23 YEARS ON

It’s hard to believe that More than 90 Minutes, Celtic Fanzine  first went on sale outside Celtic Park in September 2001. It was a sunny day in the Eastend of Glasgow that day and if memory serves me right, Celtic beat Dunfermline 3-1. Lubo scored 2 and Chris Sutton got the other one. It was exciting times we had just beaten Ajax to qualify for the Champions League under Martin O’Neill’s guidance.

Four of us drove over the night before via the Belfast ferry. We sold the fanzine in the Gallowgate bars and on the way to the ground before taking our position around the ground for the first time to raise the fanzine in the air and shout out “More than 90 Minutes Celtic Fanzine issue 1 only £1”

The reaction was positive and we sold about 500 fanzines between us and we also had a seller on the boat that morning who sold another 100 or so. The bus and boat would become very important for the growth of the fanzine in those early days. I met so many Celtic fans through selling the fanzine on the boat and at the ground and many became great friends.

Outside the ground a young Kevin Bridges would buy the fanzine for his Dad and Lisbon Lion, Charlie Gallagher would stop for a chat and buy a copy after parking his taxi up on the way to the ground to take his seat beside his fellow Lion, John Fallon who has been a columnist for about 20 years or so.

On the boat, I had so many great conversations and learned so much from older fans some who had been travelling for decades from Ireland and they would recount many journeys on the old cattle boat which brought them up the Clyde on match day and the father and son, Tony and Mark Kavanagh living in Dunleer, County Louth who travelled in all weathers on a motorbike before the Naomh Padraig CSC bus started in the late 1980’s, the new pick up for the bhoys made life a lot easier to get to see Celtic.

The Naomh Padraig bus still pulls out of Dublin in the early hours of matchdays and makes the Pilgrimage to Glasgow passing the airport where many Celtic fans will gather at boarding gates.

On those boats fans also spoke about the great players and memorable games they had attended. There were so many characters. From those who loved a beer in the bars, each Celtic Supporters club had their own area in the bars and for those not drinking they also had their place on the boat to talk about all things Celtic and share a flask of tea and a sandwich.

Grange CSC boss man. Jim Mervin would have a queue around him as Celtic fans picked up their match tickets. Marty would be punting dodgy DVDs and there would always be a ballot for a Celtic picture for a pound.

Since then we have lost so many friends. One friend, Gerry Morgan was so supportive during those early days of the fanzine.

Away days were documented by a number of contributors and Scott Crystal would regularly write about his travels from London following Celtic all over Europe with Michael Pringle and Joe Miller as his travel companions on many of those adventures.

They re-enacted the Chris Commons fall out in the dugout with Ronnie Delia after he was taken off by getting into the dug out, not sure how they got into the dugout but I’m almost sure it was against Molde.

I remember in Milan when we played Inter staying with Michael and Scott. On the way back into the city on the underground Scott got talking to a young Celtic fan from the North of Scotland who had lost his wallet and phone. He gave him his phone to call his Mother back home and as the train pulled into our stop he handed him €50. This just summed up the type of person Scott was. Sadly Scott passed away in 2022.

I would bump into Scott in McChuills on match days or in the lounge in Glasgow airport  The last time we had a good few pints was in McChuills when I hosted an Evening with Rudi Vata. As we plan to continue our European adventures this season we will be thinking of Scott on our travels.

The fanzine was also sold at away games with Gaxy always on duty for domestic fixtures while in the early days we always brought some with us on our European travels and I remember Ken selling out of the fanzine in the snow in Teblice in the Czech Republic.

A big shout out to all the ground sellers who braved all weathers to sell the fanzine outside Celtic Park before dashing to the turnstiles to be on time for kick off and position themselves close to the exits at full time to get fans leaving the stadium.

After a few seasons we got the fanzine distributed to newsagents in Ireland and Scotland and this arrangement ran until Covid. By then the media world had changed and we had also started bringing out the fanzine in digital format as print sales started to drop. Due to the costs of print and transport we made the decision to keep the print going but only to sell it from our online shop and to grow our subscription base.

During Covid we hit record subscribers and without them and our sponsors we would have been forced to wrap up the print edition and go fully digital but thankfully that was a false dawn and we can continue to produce both print and digital

Once again thanks to everyone who has supported the fanzine over the past 23 years. Some said we would never see 3 issues of the fanzine being based so far from Glasgow but here we are 23 years on still going strong. Older, maybe wiser and whole lot greyer!

Andrew Milne is Editor of More than 90 Minutes & Host of the Celtic Soul Podcast