Celtic sites – Celtic Underground

The first question you’re probably asking is: Does the world really need yet another Celtic fan site? Well truth be told maybe not. ETims, KTF, CQN, the Huddleboard, KDS and Celtic Minded cater for just about every flavour of tim out there in the Diaspora. And by and large they do what they do very well.

And maybe in some ways that’s what we here at Celticunderground see as the problem. Many of the Celtic fan sites nowadays are so polished and so professional that they could easily be mistaken for the official club site. In fact if rumours are to be believed some of them have a more than friendly relationship with the current board. And to our mind that’s not right.

Fan sites should be about fans saying what’s on their mind. The Huddleboard and KDS may not make for comfortable bedfellows but they have an honesty about them that can only come from the fans voicing what they truly believe. There is no hidden agenda to these two forums – rational and irrational discussion it may be but it’s what the fans genuinely think whether the board likes it or not. It might be a bit rough and ready but you know it’s the real McCoy. Nobody is using the façade of a Celtic fan site to present a CV to prospective employers or looking for ways to exploit fans for personal gain.

Sadly that’s something that can’t be said for many other Celtic fan sites these days. If they aren’t trotting out the board’s line on what songs to sing they are pushing gambling adverts at you. Newsnow is swamped with website after website telling you exactly the same piece of information over and over again. The desperate need for just one more hit forces what were once well respected sites to prostitute themselves with pathetic sensationalist headlines that wouldn’t look out of place in whatever paper is lower down the food chain than the Record. And for what? Is this what the Celtic fan scene should be about? Is this what Celtic fans want out of the internet? Constant regurgitation of that morning’s back pages? Maybe it is. However, it’s not the way we will be doing things.

Newsnow is a busted flush with websites more interested in being number one in that wee list on the right hand site than actually saying something that’s a) interesting or b) what they truly believe in. We’ve got a link on our site which is there if folk want it but so long as the current team are involved in Celtic Underground we won’t be putting articles up on Newsnow. If you wish to keep up to date with new content on this site and are using Firefox (and if you are not why not? Go get it ) simply click the wee orange button in the address bar and you’ll always be updated when there is something new being said.

Having said that don’t expect there to be something every day. Because as we all know sometimes nothing happens. Now we could give you 500 words on the fact that nothing is happening but what’s the point of that? It’s called filler and it’s more commonly known as rubbish. If we’ve got something to say we’ll say it. If we’ve got nothing to say you won’t hear a peep out of us.

Why are we doing this? A couple of reasons occur. As we said above, we’ve become disillusioned with the way the Celtic fan scene has moved closer to the official club and further away from the average punter in recent times and we’d like to see a site that is for fans by fans and has no other agenda. If it’s what we genuinely think then we’ll say it. If it’s not then we won’t. Self indulgent? Yeah probably but isn’t it self indulgent to take part in any website or forum or mailing lhist? Secondly we like writing for our own amusement. Some of us are much better at it than others but we like putting our thoughts down in print. And thirdly we like to hear what others think hence the comments section at the end of every article. Censorship will only kick in if we see the dreaded “podium” word.

What should you expect in future from Celtic underground? We don’t have a Scooby. It might die on its arse within a week. It might take on a life of its own. We’d like to think we could get a small core of regular readers and contributors who want to write more than a few sentences on a forum and discuss the club in a rational and hopefully entertaining manner. If you have something you want to say then contact us and let us know what’s on your mind. Lets get back to the early days of the Celtic internet fan scene when it was all about exchanging ideas and opinions about all sorts of things rather than hits, profits and keeping in with the powers that be.

Whatever happens the Celtic Underground won’t be accepting any invites to attend Celtic Park for tea and biscuits.

Celticunderground underwent a significant revamp in February 2010.

