We’ve never had it so good. Literally.
Not since the ’60s and ’70s anyway.
Even then we could never have envisioned that our greatest rivals would fall off the face of a cliff, become resurrected in some shape or form and then have their travails on and off the pitch play out like an American courtroom drama with strong comedic undertones for the best part of a decade as one clown after another perched up in the Ibrox boardroom.
Football-wise these past few years, we’ve broken various records and hoovered up numerous trebles. The brand of football after Brendan come through the door was for the best part vibrant and exciting and has been even more so since the return of Neil Lennon to the hot seat.
Big European nights are not few and far between anymore and it appears that we have genuine ambition on the content once more.
All things being equal it’s been great to be a Tim these past years.
To be honest, by and large, that’s been the case for the past twenty years since Martin O’Neill stepped through the door on a balmy summer’s day in 2000 as Celtic have secured 14 League Championships, 9 Scottish Cups, and 8 League Cups in that time.
31 trophies in 20 seasons……….not bad. Not bad at all.
Added to that there have been 10 Champions League Group appearances, making the last 16 on three separate occasions and of course a 2003 UEFA Cup Final appearance that few will ever forget. I myself was lucky enough to be there.
Success is great. And like every other Celtic fan I’ve been enjoying it. But what frames that enjoyment even more for me is the trials and tribulations that I like many others had to endure as a Celtic fan in the past.
Because it wasn’t always like this.
In fact, it used to be about as far away from this as you could get to support Celtic.
So I’ve decided to pen some articles which remind us of a time, less serene.
Of times when it was rarely exhilarating, often exasperating and sometimes traumatising to support the men in green and white hoops.
For me, it all started 30 years ago in May.
The 12th of May 1990 to be exact.
Scottish Cup finals took place earlier back then. On a gloriously sunny day, Celtic ran out at Hampden Park before over 60,000 against the same team we’ve met and hammered on many occasions since, Aberdeen.
Back then the Dons, as indeed they were once again up until recently, were the second-best team in the country. Unlike recently they had a team full of stars.
In goal, they had the then recently capped Dutch internationalist keeper Theo Snelders and outfield they had an array of established Scottish internationalists ranging from Stewart McKimmie, Alex McLeish, Jim Bett, Brian Irvine, Bobby Connor and one of our own former idols Charlie Nicholas.
Between them, they had amassed 176 caps for Scotland.
And up beside Nicholas was Hans Gillhaus who played nine times for Holland at the same time that Gullit and Van Basten were in the Dutch national team.
Needless to say, he was pretty good.
I mean a forward line of Nicholas and Gillhaus. Aberdeen fans can only fantasise about having quality like that upfront now.
Indeed they can only fantasise about the £1 million + in transfer fees they paid in total to buy those two back then.
As for Celtic, our line-up wasn’t too shabby either.
Certainly not our strongest but also far from our poorest.
No, that would be achieved only a few short years later.
The 1990 line-up for Celtic included Packie Bonner who would go on to star in that summer’s Italia ’90 World Cup for the Republic of Ireland, two Polish internationalists in Dariusz Wdowczyk and Dariusz Dziekanowski aka ‘Shuggie & Jackie’ who amassed 114 caps between them for their country as well as ex Aberdeen stars Billy Stark and Joe Miller (our then record signing), the legendary Anton Rogan and of course the ever-present maestro Paul McStay.
It also included one of my favourite ever Celtic players in Paul Elliot.
Elliot was a terrific player. Commanding, dominant and dangerous in the air at both ends, cool on the ball and an excellent tackler. The tragedy is that he never played in a better Celtic side. One that was worthy of his abilities.
Anyway, it was all set up to be a classic encounter.
Whilst Rangers had just secured their second consecutive league title, Aberdeen had already claimed the League Cup via beating the men from Govan the previous October by two goals to one in extra time. We’d fallen to the Dons 1-0 in the League Cup semi-final and they’d also finished runners-up in the league albeit a distant second.
Celtic, on the other hand, were attempting to apply a pretty large band-aid to what had been an absolutely shambolic season.
We had finished fifth from ten and only four points ahead of second-bottom St.Mirren in an awful league campaign.
Indeed we were only above seventh-placed Hibernian on goal difference.
This might sound like we were in serious relegation trouble but we did sit quite comfortably 10 points above relegated Dundee back when there only was one relegation place, no playoffs and there were only two points for a win.
