My first experience of flag waving and law breaking at a football match came at Parkhead at the age of just nine.

Armed with nothing more than a match ticket and an oversized Sweater Shop jumper, my dear mum thought she’d enhance my matchday experience visiting the home of Celtic by buying me a claret and amber flag stapled on to a yard of bamboo from a man with no teeth and yellow fingers outside.

Let it not be said Scottish football isn’t all about the razzmatazz.

Nervously shepherded into the away enclosure of the ground like a wee feartie – as someone who’d only ever been to Fir Park I wasn’t used to a stand that wasn’t wooden or had people in it – it did not take long for the ambience and majesty of a Scottish football away day to be shattered.

After being in the ground a matter of seconds, my lethal weapon of a flag was soon grabbed out of my grasp by a steward – a knight in shining lime green polyester – who snapped said bamboo in half and handed me my limp flag back to me.

The fact Pierre Van Hooijdonk scored a 97th-minute winner was a mere footnote in this tale of woe.

In that incident 21 years ago, a harsh lesson was dealt out, kids. Crime isn’t cool. You may not understand it, but you need to play by the rules.

It’s a life lesson needing learned by people who continue to put themselves first rather than the good of their football team.

On Wednesday night I was back in the Land of the Snapped Bamboo for what genuinely is one of the highlights of this job – a European night at Celtic Park.

Honestly, nothing comes close. Hearing the Champions League music crank its way through the tannoy system last season when Celtic took on Barcelona was a real bucket list experience.

While the team in green and white have performed some heroics on the big stage there over the last decade or so, the noise and feeling generated by 60,000 is something that is guaranteed.

Well, it may not be if what happened in the Linfield game the other night happens again.

Uefa have acted already to charge Celtic with fans displaying an illicit banner in the ground, something that shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone with half a brain cell.

At the time I tweeted a picture of the banner – one strongly resembling an paramilitary soldier and the other of a ‘Rodgers at Work’ sign very close to a ‘Sniper at Work’ effort seen during The Troubles – and my phone since has been going into meltdown.

What’s wrong with these people? I’ve had messages from Rangers supporters having a go – people in glass houses and all that – while some Celtic fans have defended the display suggesting it was just showing that they are all part of Brendan Rodgers’ army.

Gies peace.

The connotations of the banner are abundantly clear to anyone who has grown up in west central Scotland – somewhere with no relevance to the message displayed in the banners – and they appear to have not snuck by a Uefa delegate either.

What this has to do with football is beyond me. There are some in society who think it’s acceptable to act in a certain way, sing certain songs or do certain things just because they are in a football stadium. It’s absolutely bonkers. For the record, some of the songs coming from the Linfield end were nothing short of poisonous either, but after events in Belfast last week we shouldn’t be surprised.

Let’s be honest, a minority of the club’s support are serial offenders. Celtic have been punished 10 times in relation to fan conduct at a European match, including being fined £8615 last year for the same section of the ground displaying Palestine flags in the game with Hapoel Be’er Sheva.

Supporters went on to raise over £170,000 for Palestinian charities off the back of this, which is great, but is utterly missing the point.

How much money are they going to raise if a stand is closed? CSKA Moscow and Legia Warsaw are recent examples of closed-doors games being imposed on clubs.

Celtic released a strong statement on Thursday and have launched an inquiry. They have also insisted action will be taken. The club have made their position abundantly clear.

For the sake of everyone involved, we can only hope that maybe this time the message will get through.