The following is from the “About Us” section in 2010:

In the summer of 2006 a few of us decided to set up the Celticunderground website. At the time we were somewhat disillusioned at the cosy relationship between some fansites and the board which was developing and felt that we wanted to be part of something that wasn’t being influenced by the PLC. We were angry middleaged men and we weren’t going to take it anymore. Under the heading “About Us” we attempted to articulate something akin to a vision statement for the site. Looking back on what was written it’s clear that in some aspects we were spot on and in others we were hopelessly naive.

Almost 4 years has passed since we decided to set this site up and Celticunderground has evolved beyond anything we could have expected. Mince from CM once said to us that when Celticunderground was set up he couldn’t see where the space was in the market for yet another Celtic fan site but he quickly realised that we carved a unique niche for ourselves. That’s a nice thing to say but it suggest a degree of forward planning which we just don’t possess. We didn’t have a clue how this site would evolve. Bhoy in the Picture? Celticrumours? Podcasts? All things that we just stumbled upon and decided to play with for a while in order to amuse ourselves more than anything. Nobody was more surprised than us when folk started to recommend us or to link to the stuff we were putting out.

And there in lies the problem. There were just too many folk accessing the site in it’s previous form. Our hosting company informed us that without significant changes to our hosting plan they’d have to pull the plug. We’re pretty proud of what we’ve put together here and the influence we have had on others so we were loathed to shut up shop and call it a day. The alternative was to upgrade the server and make changes to the site.

So that’s what we’ve done.

The change in server seems like an appopriate time to review all aspects of the site. In 2006 we said we’d never go on newsnow. Well that’ll be changing. We can cope with more readers and we feel that content produced by guys like St Anthony and Lachie Mor deserves as wide an audience as possible. We’ll not be chasing the hits but we’re proud of our content and we’d like folk to get a chance to read it. The audience is on newsnow and we’ll just have to accept that.

In 2006 we said, “Having said that don’t expect there to be something every day. Because as we all know sometimes nothing happens. Now we could give you 500 words on the fact that nothing is happening but what’s the point of that? It’s called filler and it’s more commonly known as rubbish. If we’ve got something to say we’ll say it. If we’ve got nothing to say you won’t hear a peep out of us.” That’ll remain true. We’ll not be regurgitating the Daily Record in order to produce newsnow links.

We’ll be reviewing all aspects of the site over the coming months and if we think we can make the site better we’ll do so. This new site has been kind of thrown together and there are aspects of it that are pretty rough around the edges. If you can think of something we aren’t doing and should be then email us. We do this site because we enjoy but we’re not so arrogant that we don’t think it’s important to listen to what others think.

So how is this new look site going to work? Well a couple of problems present themselves immediately. We’re unable to copy over all of the content from the old site to this one. So if you have previously been a registered member of the site we’re afraid you’ll need to reregister in order to post comments. Registering will give you access to a couple more bells and whistles right enough. All our old content can still be found by clicking the archive link in the main menu.

Back in 2006 we said we didn’t have a scooby as to what you should expect from Celticunderground. We’ve a slightly better idea these days as to what we are good at and what isn’t worth wasting your time with. However, at it’s heart Celticunderground will remain a website by fans for fans. If we’re not doing something that you think we should be then email us and let us know. Better still write it yourself and we’ll put it up on the site.

The site has evolved into something that none of us could have predicted and we’d like to think that we’ll keep changing in the coming years. It might not be to everyone’s tastes but it will always be about genuine fans saying what they think because they love the club.

And whatever happens the Celticunderground still won’t be accepting any invites to attend Celtic Park for tea and biscuits.

2024 Major changes – Subtrack model

In 2024, The Celtic Underground took a very surprising diversion. In recent years their output had become sporadic, with the gap mostly filled by a plethora of other Celtic podcasts, blogs and twitter feeds (most of a high quality value influenced by The Celtic Underground).

Brining on board ex-Celtic View editor and respected journalist Andrew H Smith, The Celtic Underground brought in a new subscriber setup for additional content (both written & spoken) to help boost coverage.  Not all content was behind a paywall, and a two tier system was initally implemented to help those with a bit more ability to help pay more to subsidise others. Fuller details below.

