Well that was a chaotic afternoon yesterday at Snake Mountain, but in any cup game there is only one target, and that is to be in the next game, and we succeeded in attaining that target. The chaos started with the police operation and plan to get the Celtic Supporters into the stadium, which was once again a shambles, they used the same plan they used to get 700 supporters in, so why did the use the same plan to get more than ten times that number in? the police decided to park the Celtic buses on Broomloan Road, which didn’t have enough space, why didn’t they park our buses on Helen Street, that’s where we parked for years, it seemed to work then, so why change it? Then we got to the turnstiles it was more chaos, just a big crowd with women and children trying to cram into a narrow space, why didn’t they filter the crowd into a single line. We used to meet with the police before every Glasgow Derby, we could then try to advise them on the many problems they would encounter, but those meetings haven’t happened for a few years now, maybe that’s why we had the problems yesterday, and the Kettling of the Celtic Supporters outside our club on London Road last season.
As for the football yesterday, it was a shock to hear that Callum Mc Gregor wouldn’t start the game, and he was joined on the side-lines by Kieran Tierney, KT missing out after the tackle on him on Wednesday night in Aberdeen wasn’t a shock, the shock was when Nick Walsh didn’t think it was a tackle worthy of a red card. It wasn’t a classic display from Celtic, but it was a brilliant defensive display by our back five, Auston Trusty was immense at the heart of the defensive line, he was ably backed up by Ben Arthur, Liam Scales, and our little Mexican warrior Julian Araujo. Viljami Sinisalo was outstanding in goal, and that gave us confidence when going to a penalty shootout. The penalty shootout was a triumph for us, four brilliant penalty kicks from us, the Auston Trusty was probably the pick of the bunch, but credit to Big Tam for slotting away the winning penalty, that takes confidence and bottle.
The aftermath of the game was another shamble for those in charge of the Newco, a lot of the blame for that lies firmly with those in command at the Bigotdome, and those who were previously in command as well. These clowns have let the Onion Bears do what they wanted with impunity for many years now, and they did the same yesterday, this crowd of morons were allowed to run over 100 yards towards the Celtic Support, fire pyrotechnics into our support which included women and children, without being challenged, they also attacked the Celtic Staff, and when our players are leaving the field of play, they had to run the gauntlet of hate to get up the tunnel to safety, why was the tunnel not extended to protect of players and staff? But of course they will blame the Celtic supporters who went on to the park for starting it, but while I’m not defending going on the park, they went on to celebrate with our own players, for no other reason.
There will be a lot of talk over the next few days, from the Police and the media, and I’m pretty sure the Scottish Government will once again want to get involved. The people most effected by the events probably won’t be consulted, and that is the Celtic Support, but I have a meeting this morning at Celtic Park, and the first item on the agenda will be the chaos both before and after yesterday’s game, and exactly who was responsible for the organisation of the match.
So it was said a couple of weeks ago that Celtic were heading into a four game sequence away from home which would define our season, and most people outside of Celtic Park were predicting we would lose all four, well Newsflash, we won three and drew the other one, which puts us on course to still win the double, that would be a brilliant achievement after the setbacks we have had, mostly through injury to our senior players. So we look forward to our semi-final against St Mirren, we certainly owe them one, and this time it won’t be Wilfried Nancy in our dugout.
Glasgow’s definitely still Green & White.
