At this time in 1998, things were happening behind the scenes at Celtic Park.
Fergus McCann was in dispute with the SFA over its failure to deal with sectarianism; Middlesbrough were apparently interested in Tommy Johnson; Tosh McKinlay had gone on loan to Stoke City; and there were rumours that manager Wim Jansen and general manager Jock Brown were not seeing eye to eye.
And in the middle of all these distractions, Aberdeen arrived at Celtic Park for a league match on this day in 1998.
The Celtic team on the day was Gould, Annoni, Rieper, Stubbs, Mahe, McNamara, Burley, Lambert, Wieghorst, Larsson, and Brattbakk; and it got off to a bad start, losing a goal to David Rowson in 8 minutes.
However, after that set-back, the Celtic players got their act together and put constant pressure on the Dons defence, getting goals through Wieghorst (21), Larsson (35) and sub Jackson (82) to finish the match with a 3-1 win.
On this day at Glasgow, in 1928, Billy McPhail was born.
Billy started his senior career with Queen’s Park in 1944, joined Clyde in 1947, did his National Service with the Black Watch from 1947 to 1949, then returned to Clyde before joining Celtic on 5 May 1956.
Over the following two seasons, Billy made 57 appearances for the club, scoring 38 goals but the game that everyone associates with him was the League Cup final of 1957, when Billy notched a hat-trick in the 7-1 thrashing of Rangers.
Billy McPhail died on 4 April 2003 at Glasgow.
Jim Craig