Article: What’s occurring?

https://thecelticunderground.substack.com/p/whats-occurring
Harry Brady’s podcast preview

The Celtic Underground
Jun 04, 2024
It’s been great getting the feedback from subscribers. To quote Bruce Forsyth — “you’re a great audience, so much better than last weeks.” The nicest thing about our cosy new club compared to Twitter has been that there’s been no abusive comments offering me a square go…oh wait, that was just somebody on whatsapp after a podcast where I slaughtered the manager and Antony Murray criticised the new strip and tracksuits.

Anyway the messages have been great. I particularly liked the person who, after SEEING me interview for the first time likened my technique to that of Parky – until, on further discussion he said it was because of all my chair fidgeting and nose picking. More heartening was the subscriber who commented on how I was more handsome than they had ever imagined (or words to that effect).

The podcast has now completed its 18th season and it’s got me thinking back over the hundreds of episodes. The first few pods didn’t feature me at all and in fact the first ever podcast didn’t even feature Eddie Pearson (I know – how did you cope!?). But very quickly it became Eddie with various guests and interviews and gradually it became Eddie with, more regualrly, me before Eddie took his monk-like sabbatical in a remote part of Scotland and I took over hosting duties full time.

During that time, we have seen an incredible change in the use of technology and the expectation of the audience in terms of audio quality. I well remember doing a podcast with Eddie walking the dog. This was no doubt a joy to listen with all the strong winds and passing lorry noises providing the perfect background to two guys talking about Celtic.

We’ve moved on and now use proper USB mics and even Dynamic Mics and Zoom Podtrack4 recording devices. We cannot always guarantee that the guests will have perfect reording hardware but we do our best to ask that the come on prepared. And that leads us to who our guests will be.

Over the coming days and weeks, paid subscribers can look forward to:

The Remy, Eddie & Harry Cup Final review

Erik Sviatchenko

Barry Smith

Susie McCabe

Ken McCluskey

Garreth Farrelly

Ryan Christie

Billy Stark

Tales from The Celtic Wiki

And more….

We hope you enjoy this regular written, audio and video content. Some will be free to all, some will be for subscribers and some will be for paid subscribers. We think that £3.50 (the minimum substack allows because they have their take) for 1-2 audio/video items a week along with an equal amount of written content offers excellent value for money.

As I always say, there will be more podcasts along soon and more new content so if you’ve not decided to take up a pay subscription you’ll get some great content – just not the really really good stuff!

CU Podcast (link)

The Celtic Underground is the home of the original Celtic podcast where compere Eddie Pearson discusses and reviews the events of the past week or upcoming games. The show is a welcome escape from the simple knee-jerk reactions found on the forums and in particular offers a much needed alternative to the tired cliche driven phone-ins.

In addition, the show gives a fan’s reviews of any latest Celtic media merchandise (books, DVDs etc) and a heads-up on any rumours flying about the first team.

Since 2010 the podcast has also featured a regular feature from this site. The Tales from the Celtic Wiki segment features varied stories from throughout the rich history of Celtic as featured on this website. We are pleased to report these have so far proved to be a popular addition to the show.

Presenter Eddie Pearson displays a cracking sense of humour, keeps the good show going and frequently hits the nail on the head with regards to what’s happening in Scottish football.There is always a guest with Eddie and this has included admin from this Wiki to discuss our site (Dianogah) and other Wiki contributors such as St.Anthony and Hullbhoy.

Increasingly since 2010, the main guest has been Harry Brady, a no-nonsense straight talking Celtic supporter. The “Eddie & Harry” shows have become the staple diet of the podcasts and are possibly the most enjoyed by most.

