I think we can all agree that Celtic’s worst ever newspaper headline was “SupercaleygoballisticCelticareatrocious” with reference to the dire events of February 8 2000. But a close rival to it must be “Dziekanowski, Aitkenoffski and Milleronandoffski”. This one refers to a distressing game in the Scottish League Cup semi-final at Hampden Park on September 20 1989 when Celtic went out narrowly and excruciatingly to Aberdeen before a crowd of 45,637.

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The game must be seen in context. Celtic had won the Scottish Cup last season, but were already clearly losing out to Rangers in the Scottish League, having lost to St Mirren and drawn with Dundee United. The fact that Judas Johnston was now playing for Rangers, having said he would play for Celtic, created its own crisis and lack of faith in the club. Confidence was far from high, but we had reached the semi-final of the League Cup, a competition in which Celtic’s record had been particularly woeful of late. Sadly Ian Cameron of Aberdeen scored the only goal of the game.

But let’s take Dziekanowski first. He had arrived amidst a fanfare of trumpets and he had started off well. He was nice looking, charismatic almost, clearly talented, a good ball player and with a proven track record of scoring goals for Legia Warsaw in his native Poland. This game was his chance to show everyone just how good he was. It was probably true to say that “Jackie’s” heart was in the right place as far as Celtic were concerned, but it is also true that he found it difficult to cope with the “freedom” of a prosperous Western democracy as distinct from the stern repression of the East. Tonight, sadly to the immense dismay of his admirers, he misfired badly, making no impression on Miller and McLeish in the Aberdeen defence.

And then we had Aitkenoffski. No-one could ever accuse Roy Aitken of not trying or of being less than totally committed. Sometimes however we questioned his judgement. He did have an odd relationship with Aberdeen. He had been sent off harshly in the Scottish Cup final against them five years ago, and tonight he suffered even more injustice when he was sent off by referee Brian McGinlay. This was for two bookable offences. Neither in truth looked all that bad, and manager Billy McNeill was adamant that Jim Bett “went down” for the second one. The red card for Aitken happened late in the game and killed what little hope Celtic had. By January, Aitken was away to Newcastle United and this game may have played a large part in his decision to leave the club he loved.

Rude Bhoys T-Shirt |Green

And then we come to Milleronandoffski. Joe Miller had been with the club since 1987. He had had his moments – notably in last year’s Scottish Cup final when he was the hero of the hour – but over the piece, there had been more disappointments than triumphs. Billy McNeill was now beginning to share the misgivings of the support, for Joe was only on the substitutes’ bench this night. But Steve Fulton was not “doing it” and Joe was brought on in the second half. Sadly, Joe himself made little difference and shortly after Aberdeen went ahead, in desperation, Billy brought on Andy Walker to replace the unfortunate Joe whom Billy believed to have been disobeying instructions! The Aberdeen supporters (Joe used to play for them) found this funny, the Press were bewildered and the Celtic fans did not know what to make of it. Joe exchanged a few pleasantries with his Manager  as he ran off, put in a knee-jerk request for a transfer the following day and it would be fair to say that relationships between McNeill and Miller were never quite the same again.

The real losers of all this were Celtic, but it was merely the start of our troubles. The game itself saw some good football, but it was Aberdeen who won and indeed who went on to beat Rangers in the League Cup final in October 1989. The following midweek in a European tie, Dziekanowski scored four – but Celtic still lost the tie! The rest of the season, give or take the odd good result, was a painful one with the departure of Roy Aitken in January 1990 and then the loss of the Scottish Cup final in May 1990 to Aberdeen in that most agonising of ways – a penalty shoot-out!

