Great result at Easter Road. Beaton is the one to watch on Monday.

[Joe O'Rourke]

Wednesday night at Easter Road was a very good experience, in the football side of it anyway. I think Hibernian FC need to update their match day operation for the visit of Celtic FC, there has been many complaints coming with regards to how their stewards handled the ingress of the Celtic Supporters, and I’m sure John Paul Taylor will be following the complaints up through the proper channels at Celtic and Hibernian.

Back to the football, it was a pretty shaky start by Celtic, the first 15/20 minutes seemed a bit edgy, but once the first goal went in we completely dominated the match, in fact the last 20 minutes was like shooting practice. I went through to Edinburgh on a terrible night with a little bit of concern, it has been a pretty difficult venue for us over the last few seasons, but Wednesday night was as good a display as I’ve ever seen there, once we weathered the early storm it was a stroll in the park for us.

There could have been a reaction to our players being away at the World Cup, but certainly Aaron Mooy and Daizen Meada didn’t show any reaction, and Cameron Carter-Vickers was as strong as he always is. The highlight of the match was certainly Daizen’s goal, a brilliant run and strike, we would love to see more of that in games, and Aaron Mooy scoring his first goals for the club was great to see as well, he took his penalty very well indeed.

Once again VAR was not what we were hoping for, then again, I said from the start it would only work with honest officials operating the system, and there is a distinct lack of those type of officials in the SPL. There were a couple of instances where it didn’t seem to work, the first one that was missed was the tackle on Carl Starfelt by Kevin Nisbet, which should surely have been a card, and checking for the handball at our penalty, when it was very clear that it was. And maybe worst of all is the time it takes to review an incident. All in all I would say it has failed so far, will it get better? I sincerely doubt it, do the people involved want it to improve? I think they will believe it has served their purpose so far.

Following on from that, Crawford Allan sinks the boot in further by appointing John Beaton as the match official for Monday’s match at Snake Mountain, that’s their way of telling us that they are in charge, and we have to suck it up. Of course Big Jock had the answer to their cheating most of the time, be better than them, and score that many that they can’t chop them all off. So, if we turn up and play to our capabilities (if we’re allowed to) I’m quite confident we will come away with a result.
Finally, I hope you all had a Hoopy Birthday, and I wish you all a Champion New Year.
Glasgow’s Green & White, we never Stop !!!!