While many guests are just regular punters the show has included some notable voices including the politician George Galloway. Always willing to champion Celtic fans and Celtic related causes, the Celtic Underground podcast has included some unforgettable editions with, among others, the Celtic Graves Society and the Good Child Foundation (Thai Tims).

A notable edition which I’d highly recommend is the show after Tommy Burn’s death (link), which was as great a tribute as you can ever give to such a good man.

The CU podcast is a fabulous – and influential – addition to he world of the net friendly Celtic fan and there are signs that it’s reach is spreading beyond the forums and internet savvy supporters. In 2011 the podcast was regularly pulling in 5,000 plus downloads while the George Galloway show hit the 12,000 mark. It’s popularity is well deserved and the podcast is genuinely much appreciated by its ever growing core base of listeners who really look forward to the next show.

If you have any questions to post to the podcast, you can post on the KStreet forum or the Celtic Underground site itself.

Podcast Review

(by joebloggscity)
The site is most famous for its podcasts. Started in October 2006 the podcasts hit the road running under the stewardship of ‘Eddie Pearson’ who maintained a generally weekly show till the summer of 2012 when Eddie decided to hang up his headset. During his tenure he interviewed ex-players, notable fans, fanzine writers and website contributors (including people from TheCelticWiki) . However, the podcast was best known for what became a favourite double act show of ‘Eddie Pearson’ and ‘Harry Brady’, where each seemed to work off well of each other. Eddie’s more laid back and amicable style contrasted to Harry’s more abrasive partisan outlook on Celtic & Scottish football issues, and it became required listening for all. The general good humour and banter even in debate between the two was a great joy to listen to. The quality of the conversation and analysis put the mainstream media to shame. Such was demand for their show that any delay on release of a podcast would lead to bleating from some on the forums. You can’t win them all with some!

One great addition onto their podcast was the addition of ‘Tales from TheCelticWiki’. This was a supplement at the end of the podcast of a retelling of an event from this site, an oral history tale you can say. Highly popular it very much complimented the main podcast.

The most notable point of the show was that it was a seminal show and became the benchmark for all Celtic podcasts. In many ways, the CU podcast under Eddie was to podcasts what say ‘Not The View’ was to Celtic fanzines. It was that seminal and important, and set the blueprint for all Celtic podcasts in their approach and manner.

It was also a springboard for other podcasts to get off the ground. The Lost Bhoys podcast got its first airing via Celtic Underground, and each end year there was a crossover show. From 2011, success of these shows saw a boom and glut of Celtic podcasts taking their cue from the originals. However note that as much as the new podcasts were influenced by CU podcasts, thankfully each tried to differentiate from each other, but the amiable Celtic tone & culture was what all had in common. This led to a great variety of shows, so you could pick a podcast tailored to your liking.

There is so much more to say on the show, but if you want to know more then we can highly recommend you download the podcasts from their archives. They are a great contempoary record of Celtic, and will be much replayed by all over time.

Tribute to Celtic Underground

(following is by TheHumanTorpedo of KDS forum and this site, follows the ‘retirement’ of ‘Eddie Pearson’s’ role on the show in Sep 2012)

The quality and diversity of guests was simply outstanding. Eddie and Harry’s regular chats were the backbone of the pod. The guys didn’t set themselves up as being anything other than a couple of Celtic fans chatting but what they produced was actually a fantastic audio history of Celtic’s recent triumphs and tragedies. The past few years have seen history defining events – “Dougie, Dougie”, Bombs & bullets, the death of Rangers – and nowhere are these events better covered and recorded than on CU.

They guys have left us with a priceless archive and I’d urge anyone who hasn’t done so to delve into the CU library.

I dread to think of the time and effort Eddie has put into the pod over the years. A monumental effort and one I think every listener is massively grateful for.

Links

• Celtic Underground homepage
• Celtic podcast homepage and archive
• Celtic podcast RSS
• iTunes Celtic Underground podcast page
• KStreet discussion on Podcast
• CU (celticrumours) Twitter Feed