More than 90 Minutes Issue 111 Print

Born in 1948, David Potter first saw Celtic at Dens Park, Dundee in March 29. It was a 3-5 defeat, which equipped him admirably for the horrors of the early 1960’s. He had “followed” Celtic for a few years before that and recalls having been called upon to impersonate Jock Stein and receive the family silver teapot which had to do for the Scottish Cup as it was presented on April 24 1954, after he and his father had spent a nerve wracking afternoon listening to the radio!  Since then, he has “followed” every Celtic game with bated breath, and has written extensively about the club in magazines and books. His favorite team was that of 1969 (which he rates marginally better than 1967) and his favorite player was Henrik Larsson.

His ambition for Celtic is for them to keep on winning silver in Scotland and to be something in Europe once again. His other interests are cricket and drama. He is 70, a retired teacher of Classical Languages, married with three children and five grandchildren. He now travels on the Joseph Rafferty bus from Kirkcaldy. He also loves Forfar Athletic.

If you would like to support our Independent Celtic Fan Media Platform you can become a Member, Subscribe, Buy or Donate for the Price of a Pint. Your Support helps us continue to produce Daily News & Articles, Weekly Newsletter, Two Weekly Podcasts, Monthly Fanzine, Video Content & Live Shows.

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Glasgow Celtic Hoodie / Green

“It’s more than just a football team, they’re playing for a cause, for a people.” Tommy Burns.

In his classic tale of the enduring power of love, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s epic novel “Love in the time of Cholera” charts the course of a romantic fascination, a deep longing and passion that begins in youth and persists into old age, despite never having been properly consummated. It takes on it’s own dynamic as the author describes the emotions of a single day, that we come to understand will never be repeated. The contention that there are things in our lives without which life would be less fulfilling, less rewarding, less meaningful, less spiritual, is clearly true. For me one of the things that give my life meaning, which has been part of my life for as long as I remember, is Celtic Football Club.

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The Brandywell Days

Even as a young boy in the mid 1960’s going to the Brandywell to see Derry City with my father, Celtic already occupied a place in my heart. A place that would in time surpass any other sporting passion. I can take it with relative ease, if Derry City narrowly lose the League of Ireland on the last day of the season, as they have done, or if the Irish national team fail to qualify for major tournaments. Don’t get me wrong; I still like to hear of Cliftonville beating Linfield or Glentoran, or St.Pauli getting one over on Hamburg. Barca beating Real. Argentina winning the World Cup. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really bother me very much to be honest. Nor does who wins the English Premiership or even the Champions League (as long as it’s not an English team). Doesn’t register on my emotional barometer. As far as other teams go, I very much err on the side of a resigned indifference, best summed up as “Whatever happens happens.”

Celtic.

But not with Celtic. With Celtic there is always the anxiety of the next game, the tension of the next goal. For the most part it’s manageable. After all, we usually win domestically at any rate. But against the old ‘Rangers’ and their modern manifestation, Sevco, my emotional barometer goes off the scale. I have an abiding hatred of Rangers old and new. I despise everything they stand for. Monarchy, militarism, ‘Empire’, jingoism, deference, sectarianism, racism and downright bigotry. All are the hallmarks of the side from Govan. I don’t think all Rangers fans are mindless bigots, but it seems to me a significant section of them are. Any fans who could casually sing “The Famine Song” or fall in love overnight with someone as odious as El Hadji Diouf, need perhaps, more to be pitied than scorned. Fans who make an on going mockery out of historic child sexual abuse, and wear it as a badge of honour, puts the mind set of such people well beyond normal “banter” and mere sporting rivalry.

“Top of the Hill”

The area where I grew up in Derry, the “Top of the Hill”, was a small nationalist “enclave” in the predominantly loyalist Waterside area of the city. Even before “the Troubles” you had to be careful about where you walked, where you were, how you might get home? Nearby in the main loyalist estate in the city (strangely it was called “Irish Street”), there were many rabid Rangers fans. Some of them, like the McKnight’s and the Willis’s, had big families of teenage boys, who we used to engage with regularly. The trick was never to be caught in their patch alone. One of my closest friends at the time was Gregory Quigg. We had sat beside each other in school from our first day in Miss McCourt’s Primary 1 class. As we grew up we were often mischievous, but not vicious. We did all the wrong things. We smoked. Played snooker. We went to card schools. And we followed Celtic. But we weren’t bad kids. Just rebellious.

