Trending
You are at:»»Celtic On This Day – 31st October – David Potter’s Celtic Diary
Celtic on This Day

Celtic On This Day – 31st October – David Potter’s Celtic Diary

By No Comments

The late, great Celtic Historian David Potter’s Celtic diary highlights key Celtic-related events relevant to each day, today covering 31st October…

SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER 1903

Sam Gilligan

Celtic are the first visitors to the New Hampden Park which is opened today. It is a fine, large, well-appointed stadium and holds comfortably the 60,000 which The Glasgow Herald believes to be present. Sir John Ure-Primrose, the Lord Provost of Glasgow makes a speech and his wife declares the ground open. Sam Gilligan of Celtic takes the centre to start the game, and therefore has the honour of being the first man to kick a ball at Hampden. Sadly for Celtic, however, Queen’s Park win 1-0.

 

SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER 1931

Today is the debut of Canadian Joe Kennaway in the Celtic goal. Joe was brought across the Atlantic to fill the void left by the death of John Thomson and today he plays in a 2-2 draw against the strong going Motherwell at Fir Park. The Scotsman says that he had a good game, but he seemed to find the soft ground rather difficult. Charlie Napier scored two goals for Celtic.

WEDNESDAY 31 OCTOBER 1956

After a decade of striving, Celtic at last win the Scottish League Cup. They do this at a virtually empty Hampden before a meagre crowd of 31,156 on a Wednesday afternoon in a replayed final against Partick Thistle following a terrible first game on the Saturday. All the goals come early in the second half and are scored by Billy McPhail with two and Bobby Collins one, as Celtic run out 3-0 winners. Meanwhile the world awaits with dread the outcome of the Suez Crisis which threatens world war as Israel today presses even further into Egypt.

THURSDAY 31 OCTOBER 2002

Graeme Souness returns to Celtic Park tonight as Manager of Blackburn Rovers in a much awaited UEFA Cup tie. Celtic win 1-0 with a goal from Henrik Larsson, but the English media are full of patronising comments about how good Blackburn played and how they are going to win in two weeks’ time at Ewood Park.

SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER 2009

Kilmarnock have not won at Celtic Park since 1955, and today they are not like doing it either as Celtic beat them 3-0 with goals from Aiden McGeady, Georgios Samaras and the very impressive Niall McGinn. 46,000 are there and enjoy a boost following the depressing exit from the League Cup to Hearts the previous midweek.

David Potter

Matt Corr’s new book Majic, Stan and the King of Japan is out now and Neil Lennon, the Celtic captain that season, has written the foreword for us.

You can get a signed copy of the hardback version direct from Celtic Star Books by clicking on the image below. It’s also available an an e-book via Amazon Kindle and please note that all colour photographs that appear in the beautifully presented printed hardback book are also available in the Kindle version of Majic, Stan and the King of Japan…

Majic, Stan & The King of Japan
More Stories / Latest News
Alexandro Bernabei of Celtic celebrates scoring
Alexandro Bernabei wanted by Sevilla following South American success
Celtic's 6IAR Champions
The remarkable story of Celtic’s six-in-a-row from 1905-10
Moussa Soumano
Celtic monitoring AC Ajaccio winger ahead of summer window opening

About Author

David was a distinguished Celtic author and historian and writer for The Celtic Star. He lived in Kirkcaldy and followed Celtic all my life, having seen them first at Dundee in March 1958. He was a retired teacher and his other interests were cricket, drama and the poetry of Robert Burns. David Potter passed away on 29 July 2023 after a short illness. He was posthumously awarded a Special Recognition award by Celtic FC at the club's Player of the Year awards in May 2024. David's widow Rosemary accepted the award to huge applause from the Celtic Supporters in the Hydro.

Related Posts

Comments are closed.