But the fact I’m even mentioning relegation tells you just how awful the whole season was.
There were only really two highlights that occurred during that term; the incredible 5-4 Cup Winners Cup second leg win over Partizan Belgrade which still led to our elimination on the away goals rule and an always satisfying 1-0 win over Rangers at Celtic Park in the Scottish Cup fourth round, which had been our solitary Old Firm victory of that campaign.
Believe it or not Celtic only scored 37 league goals over the whole league season encompassing 36 matches.
That was joint sixth from ten in the goalscoring charts. Shocking.
Safe to say the brand of football deployed that year most definitely had not been the Glasgow Celtic way.
But that day at Hampden really was a beautiful one, and Celtic were attempting to win their third consecutive Scottish Cup.
I sat with my father in the old ramshackle main stand.
It was my first experience of the legendary Hampden and to be honest, the place was quite underwhelming. Indeed it made Celtic Park look like the San Siro at the time. The old press box looked like it was literally sliding off of the roof of the main stand and it quite possibly was.
The toilets were generally so bad that most folks elected to use the walls outside them instead.
A far less traumatic experience.
But all that mattered little as I took my seat with the huge magazine-style match-day programme and a barely edible pie.
Alas, the game was dire. A turgid and uneventful 120 mins of goalless football which took us to penalties for the first time in Scottish Cup final history.
The shoot-out proved to be far more eventful than the game.
Indeed it was the very drama of the penalty decider which finally turned me as an 8-year-old kid on to football.
My father had been taking me to Celtic Park for years but I had by and large shown little interest. I have vague memories of the centenary season and the title-winning trophy being lifted in 1988.
But it all changed that day in May two years later and very acutely when the penalty shoot-out commenced.
Something just clicked.
A sudden awareness of how much this all meant to everyone and for the first time………to me.
All the sights, sounds and smells suddenly became very real and even more important.
Everyone held their breath as kick after kick was taken from the penalty spot.
Charlie Nicholas, who would go on to rejoin us that summer converted his coolly which was like a dagger into the heart for many even if he did refuse to celebrate and the shootout entered sudden death which was another first for Scottish football.
There we collapsed.
‘Shuggie’ had already blasted his into orbit during the initial five but it was Anton Rogan, pretty much a serial villain amongst Celtic fans at that time due to his generally poor performances, who had his kick saved by Snelders. Brian Irvine then stepped up to dispatch for Aberdeen and the Dons triumphed 9-8.
The drama really was incredible.
Unforgettable for me at least as you can probably tell by me taking the time to write about it three decades later.
As we exited the stadium the air was full of animosity. Most of it was directed at Mr Rogan.
Some also at Packie Bonner.
Packie you see had decided to stick rigidly to the tactic of diving only to his right for pretty much every Aberdeen penalty clearly playing the law of averages game. Aberdeen concocted a quite brilliant plan where they would place all of their penalties to Packie’s left.
It worked a charm.
Rogan’s penalty wasn’t actually that bad. About as close to the post as you can get.
Theo Snelders decided to go left probably after noticing how much his opposite number had been avoiding it and it came up trumps. If only Packie had thought of trying it first.
For Anton, his place as the poster boy for Celtic fans’ frustrations had been confirmed. He never really did recover.
As for Celtic, this would be their last Scottish Cup final for five years and pretty much heralded the beginning of the dark times though in truth they really began the moment the whistle blew on the previous year’s cup final win over Rangers.
Well, the previous two seasons really had on the whole been rank rotten it’s just that the Scottish Cup final runs had papered over the widening cracks.
The defeat also confirmed that for the first time since 1962 Celtic would not be playing in a European football competition the following season. This was, of course, the era of the now defunct Cup Winners Cup which took precedence over the UEFA Cup which Aberdeen had already qualified for via their league placing. Therefore UEFA Cup participation went to fourth-placed Dundee Utd who’d finished a mere one point above us.
One bloody point. A bad day all around.
For me, though it was the beginning of a lifetime obsession.
In fairness, the general national excitement of the time about the forthcoming Italia ’90 World Cup tournament helped too, and from that day forth my attention was 100% on the full 90 mins of every game and more importantly all things Celtic.
Little did I know of course that the next five years would be some of the lowest times in the club’s history.
But that my friends is another story…………
....Always A Tim! 