All RINGSIDE TABLES are now SOLD OUT for A NIGHT OF INTERNATIONAL BOXING AT CELTIC PARK IN AID OF THE KANO FOUNDATION on Saturday 17 Sept. 2022. We have ONLY 6 general TABLES left as we head for a SELL OUT for this great cause.
Enjoy a 3 course meal before watching a night of top class boxing featuring ELITE Champions and help keep football free for kids by supporting the Kano Foundation. If you can’t make it on the night you can sponsor a fight.
Ringside Tables of 10 SOLD OUT
Tables of 10 (£500)
Single Tickets (£55)
Doors open 5pm. Meal served 6pm and Boxing starts at 8pm
For more details and to secure your tickets contact
Celtic have the chance to open up an early lead in the SPFL Premiership. Rangers draw away to Hibs yesterday could see Celtic go top of the table with a two point lead if we beat Hearts.
Hearts travel to Glasgow in decent form, sitting 4th on 7 points with 2 wins and a draw from their opening three games. The Jambos played on Thursday night in the Europa League Play off, losing 2-1 away to FC Zurich, they still have a good chance in Edinburgh this week, even if they fail they drop into the Conference League. In the league they have beaten Ross County and Dundee United, both matches at Tynecastle, sandwiched in between was a point at Easter Road. They added Lawrence Shankland in the summer and the former Dundee United striker has been on the scoresheet three times in the league and Europe.
Celtic have looked good since the return of the league action, a 2-0 win in the opener against Aberdeen, 3-1 away to Ross County and then last week’s 5-0 away win to Kilmarnock. Hearts are a step up to the teams we have met so far.
It really has made a difference not having early season European qualifiers this year, the team seem a well oiled machine with plenty of recovery time compared to previous seasons, it should help us this season. We obviously have Champions League games coming up but the fact we have been able to only play one game a week until that starts could be crucial. The draw for the Champions League takes place on Thursday.
The transfer window closes in ten days and Celtic should have one or two more added with some players likely to move on. There seems to be interest in Sead Haksabanovic from Rubin Kazan, giving an other option in the wide areas, a defensive midfielder would also be a welcome addition.
Hearts will be tough opponents but the way Celtic have been playing you expect us to win every game under Ange, and it’s the same again today.
Mick Kane hails from Glasgow. He has been hooked on Celtic since he went to his first game when he was 7. Celtic beat Hamilton 8-3 at Celtic Park on the 3rd of January 1987. His favourite player at the time, Brian McClair scored four goals.
He started going regular as a 16 year old when Celtic played at Hampden for the season, being a Southsider it meant a short train journey to get to Hampden. From then he has had a season ticket travelled around Europe for games as Celtic became the dominant force in Scottish football again. A nice change from growing up during Rangers run to 9 in a row.
Signed by Martin O’Neill for £50,000 from Hibs, Didier proved to be the bargain of the decade and he would become a mainstay of the team under MON.
Twenty years on from the run to Seville it will be a pleasure to hear Didier talk about his time at Celtic and that famous journey to the UEFA Cup Final.
During his time at Celtic, he won 3 League titles, 3 Scottish Cups and 1 League Cup. The Celtic Supporters Festival kicks off in Bangkok on Friday 10th March at O’Shea’s for 3 nights before we move to Pattaya for 7 nights of sun. sea and Celtic.
Click Link to book the Official Festival Hotel in Pattaya.
This season marks the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite seasons following Celtic, 2002/03 Although no silverware ended up at Paradise that season, I cherish all those memories as we travelled throughout Scotland and Europe selling More than 90 Minutes Celtic Fanzine outside each ground.
The memories of the laughs we had on our travels and the heartbreak we all felt as we left Seville late in the night after a sickening defeat to Porto are still fresh in the mind. Without the good old Credit Union, we would have all been watching on TV.
I am lucky that I will now get to relive that season with one of the heroes of Martin O’Neill’s Celtic side.