The Celtic View first arrived in our local newsagent, where as a young teenager I had a paper round, in the mid 1960’s. A small 4 page black and white publication, we devoured it down from cover to cover. We also were regulars at the Brandywell were fixtures against Linfield in particular, took on a new edge as the embryonic undercurrents of the Civil Rights movement came face to face with the extreme sectarianism of Linfield and their travelling support. They had lorded over us for years. Decades even, but there was change in the air. On several occasions in the late 60’s there were pitched battles in and around the Brandywell and one one occasion we drove up to 500 Linfield fans from a stand which usually contained young, mostly teenage fans of the home team.

Glasgow Celtic Hoodie / Green

Lisbon Lions.

Although not talked about much retrospectively, Celtic’s 1967 European Cup win over Inter Milan was a massive source of pride. “Our” team in Glasgow had become the Champions of Europe. The Lisbon Lions were born. Bonfires were lit in some nationalist areas across the 6 counties, and the Waterside Boy’s club where Gregory and I played soccer, had their annual Dinner Dance that night in a nearby hotel, an event which was buzzing after the result. I have no doubt the confidence accruing from Celtic’s victory had an important psychological impact on the nationalist community, a renewed confidence about who we were and what we might become. I know it did in the Top of the Hill where we lived, and areas like the Bogside and the Brandywell where I went to school. Celtic changed our lives.

Coming of age.

For some reason, I can’t quite remember exactly how, Gregory and I went to different secondary schools, but we still hung out together. By 1969 when we were finishing school as 15 year olds, our coming of age took place in a changed landscape.  The area around our schools had become a battleground. From the Christian Brothers Brow of the Hill, where I went to secondary school, it was two hundreds yards from the school gate to the Rossville Flats, where in August 1969 the “Battle of the Bogside ” was making news headlines across the world. This was our hinterland, our playground, and by the age of 15 many of us were learning the tricks and the trade, of street rioting against a vastly better resourced British Army and the RUC and not getting caught. Undeterred by a mandatory 6 months sentence for “Riotous Behaviour”, we soon grew to hate their presence on our streets, with a ferocious intensity.

Very soon Derry City would be banned from the “Irish League”, as the only remaining “Catholic” team, in terms of support, following on the brutal demise of the legendary “Belfast Celtic” some decades before in the face of violence against the players by Linfield fans in a Belfast Derby.

More than 90 Minutes Issue 111 Print

First trip to Glasgow.

Whilst still keeping an eye on Celtic’s fortunes, there were other emerging priorities. Caught up in the maelstrom of the unfolding political crisis, it was exciting, dangerous, rebellious stuff. Without Derry City there was only Celtic. Another friend of mine from Creggan, “Wee Charlie” McLaughlin and I decided if we could get tickets we would go to see the Celtic in Glasgow. 50 years ago, in April 1970 I attended my first game. The infamous “Bobby Davidson Final” saw Aberdeen defeat Celtic 3-1 on a day of monumental referring bias and injustice, in a game which still contained many of the “Lisbon Lions” including Tommy Gemmell, Billy McNeill, Bobby Murdoch, Bobby Lennox and Jimmy Johnston. Davidson was, to use the accent of the time, an unrepentant “Bluenose”. A significant figure in the infamous “Lanarkshire Referees Association” and a prominent Freemason. He was also a regular at Ibrox. The referring was, quite simply, an affront. It was a huge disappointment. But as we returned to Ireland on the Monday morning, thoughts turned to other things.

European Cup Semi Final.

