It was part of a wider drive by Celtic’s board to address supporters’ gripes with the club’s communication. Accounts of how the meeting played out have been positive and negative.

Discussing the meeting, Clark revealed how it came about as well as discussing the content of the session which lasted several hours.

Greenock CSC on Celtic board Q-and-A: ‘They were told to their face’

Speaking on Clyde Superscoreboard, Clark said: “There seems a bit of misleading information going about. We’ve been working on this for months, and we invited the board down. We’ve been inviting the board down for years, to be truthful — but over the last couple of months, we started to get to a stage where we thought we were getting them down.

“But listen, they knew our club. We’ve been a club for 81 years , and going back through the years, we’ve had the Kellys, Whites, Fergus [McCann], Peter Lawwell… so us getting the board down was us giving our members the opportunity to talk to them and ask questions that they wanted answers to.”

On the timing of the meeting and whether he felt that it had only come about due to the weekend’s result against Falkirk, Clark continued: “No. We actually thought we were getting them down just over two months ago, and they had to cancel pretty late on because the main players couldn’t all get there at the same time.”

On whether he expected O’Neill’s appearance, he said: “No. Nobody [did]. I actually got told Martin was coming while I was in the hall, when the first load came down. Martin’s been down in the club recently, anyway, before he came back to Celtic, he was down doing a Q-and-A.

“But as you know better than me when Martin is in the room he usually takes over the room. “Yeah, it [having him there] definitely did [change the mood]. There were times Martin took over the question. The question would maybe be for the board but he would jump in and take it.”

On the content of the meeting, Clark continued: “[O’Neill] did a few circles around when one of our members asked him what the objectives were for the next five years. Winning the league five times, qualifying for the Champions League, winning a game in the Champions League and qualifying out the group stage.

“Martin came back to that a few times as maybe a bit unrealistic. I’m not saying he said it was unrealistic, but he kept going back and questioning it. So he took over a bit.

“While Martin was there, the question was asked to the board ‘What are we doing to replace him?’ They just said Martin is on a one-year contract with an option at the moment. In January there is going to be a budget to spend.

“The feeling that came out kind of was that everyone was wanting January to come early. Michael Nicholson said he wanted January to come quick. They know they need strengthening. We bought two centre forwards in the summer, and I asked how we came to the conclusion about those two.

“It’s about getting the right people available. The very last one, I don’t know if it was a question or a statement, but the guy who asked it said he didn’t think the board are capable of doing the job.

“What we did it for was to give everybody the opportunity to ask a question. I opened the meeting with that. I didn’t want anyone leaving the evening without having the opportunity to ask a question. We agreed it was going to run from 7pm to 9pm.

“About 9pm, I asked who still wanted to ask a question, and I asked the board if they were willing to stay, and they said yeah, so everybody got the questions.

“We even laid out bits of paper in case people didn’t feel comfortable standing up and speaking, I would ask the question for them. There was nothing out of bounds.

“There were questions asked about Dermot, questions asked about transfer policy, questions asked about the number of shares we have and if we can go and find the forgotten shareholders.

“You hear everybody going a three year or five year plan, that was brought up. You’ve got KPIs in there, that’s what they’re measured to.

“On the football side of things, they got asked a lot of things about how they go about identifying players and how they go and make decisions. And they’ve got a four-man panel, and people who meet the criteria get fed into that; then Martin makes the final decision on top of that.

“As a club we invited them down, we asked the questions. Did we get everything we wanted? Definitely not. But we can’t hold people’s feet to the fire and say, ‘That’s not the answer we want, we want this answer.’

“A lot of it was corporate answers but it very much got across to the board that we are not happy. They don’t have to come to Greenock to find that out. They were told that to their face.

“It wasn’t just our club; there were about eight or nine different clubs in the hall. There were some people who made really good points from other clubs and really emotional points from other clubs. So it wasn’t a backslap, let’s put it that way.

“In my personal experience, I asked about how we recruit and I don’t think we got that in total depth. In terms of an opportunity for our members and our guests to tell the board how they felt I think that came across.”