9th May 1968
The players apparently had the day off for training. I was at work at the dental practice and then, in late afternoon, when everyone else was at their dinner, I did a bit of running in the park near my parents’ house. I wasn’t killing myself but it felt quite good.
10th May
The press reported that John Fallon will keep goal for Celtic in the Inverness Select match.
Regular keeper Ronnie Simpson will play for the Reserves in a friendly at Ashington, Northumberland and Celtic Boss Jock Stein has decided that Fallon and Bobby Wraith, who joined the club recently from Dalry Thistle, will be the goalkeepers in the travelling party to the Highlands.
Celtic will leave Glasgow early on Saturday morning for the train journey north. They will spend Saturday night in Inverness and travel home on Sunday. On Monday, the first team regulars will be in action at the opening of Cumbernauld Juniors’ new ground.
Football clubs in general are not very good at letting their players know about future events so the players would have found this information – from one of the evening papers – very helpful –
‘Celtic will leave Prestwick Airport on Thursday 16th May at 1.20pm to start their tour which involves a week’s holiday in Miami before playing games in New York, Toronto and Mexico.
The Celts are due to arrive in Miami late on Thursday and they will stay there until May 24th, when they move on to New York. They will play the first of their two matches against Inter Milan on the 26th May.
On May 28th they leave for Toronto and will stay there until June 2 when they leave for Mexico. The return journey starts in Mexico on June 8th at 11.30am and ends almost exactly 24 hours later with the arrival at Glasgow Airport at 11.35am.
Join Celtic and see the world!’
Goals by Portugal’s World Cup heroes – Eusebio and Torres – gave Benfica a 2-0 victory over Juventus in Lisbon last night in the European Cup semi-final first-leg tie.
It was announced that Scottish Cup winners Dunfermline Athletic will leave Prestwick Airport for their tour of North America on 13th May.
11th May
There was a crowd of 10,000 inside the ground for this match between an Inverness Select and Celtic, the latter fielding a side of Fallon, Gemmell, O’Neill, Murdoch, McNeill, Brogan, Johnstone, Gallagher, Wallace, Lennox and Hughes. A disappointing feature for the home fans was the absence of Celtic manager Jock Stein, on business elsewhere.
Celtic started the better and soon took the lead when Wispy took advantage of a defensive slip-up. However, the Inverness Select equalized when Lazenby back-headed a Neil cross past John Fallon.
Celtic were taking more and more control of the game and got further goals in the first half through a Tam Gemmell penalty – after Yogi had been brought down – and a fine drive by Bobby Murdoch right on the half-time whistle.
In the second- half, Celtic continued to dominate and got three more through Chopper (56), another TG penalty (72) and an OG.
Final Score Inverness Select 1 Celtic 6
Reserves
In the match arranged in Northumberland, the final score was Ashington 3 Celtic 4.