermot","tag-desmond","tag-dunhill","tag-fan","tag-protest","tag-targeted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62008,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62006\/revisions\/62008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}