TONIGHT the eyes of UEFA, the Celtic Director’s Box and indeed the wider Celtic support will be on the Standing section in the North Curve area at Paradise to see if there are any flares or pyros that will inevitably lead to another charge from the game’s governing body.
Hopefully that doesn’t happen and the visiting supporters from Rome can behave themselves as well. Certainly Lazio are very close to a complete closure of their ground if their fans continue to act in their disgusting racist manner and for Celtic, a partial closure of the standing section, either imposed by UEFA or decided on by the club itself, is clearly on the cards if there are pyros at tonight’s party.
Here Celtic historian David Potter has a look back at some of the more regrettable incidents involving our support over the decades and surely today’s generations of Hoops fans seem to be better behaved than their forefathers who are mentioned below, but still, bin the flares tonight Bhoys…please!
It is probably true to say that Celtic’s fans are better than most. This is not to say that wearing a green and white scarf automatically qualifies one for sainthood or canonisation, for the occasional nana still lets us down, but it is often recognised as one of Jock Stein’s achievements that he managed to rid the support of the worst element.
Certainly, the struggle is still ongoing, but most of the Celtic support’s really bad days are in the distant past, with a great deal of nastiness happening in the early 1960s when a combination of poor results and the gradual breakdown of repression in organisations like schools and churches began to have its effect on those of our support whom evolution had not really got to. Here is a top 10 of days (in no particular order) when some of our support would have had embarrassing interviews with policemen, judges, mothers and priests in the days that followed.
31 March 1962 – a break-in from the Copland Road end at Ibrox when Celtic were losing 0-3 to St.Mirren in the Scottish Cup semi-final managed to get the game stopped. Ten minutes remained and Celtic’s Directors ceded the tie, but the crowd were cleared and the remaining ten minutes were played during which time Alec Byrne pulled a goal back for Celtic.
25 March 1905 – Jimmy Quinn was sent off (unjustly, as it turned out) with Celtic losing 0-2 to Rangers at Celtic Park in the Scottish Cup semi-final. The crowd invaded the park, threatening damage to the Rangers players and in particular the referee Mr Robertson of Queen’s Park. Celtic ceded the tie.
26 April 1920 – There was only a small crowd present at Celtic Park this Holiday Monday and the visitors were Dundee, one of the better teams in Scotland at the time. The trouble was that they had lost heavily to Rangers on the Saturday, and it was widely believed in Celtic circles that they hadn’t been trying too hard, a perception helped by The Dundee Courier whose reporter was puzzled by the apparent lack of commitment by some players.
This game was fizzling out to a 1-1 draw, but some tackles were none too gentle and one on Adam McLean was the catalyst for a pitch invasion, as the players scampered for the pavilion. The game was never finished, and Celtic Park was closed for the first few games of the new season.
2 May 1999 – During a Celtic v Rangers game which eventually won Rangers the Scottish League, referee Hugh Dallas, who had sent off Stephane Mahe and made a few other decisions which were not to the liking of the Celtic fans, was struck by a missile and play was halted until such time as the blood coming from his head was staunched. Dallas would probably have been entitled to abandon the game, but he continued and his first action after the restart was to award a penalty kick to Rangers! Say what you want about the man, he was no coward! Celtic were fined heavily for this piece of nonsense.
19 April 1966 – The disallowing of a perfectly legitimate Bobby Lennox goal led to a shower of bottles, cans and missiles from the Celtic end of Anfield in the European Cup Winners Cup semi-final against Liverpool. The violence was universally condemned, but in mitigation it has to be said that it was a dreadful refereeing error, which cost Celtic the tie.
30 August 1961 – Celtic’s exit from the Scottish League Cup after a dreadful performance at Muirton Park, Perth was accompanied by a horrendous trail of damage all the way back to the railway station with house, car and shop windows being smashed, innocent bystanders intimidated and the railway station itself becoming a scene of havoc. The Fair City of Perth (no-one’s idea of a cauldron of footballing hatred) had never had this treatment before and Bob Kelly, Celtic’s Chairman had to apologise.
4 November 1961 – Celtic’s players had played in a good game against Dundee (a fine team with Ure and Gilzean on board who would win the Scottish League that season) and had lost narrowly 1-2, when it was generally agreed that a draw would have been a fairer result. This did not excuse the sheer thuggery that went on in Dundee City Centre that night where some public houses had to close, cars were ransacked and even in some cases, damage done on the Riverside to buses parked and waiting to take Celtic supporters home!
12 December 1984 – Rapid Vienna had lied and cheated their way to a third game to be played at neutral Old Trafford in the European Cup Winners Cup. There is absolutely no doubt about that, but that does not excuse the physical attacks on several Vienna players that night by fans whose justifiable feelings of outrage had run out of control. Celtic had to play their next European home tie behind closed doors.
7 August 1965 – Celtic beat Sunderland 5-0 in a pre-season “friendly”. Sunderland were managed by ex-Rangers player Ian McColl who had just signed Jim Baxter from Rangers. There was thus an extra edge to the proceedings. The team played superbly and the behaviour in the Roker Park ground was not all that bad apart from the throwing of an orange (!) at Jim Baxter and one or two unpleasant chants.
It was what happened subsequently that disgraced the club and led Jock Stein in the first ever edition of The Celtic View to launch his attack on thuggery and violence. Some of the “Mackems” of Sunderland were up for a fight as well, and duly got one, or rather a series of fights in various parts of the city and in bus parks and railway stations. Some less than totally intelligent Newcastle United fans gave willing support to Celtic as well.
6 September 1941 – With Great Britain struggling for survival and her only ally (the unlikely one of the Soviet Union) fighting for its own existence against the might of Nazi Germany, one might have thought that violence at football matches might have gone into temporary abeyance.
But at Ibrox as Rangers beat Celtic 3-0, Celtic fans, seeing a deliberate plot to crock or maim Jimmy Delaney who had just returned after two years out with a broken arm, turned nasty. Delaney had been badly fouled in the box and a penalty had rightly been awarded. Delaney was behind the goal being treated when the penalty was taken. Frank Murphy took it, the ball was parried brilliantly by Jerry Dawson but then as Murphy ran in to hit the rebound, he was felled by a Rangers defender and no penalty awarded or other action taken.
A hail of bottles was the result, and further trouble ensued when Delaney and Crum were both carried off injured. As a result, Celtic Park was closed until mid-October.