Big John Hartson will be on stage at Peadar Browns, Dublin on Friday 11 Nov 2022. Twenty years previous in the winter of 2002. John was on fire in front of goal banging in 4 goals at Celtic Park against Aberdeen and scoring on the road against Dundee United and Rangers.
That was all before his most important goal for Celtic in Vigo when his goal put us in Europe after Christmas for first time in decades. He then gave us the perfect Christmas present a hat-trick against Hearts.
In his time at Celtic, he scored over 100 goals for the club and won 3 Leagues, 2 Scottish Cup and 1 League Cup. I will be interviewing John on stage before hosting the questions and answers session to order tickets and join us click the link below.
The area the pub is in is well serviced with plenty of hotels. The bar is located about 100m from Phrom Phong BTS Sky Train Station. One stop to the east is Thong Lor and one stop to the west is Asoke . Two stops to the west is Nana.
Any hotel close to any of these BTS Sky Train stations would be very convenient and close to the bar and would have many options regarding food, drink, nightlife, and shopping.
During the weekend in Bangkok we will have Gigs, An Evening with the Celtic Players and watch Celtic in the Scottish Cup at the Thailand Celtic Supporters Festival.
KANO KEEPING FOOTBALL FREE FOR KIDS. Thanks to everyone who has bought tables and tickets for A NIGHT OF INTERNATIONAL BOXING AT CELTIC PARK IN AID OF THE KANO FOUNDATION on Saturday 17 Sept. 2022
A SCOTLAND Select will take on an IRELAND Select in the Kerrydale Suite.
Enjoy a 3 course meal before watching a night of top class boxing featuring ELITE Champions and help keep football free for kids by supporting the Kano Foundation
We have now sold half of the tables but we need to fill the venue to help keep football free for kids. If you can’t make it on the night you can sponsor a fight.
Ringside Tables of 10 (£600)
Tables of 10 (£500)
Single Tickets (£55)
Doors open 5pm. Meal served 6pm and Boxing starts at 8pm
For more details and to secure your tickets contact
Celtic Historian & Author, David Potter pays tribute to Yogi.
The news of the passing of John Hughes came to many of us as a deep personal blow. Those of us who grew up in the 1960s had strong feelings about The Bear.
The early 1960s were not great years for Celtic, and it would not be long after Celtic supporters got together that an argument could be guaranteed to develop about John Hughes!
There were those who thought that he could be the greatest ever; there were those who thought him a waste of space. The truth is that John Hughes could be either of these extremes. I tended to believe that he could perform wonders for the club – but oh, how I wish I could have used the word “consistent” about him!
If only he could produce every week what we knew he was capable of, then the arrogant Rangers of Baxter and Henderson could have been swept aside.
He stormed onto the scene at the beginning of season 1960/61 and for a while, all was brilliant as Celtic beat Third Lanark (twice) and Rangers at Ibrox with Hughes looking like the new star.
He lacked the grace and style of Patsy Gallacher and Charlie Tully (he was never that sort of player) but there was something of Jimmy Quinn and Sandy McMahon about him. Alas! It could not be maintained, and there was no-one at Parkhead at the time who could talk to the youngster through the difficult times and encourage him.
Rangers beat Celtic twice at Parkhead in the League Cup and the League in autumn 1960 and the bubble was well and truly burst.
In some ways those first six weeks of this career were a microcosm of the rest of his Parkhead life. Capable of brilliance, but not always able to produce it through lack of confidence or conviction.
The end of that season, for example, saw a marvellous performance in the Scottish Cup semi-final against Airdrie… but then a feckless, flaccid display in the final against Dunfermline which many fans (and indeed one team mate in particular) found difficult to forgive.
No player was more talked about on the supporters’ buses than John Hughes. His spiky hairstyle encouraged the nickname “Yogi Bear” who was “smarter than the average (park) ranger” and he generally had a good season in 1961/62 when Celtic impressed everyone – but blew up spectacularly when they had to win against St Mirren in an awful semi-final.
His jousts with Ian Ure of Dundee (a man who was also called “Yogi Bear”) were a feature of the season with honours even at the end. But it was Dundee, not Celtic, who won the League.
