CELTIC played a ‘home’ SPL match against Aberdeen on this day in 1995 in front of a crowd of just 20,623.
A 2-0 win for the ‘Hoops’ who played for the first time in one of the strangest looking Celtic strips of all time, edged Celtic closer to a UEFA Cup spot just one point behind third placed Hibs who were just behind Motherwell in second place with EBT FC of course the league leaders, 16 points clear, in the season where Celtic played our home games at Hampden as Paradise was being re-developed into the modern 60,000 capacity fortress that it is now.
The Celtic team that day was Bonner, Boyd, McKinlay, O’Neil, Mowbray, Grant, McLaughlin (Collins, 60min), McStay, van Hooijdonk, Falconer and O’Donnell.
It was Pierre Van Hooijdonk who made the difference, scoring both goals to take his total to six in nine games for Celtic, the first from the penalty spot and the second with a strong header.
Roy Aitken was the Aberdeen manager and was clearly struggling in the job, although the problems were not of his making. A decade before they were the top dogs in the Scottish game now they were in a worse state than Celtic and down at the bottom of the league.
Aitken’s side played like a team doomed to face at least a play-off in any attempt to stay in the top division.
The Dons Board even offered the players a £5000-a-man bonus to stay up but that didn’t seem to have any effect whatsoever.
Kevin McCarra, writing in The Times, described the state Celtic were in perfectly.
“The crowd of 20,623 was Celtic’s smallest of the season and that fact is not to be attributed only to live TV coverage.
“In the past, a seat in front of the box in the living room would only have been a consolation prize for those who had failed to obtain tickets. These days, as Celtic become increasingly associated with halting, anxious football, those who do attend have come only to grumble.
“Burns, who yesterday dropped John Collins from the starting line-up, knows how unsatisfactory the entertainment is. By the middle of the first half, as yet another simple pass was miskicked out of play, the jeering had begun.
But better things were to come from the team Tommy Burns was building.
And as Celtic play Aberdeen this weekend at Celtic Park we should remember harder times like these.
This Saturday Celtic will wear the Hoops, will start the game 8 points clear of the new club playing out of Ibrox – the one that bossed the league in 1995 died – and we’ll have 60,000 there.
How times have changed. The Rebels won right enough.
