Dunfermline, the week before we stopped their Ten: “We walked back to our buses and the journey back home was like a wake”

Jim O’Rourke tells the story of how the Sons of Donegal CSC managed to get enough tickets to fill two buses for the Dunfermline v Celtic match in 1998. We featured some stunning photographs from Jim Greenan earlier today taken at this game where a victory would have seen Celtic win the league and would have ended the Rangers pursuit of Ten-in-a-Row. It didn’t quite happen for Celtic that sunny Sunday afternoon at Dunfermline but the party was only postponed until the following weekend when Celtic made no mistake in beating St Johnstone to stop the Ten…

READ THIS…East End Park, Dunfermline – The week before Celtic stopped their Ten

I was a member of the the Sons of Donegal bus and the week before the Dunfermline game we had heard through some Bhoys from Fife they were holding a public sale of home tickets.

So on the Saturday morning around 15 of us drove through and when we got to the ground around 9am there was hardly any one there so were were able to snap up around 60 tickets between us as we knew that our allocation wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the demands of everyone wanting to see us win the league and more importantly stopping them getting ten.

The day of the game we were in our base which at the time was the Claddagh club in Govanhill and we had the brilliant Blarney Pilgrims playing before we left and because of our foresight of obtaining the home tickets we managed to run 2 buses to the game.

When we got to the ground it was like a home game and we took our position on terracing behind the goals. It was great to see so many other Celtic supporters in the home end with us but to be fair most Dunfermline fans we spoke to wanted us to win it.

The game itself was like most games that season we had most of the possession and was no surprise when Simon Donnelly scored but probably due to nerves our finishing wasn’t what it should have been that day. The second goal never came and all we wanted to hear was the final whistle but sadly out of nothing they scored and it was a sickening feeling and when the game ended we walked back to our buses and the journey back home was like a wake.

The 90s had brought so much pain to Celtic fans that even the more upbeat amongst us struggled to raise the spirits but the following week made up for almost a decade of misery when Henrik then Harold scored v St Johnstone it was party time for Celts all over the world.

Jim O’Rourke

Celtic clinching the title in 1998, I'm guessing a few of you were on the pitch that day? A guy in the pub that night brought out a sod of grass from Celtic park & actually ate some of the grass 🙂 Mild hysteria that weekend pic.twitter.com/Ss1aI7xR20

— Lisbon Lion (@tirnaog_09) March 31, 2021

Wim Jansen carried high by the Celtic players after clinching the title, it turned out to be Wim’s last match in charge but we are grateful for his time here and he’s guaranteed legendary status at Celtic park pic.twitter.com/THL8SM9vwO

— JustAnOrdinaryBhoy (@ordinarybhoy) March 31, 2021