Rapid Vienna have confirmed full details relating to their friendly with Celtic next month, via the Austrian club’s official website.
Celtic will be the visitors to the Allianz Stadium on 9 July with the friendly match kicking-off at 6pm local time – that’s 5pm Celtic Park Time. For those planning on attending some of the pre-season matches in the continent this one will cost you between €12 and €18.99 for a ticket, with presumably no problems on getting tickets.
Celtic now have one more pre-season match to be confirmed with games already announced against Banik Ostrava, Legia Warsaw, Norwich, Blackburn Rovers and now Rapid Vienna. The one outstanding date is 6 July and we’ll no doubt be hearing about any details as they are confirmed.
The doors open at Lennoxtown tomorrow as pre-season training gets underway for the players who were not involved in international duty this month.
To Celtic supporters of a certain vintage Rapid Vienna are a regarded with justifiable distain and dislike for the way they cheated Celtic out of a chance to reach a European final back in 1984. Celtic lost the first leg 3-1 in Vienna but in a brilliant performance at Celtic Park the Austrians were sent packing or so we thought. Celtic won the match 3-0 but a half bottle of Voka was thrown from the Jungle, onto the pitch. It didn’t make contact with anyone but the cheat reacted as if he’d been hit by a sniper’s bullet and got stretched off.
UEFA unbelievably ordered a repay at least 100 miles away from Celtic Park so we all headed down to Manchester to play them at Old Trafford – a real dump back in 1984 – and that night it had the most hostile of atmospheres ever witnessed from the Celtic support.
They won that game 1-0, some retribution was had and they went on to reach the final where thankfully Everton cuffed them 4-1. But the fall-out from the night at Old Trafford and the game at Celtic Park didn’t stop there. Celtic were told to play our first home game the next season behind closed doors.
Atletico Madrid were the visitors – another old enemy of Celtic’s – and after a draw in Spain we lost the second leg with no Celtic supporters in the ground.
Many supporters in the 1980s reckoned that this incidents were the beginning of the decline in Celtic’s fortunes for and noted that Aberdeen had won the Cup Winners Cup the previous year and Dundee United reached the UEFA Cup final – that season was Celtic’s chance in the early 1980s to get to a final and we were cheated out of it by Rapid Vienna, possible corruption at UEFA and the weakness of the old Celtic Board who should never have accepted the decision to replay that game.
Someone in our support threw that bottle. Must have been ashamed at the damage that action caused.
Jim Craig, writing on The Celtic Star told the story of those three games against Rail Vienna in 984.
“The first leg of the Cup Winners’ Cup 2nd round tie between Rapid Vienna and Celtic – held in the Austrian capital – resulted in a fine 3-1 victory for Rapid, with Brian McClair getting the Hoops’ only goal.
“Two weeks later came the return at Celtic Park, which attracted a crowd of 48,613. It started brightly enough as a contest but soon descended into a shambles, with one Rapid player sent off, another leaving the field with his head swathed in bandages and the whole Austrian team, plus those on the touchlines, complaining about decisions made by the referee.
“Celtic won 3-0, ostensibly taking the tie 4-3 on aggregate but Rapid took their case to the ultimate authority and UEFA ordered that the game be replayed at a ground more than 100 miles from Celtic Park.
“Old Trafford was the chosen venue and the two sides ran out at Manchester on this day in 1984 for the deciding tie. It was a very emotional occasion and the Celtic players could not find the form they had previously shown.
“Rapid left-winger Pacult broke away in the 17th minute to slam the ball past Pat Bonner and that proved to be the only goal of the game. Even more disastrously for Celtic, a ‘supposed’ fan raced on to the pitch to attack the goal-scorer, an incident which once again brought the club to the attention of UEFA.”
If you were at any of these games against Rapid Vienna in 1984 we’d love to hear from you. Please post your recollections of any of these three games below or email editor@thecelticstar.co.uk and we’ll share for you.