Like everyone else, he suffered from the crazy team selections of Mr Kelly, but yet those of us who loved the Bear kept faith in him, and just now and again, we saw how good he could be. Take for example January 25 1964 in a Scottish Cup tie at Morton when he scored a magnificent, individual goal, and things looked good.
He then scored the goal that gave us a wonderful and surprise victory against Slovan Bratislava, but then three days later at Ibrox when many of us felt that we were on the cusp of something big, John returned to depressing anonymity.
Midwinter 1964/65 saw Celtic at their lowest ebb, yet John was usually exempt from the abuse of the fans because we always felt that he could do something.
Wearing sandshoes on Boxing Day he scored two goals against Motherwell, and then on the very eve of the announcement of the appointment of Jock Stein, Yogi, again wearing sandshoes, scored five on a frost bound pitch against Aberdeen.
He was a very good “bad weather” player revelling in rain and frost – scoring a magnificent goal in the rain at Parkhead in September 1964 against Rangers and then finding it mysteriously disallowed – and for a while under Stein, goals began to flow.
He won his first Scottish Cup medal in 1965, and was trusted with the job of scoring the penalties in the League Cup final of October that year. And what pivotal two moments of Celtic history those were! Those of us who had doubts about his temperament held our breath as the lumbering figure of Yogi appeared to take the two kicks to confirm that Celtic were back and (crucially) that the Rangers complex had gone.
We have already talked about the goal at Morton. There was another one equally good one against Morton in a League Cup semi-final at Hampden in 1967, but those of us who saw the goal at Dens Park in September 1965 will not admit to the possibility of anyone ever having seen a better goal. As an old timer put it, even Patsy Gallacher had to yield to that one! Sadly, that goal does not seem to be on any kind of film.
John was probably unlucky not to be one of the eleven in Lisbon, and he also missed out through injury on the glorious month of April 1969, but he played in most of the rest of the glory days, including the epic League chase of 1968, and, of course, he scored against Leeds in that semi-final of 1970.
It was no secret that he and Jock Stein were no great buddies. Stein seemed to blame John disproportionately for a missed chance in the Milan Cup final against Feyenoord in 1970, and then there was an unfortunate incident in a game at Perth when John was injured, insisted on carrying on, and then eventually had to come off. Stein did not like losing and sometimes needed a scapegoat.
Following quite a few not very well hidden spats with Jock, Yogi was transferred (along with Willie Wallace) to Crystal Palace where he scored another one of his great goals (fortunately captured by TV cameras) but then suffered from injury, something which he had been unlucky with at several points of his career.
He eventually moved to Roker Park, Sunderland to join his brother Billy, but injury struck in his very first game and basically his career finished before he was 30.
He was greatly admired in England with Newcastle United prepared on several occasions in the late 1960s to “rock football” with an offer for him, but he stayed with Celtic.
He remained a Celtic man, and was frequently seen at Celtic Park in his later years. He remained bitter about Stein, (and he was not the only one) but both men appreciated the value of the other’s contribution to the club.
John was a totally different character from Jimmy Johnstone, as different from each other in their approach to the game as they were in looks. Nevertheless, if a supporter ever happened to be lucky enough to attend a game where both were on song at the same time, then there was nothing on earth that could have stopped Celtic on these occasions – and so often it seemed to happen at Easter Road against Hibs – but of course there were so many other magnificent footballers around at the same time.
He was probably a better left winger than he was a centre forward. The sight of John rampaging in the open spaces down the left wing with panic stricken defenders in his wake is something that was one of the joys of the 1960s.
Had he been able to do this sort of thing oftener, he would have been one of the greats of all time. As it was, he has left us with many joyous memories of the great days of Celtic.
It is such a pity that the word “inconsistent” has to be applied to him, but nevertheless our generation of fans must feel sorry for the younger ones who never saw Yogi Bear in his prime!
His passing is an occasion of great sorrow, for John is well worth his place in the Valhalla of great Celts.
