The weekend before playing St Mirren at Love Street 40 years ago today, Celtic had taken part in a mini-tournament to play an exhibition match in Hong Kong against local side Hong Kong Rangers. Celtic were rewarded for playing this friendly, picking up a cheque for £20,000 although Billy McNeill had offered to return half the fee if his side didn’t win the match!
Cesar didn’t need to worry about that as Celtic ran out convincing 5-0 winners with Tommy Burns scoring twice and Roy Aitken, Frank McGarvey and Tom McAdam all getting on the scoresheet.
And former Celt Jimmy Bone was playing for Hong Kong Rangers against his old club.
Cesar, judging by his starting line-up, was clearly taking no chances about that £10k gamble. He named Bonner, McGrain, Reid, Moyes, McAdam, MacLeod, Sullivan, Aitken, McGarvey, McCluskey and Burns as his Celtic team.
According to Celtic Wiki 28,000 tickets were sold for this game but due to bad weather only a fraction of that number bothered to show up. The official attendance of 5319 was due to an atrocious period of heavy rain.
The game was actually fortunate to take place and finish at all. Had it been a competitive match it may well have been postponed.
Listen to this, it’s brilliant. Just been recorded over the past few weeks, a 1970s Celtic fans classic song…
