John Kennedy's exit from Celtic was finally confirmed by the club today after 27 years of service, but the way they announced the news has left a sour taste, argues Graeme McGarry, in a week of missteps from the club's hierarchy.
After the astonishing turn of events on Monday night, when Dermot Desmond attempted to lay waste to the reputation of Brendan Rodgers after he resigned as Celtic manager, we probably shouldn’t have expected any better.
The norms of managerial departures had been shattered. No matter how badly a manager had performed or what bridges had been burnt, never before had a club in the history of the Scottish game released a statement that went much beyond the bland and perfunctory, never mind one that veered with such relish into the vitriolic.
But even still, when news emerged – not from Celtic, but from the media – that John Kennedy had also left the club, there was still an expectation that his 27 years of service would eventually be marked in an appropriate way by the institution to which he has dedicated the majority of his life.
After all, the statement published by Desmond on Rodgers, no matter your view on it, was obviously personal. Kennedy’s departure was clearly entwined with the fate of Rodgers, but his constant, quiet contribution to the club was surely a separate matter, and worthy of acknowledgment.
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Instead, his exit after almost three decades as a Celtic player, coach, assistant manager and one-time caretaker was folded into a brief statement on the club website alongside news of the departure of coaches Adam Sadler and Jack Lyons, and Head of Performance Glen Driscoll.
The thanks for his efforts? A collective nod alongside these other former employees and a coldly impersonal well-wish for the future, before the missive swiftly moved on to welcome Stephen McManus and Mark Fotheringham into the new first team coaching set-up.
Some may argue that’s just life at a big club. Things move along quickly and there is little room for sentiment. It’s just how it goes. But Celtic often shout from the rooftops about how they are ‘a club like no other’. That there is a ‘Celtic family’. The notion seems laughable after the way the black sheep of the flock have been cast out and castigated by the club’s domineering father figure this week.
As petty as this may seem, confirmation of Kennedy’s exit wasn’t even deemed worthy of being pushed out on the Celtic social media channels. Perhaps because the club feared the backlash and comments it would provoke had it been published there.
Kennedy, no matter the reasons for his own surprise resignation from Celtic, if that’s what it was, must feel he deserved better. Immensely popular with the players, past and present, you have to wonder what the likes of Callum McGregor and Kieran Tierney make of it all.
There was once a theory that Kennedy was being groomed to one day be the Celtic manager in his own right. When there has been turmoil in the past, and as managers have come and gone, he has been the constant in the Celtic dugout.
He has served Ronny Deila and Rodgers as first team coach, then Lennon, Ange Postecoglou and Rodgers as assistant manager, and has even turned down opportunities to strike out on his own elsewhere to remain at the club.
He has weathered storms and toed the company line in the face of turmoil when he was thrust out to face the music, most notably when he temporarily took over the reins and was trusted to steer the team through choppy waters after Lennon’s resignation in the club’s ill-fated ‘Covid season’.
Which rather begs the question, what exactly has happened that he felt compelled to leave Celtic now along with Rodgers? Or was he in fact pushed?
The truth of that will no doubt come out in the wash in the near future. Whatever animosity there is between those at the head of the club and the departing coaching team though, the call from on high to treat Kennedy as though he was just another tracksuit feels misguided, and is only likely to anger the fanbase - who generally hold him in high regard - even further.
If the statement attacking Rodgers was unbecoming of a club of Celtic’s stature, then the cursory, brief language used to sum up Kennedy’s efforts in service to Celtic was not only wholly inadequate, but entirely lacking in class.
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