On Wednesday evening Celtic were due to play Leeds United in the European Cup Semi Final second round. On Tuesday night in a freak moment someone I knew had to cancel and there was a spare ticket. After paying for the match ticket, and for the second boat ticket in a matter of days, my 16-year-old bank was bust and after a few pints on the boat, I arrived in Glasgow mid afternoon with the equivalent of 50p. And nowhere to stay. Off the 136,000 plus that attended Hampden that night, I was one of the first into the ground. By some miracle in the madness of the occasion I found myself besides the cousins who had left me at the train station a few days earlier. Hampden in those days with an absolute death trap. It was like a pyramid. Being amongst 136,000 Celtic fans was like nothing I’d ever experienced. We moved as one great mass of humanity, my feet rarely on the ground. We came from a goal down on the night to win 2-1, making it 3-1 on aggregate to reach the final of the European Cup.

Changing times.

We lived in changing times, changing priorities. By now there were daily hostilities on the streets of Derry. My friend Gregory, with whom I learned much about the world, was the first of my classmates to go to Long Kesh. Soon there would be internment and Bloody Sunday. Through most of it we kept an eye on the fortunes of the Celtic, but there were other things as well, which were difficult to ignore. Regular trips to Glasgow stopped for the guts of 20 years. But deep down, despite it all we were always on our way back to Paradise. Our love never died. Through thick and thin.

The Bhoys Are Back in Town T-Shirt |Black

Paradise.

These days in Paradise I would sometimes go in really early, just to sit there, just to take it all in. A kind of meditative reflection, of all that comes and goes. I don’t do it anywhere else in the world. I think of big nights I’ve witnessed being there, beating Barcelona, Manchester United, AC Milan. Sweeter still the memories of “us” doing “them” in the most important game of all, the “Glasgow Derby”. Remembering the night Big Yan Venegoor of Hessilink grabbed a winner in the 94th minute. Or with the Margaret’s crew in the “Free Broomloan” stuffing them 5-1 at Ibrox. Or with Eddie Toner and Jeanette Findlay and Ciaran Kenny, winning the league on “Helicopter Thursday” in 2008 after having been written off in April. My memories are endless. I miss everything about. Booking flights, hotel rooms, meeting people in the airport and the animated chatter about “The Bhoys”. Most of all I miss my friends, those who have sat around me for years, first for a few years in 112 of the Lisbon Lions Lower and for more than 10 years in 140 of the Jock Stein Lower. It will be a pity if we were unable to play out the season; I seriously think we’d have won the SPL by at least 20 points. But next year promises to be monumental as we head out to mark new milestones make new records in the history of “our club”. That’s provided that we are going to have football at all, at least as we have known it, for years to come? Hopefully not. As it is, I feel at a loss for all the things I took for granted and can’t wait to get back to Paradise. I know why it’s called that. I know what love is! Love in the time of Covid19!

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Vincent Doherty was born in Derry but now lives in Dublin, he is enjoying his retirement by travelling to watch Celtic home and away.

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Celtic Soul Polo-Top | Black

The story of how one of the world’s most powerful anti-slavery songs became a Parkhead anthem is a remarkable one, but first we must disabuse ourselves of billy boys and being up to the knees in anyone’s blood. These are later bastardisations (if you can forgive the word!) of what was a fine song.

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The original words of the chorus are

Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the jubilee!

Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!

So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea

As we were marching through Georgia!

and it is about the American Civil War of 1861 – 1865 when the “free” states of the North defeated the “slave” states of the South to the general approval of right-thinking people in Europe, including not a few who looked at Ireland and Scotland as well and wondered about “slavery”. The song enjoyed a certain popularity in Victorian music halls, but began to die a death, until about 1917 when the Americans joined the Great War, bringing with them their music including this song with its obvious parallels in freeing Belgium from the Germans. But it only really became famous again in Glasgow after the events of March 21 1925 at Hampden Park. This was the Scottish Cup semi-final when Celtic, against all the odds, smashed Rangers 5-0 after the morning papers had not given Celtic the slightest chance of winning.

