Excited

I was really looking forward to the second round second leg match against Aarhus in the European Cup Winners’ Cup. Not only did I know I was playing but the idea of actually taking part in another European tie (I had played in the home leg against Go-Ahead Deventer) just made me feel great.

It also made life a bit difficult for me at training with the part-timers, the sessions being brought forward to two nights before the match. While the squad was being put through the mill on a tough session, I was told to take it easy and concentrate on short stuff, as I was playing sooner than them. I never was one for pushing myself forward but that night I made doubly sure that I did not come over as a bit cocky. I would not be the first player to end up back in the reserves after a try-out in the first team! Continue reading →

On Cloud Nine

From the minute Sean Fallon told me that I was in the side for the match against St Johnstone, I was a very happy man. Or, as a Glaswegian would say : “my heid was in the clouds!”. My Dad was delighted, my Mum less so. She still believed that there was this group of thugs on the pitch trying to do damage to her older son and nothing Dad or I said could dislodge this thought from her mind. She had never seen me play and from what I was told, she spent the 90 minutes of every match praying that I would come back in one piece!

Anyway, from the Thursday night until the Saturday, nothing bothered me or was too much trouble to deal with. Even the guy I bought the evening paper from on the Friday night just outside Central Station – whose comment of “are you no’ in that team yet?” used to ‘get on’ a certain portion of my anatomy under the neck and above the waist and normally associated with a woman – even he got a smile and a nod and a ‘maybe soon’. If I was going to tell anyone, it certainly would not be him!

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Second Team in Action

As I mentioned last week, the second team had a 2^nd X1 Scottish Cup tie against Morton to play on the 8^th November at Celtic Park. The side was John Kennedy, Jim Craig, Frank McCarron, Davie Cattenach, John Cushley, Willie O’Neill, Stevie Chalmers, George Connelly, John Divers, Gerry Sweeney and Tony Taylor.

I always had a deal of sympathy for our left-wing pairing of Gerry and Tony. They both worked very hard in training but because better known names like John Divers, Stevie Chalmers, Charlie Gallagher and Bertie Auld occasionally dropped down into the reserve team – and naturally did well – they seldom got the publicity they deserved. Continue reading →

The Opposition

On that afternoon at Celtic Park, the listed Partick Thistle side showed one name which would have caught the attention of the Celtic support plus two others who would make a name for themselves in the future.

The ‘known’ name was Jim Conway, playing that day in the outside-right position. Jim had been at Parkhead from 1956 to 1961, making 43 appearances in the Hoops and scoring 13 goals, before arriving at Firhill after spells down south with Norwich City and Southend United.

At centre-forward for the Jags was my old Queen’s Park team-mate Andy Roxburgh, who would go on to be manager of Scotland from 1986 to 1993, before then becoming the head of UEFA’s coaching sector. And at inside-left was Davie McParland, destined later in his career to be assistant to Sean Fallon at Celtic Park at the time of Jock Stein’s car crash.

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Happy Enough

It might have been only a 1-0 victory for Celtic against Aarhus in Denmark but the whole party seemed happy enough on their return to Parkhead. That everyone had come through the match unscathed was possibly one reason for the management to be pleased and Jock Stein (as I would discover later), not usually one to give an air of over-confidence – at least to the press – before a match, was actually quite sure that Celtic would go through to the next round. At his press conference on the day before the next match, a league encounter against Partick Thistle, he came out with these rather surprisingly confident words;- Continue reading →

A Trip Round Europe

As I mentioned previously, after the match against Stirling, Jock Stein, in his other role as Scotland manager, had headed for Rome to watch Italy play Poland in a World Cup tie. It must have been an uncomfortable Sunday afternoon for the Celtic Boss, as the Italians thrashed the visitors 6-1!

After a night in Rome, he then made his way to Denmark to meet up with the Celtic party in Aarhus prior to the match on the 3^rd November.

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Difficult Thoughts
Having played the night before, and with the first team having a home match on the Saturday, the most logical thing for me to have done would have been to go along to Parkhead to see the game. However, if I am being perfectly honest, I did not fancy the idea of sitting watching Celtic take Stirling Albion apart on a fine afternoon at Celtic Park!
Now, if that sounds a bit like heresy for a Celtic fan to say, let me put my thoughts into some sort of perspective. Continue reading →

Dundee 1 Celtic 2

A Game of Two Halves

A much hackneyed expression but one which in this case was a perfectly accurate way of describing the action. Under the heading –

Merited Win for Celtic at Dundee

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A Wonderful Time

For anyone with Celtic’s interests at heart, the few days after the League Cup final were ones of euphoria. Fans were glad-handing each other in the shops, pubs and streets; older mums and aunties had never been cuddled quite so much; and wee bairns wearing anything green were having toys and sweets thrust at them by total strangers. It was quite a time!

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A crowd of 107,609 – which is still to this day the largest-ever attendance for a League Cup final – crowded into the national stadium on that Saturday afternoon to witness the action. The teams were ;-

Celtic; Simpson, Young, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Johnstone, Gallagher, McBride, Lennox, Hughes.

Rangers; Ritchie, Johansen, Provan, Wood, McKinnon, Greig, Henderson, Willoughby, Forrest, Wilson, Johnston.

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