But this Celtic team still had Patsy Gallacher, now aged 34 and with a point to prove to those who thought he was past it. He, in conjunction with the McStay brothers, hatched a plan which involved soaking up the early Rangers pressure, allowing them to think they were the better team but frustrating them at the same time, then when Rangers had shot their bolt, hitting them with everything Celtic had. The plan worked a treat. The game kicked off before a six-figure crowd, Rangers attacking the Mount Florida end where all their supporters were, but couldn’t score. Celtic did, though, after a lovely move involving Peter Wilson, Patsy Gallacher Paddy Connolly and Jimmy McGrory. Half time came with Celtic one ahead, and Rangers wondering why with all their pressure, they hadn’t scored.

Rude Bhoys T-Shirt |Green

But Celtic now had the benefit of the cold east wind behind them in the second half and their four midfield men of Peter Wilson, Jean McFarlane, Alec Thomson and Patsy Gallacher all stepped up the mark. Celtic first achieved parity, then supremacy and finally domination as the Rangers defence crumbled like a cake in front a superb Celtic team. The Rangers supporters too behind that Mount Florida end goal also crumbled and by the end of the game, there were huge gaps where the Union Jack wavers had been. It had been 22 years since Rangers had last won the Scottish Cup. For some time, people had talked about a jinx. There was no real jinx here. It was simply Patsy Gallacher and Paddy Connolly who supplied Adam McLean, Jimmy McGrory, Alec Thomson and Adam McLean again to defeat Rangers 5-0.

It was the sheer unexpectedness of the win which propelled the Celtic heartlands into delirium that night, as Garngad, Gorbals, Croy and even places like Lochee in far away Dundee saw singing and dancing in the streets. Some time during the prolonged festivities, but certainly before the Scottish Cup final on April 11 1925 (for a “survivor” of that final told me he heard it then!) the new version of the Georgia song emerged as

Hurrah! Hurrah! We are the Tim Malloys!

Hurrah! Hurrah! You heard us by the noise!

We beat the Rangers in the Cup – twas great to be alive –

Not one, not two, not three, not four but five!

More than 90 Minutes Issue 111 Print

“Hurrah” was sometimes changed to “Hello”, and “beat” was sometimes changed to a less respectable word, but that song stayed with Celtic for 40 years. I recall hearing it at Tannadice Park in 1962, except after 1957 the last line had been changed to “Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six but SEVEN” and I recall the fingers being held up after each number as the volume grew. It was a very rousing song, eventually dying a slow death like “God Save Ireland” and “Erin’s Green Valleys” after 1967 when there was so much more to sing about.

So don’t groan and boo when you hear less wholesome versions of this song! We cannot really claim to have had it first – that honour must go to Abraham Lincoln’s triumphant men – but we had it first in Scotland and long before Billy Fullarton’s Bridgeton thugs and gangsters perverted it as their own.

Glasgow Celtic Hoodie / Green

Born in 1948, David Potter first saw Celtic at Dens Park, Dundee in March 29. It was a 3-5 defeat, which equipped him admirably for the horrors of the early 1960’s. He had “followed” Celtic for a few years before that and recalls having been called upon to impersonate Jock Stein and receive the family silver teapot which had to do for the Scottish Cup as it was presented on April 24 1954, after he and his father had spent a nerve wracking afternoon listening to the radio!  Since then, he has “followed” every Celtic game with bated breath, and has written extensively about the club in magazines and books. His favorite team was that of 1969 (which he rates marginally better than 1967) and his favorite player was Henrik Larsson.

His ambition for Celtic is for them to keep on winning silver in Scotland and to be something in Europe once again. His other interests are cricket and drama. He is 70, a retired teacher of Classical Languages, married with three children and five grandchildren. He now travels on the Joseph Rafferty bus from Kirkcaldy. He also loves Forfar Athletic.

If you would like to support our Independent Celtic Fan Media Platform you can become a Member, Subscribe, Buy or Donate for the Price of a Pint. Your Support helps us continue to produce Daily News & Articles, Weekly Newsletter, Two Weekly Podcasts, Monthly Fanzine, Video Content & Live Shows.

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