It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. The other night we published an article by Brendan McKenna (Breandán Mac Cionnath) about what it was like supporting Celtic in an era before most of us were born and when referring to the Celtic End – where the young team preferred, it was similar to the North Curve today – we mistakenly used a photograph of the Rangers End at Celtic Park rather than one of the Celtic End which was being discussed in that fascinating article.

READ THIS…The old Celtic End attracted a younger demographic and was generally much more volatile

I think the error was because I’d only ever seen the Rangers end in the old Celtic park with a roof on it. Anyway the error was sorted out in the comments and that opened up some additional information that is well worth sharing.

‘I’m pretty sure that the picture of the stadium is actually the East terracing, the old Rangers’ end, as the Celtic end was covered by the early sixties. Also, you can clearly see the old half time scoreboard which I remember as being situated at the back of the East terracing. Half time scores were conveyed using the alphabet as a code for the games – you had to buy a programme to find out which teams were playing under which letter of the alphabet,” Paul Aurige stated.

And Mike Maher added this:

Yes – that photo is actually of the “Rangers End”. The photo was taken in the 1960/61 season – the season I started going to games. By that time the Celtic End already had a cover. As Brendan says the Celtic End was in 1960’s the place for the more volatile and passionate fans.

It would be a few years yet before the Jungle took that mantle (the Gordon Strachan incident was a few decades away). When I was taken to games as a youngster it was either the wee enclosure in front of the main stand or mostly the Rangers End.

One of my earliest memories is of standing in the Rangers End on a sunny day and hearing “Hail Glorious St Patrick” coming from the Celtic End at the opposite side of the ground.

Apart from the Rangers games there was no segregation in those days so as a youngster I was always aware of visiting fans aroud us at times. Partick Thistle, Hearts and Dundee are the teams I recall as bringing a reasonble support.

On one occasion I spent the game in the company of some visiting Aberdeen fans. In those days Aberdeen was still considered a reasonable journey and I was intrigued by their stories of having to travel relatively long distances for every away game when we had so many away games that were only a few miles further than an home game.

When I started going to games with friends as opposed to being taken by adults we occasionally went into the Jungle – especially if it was raining but that was not considered as a particularly exciting location in those days- certainly no singing.

My first occasion in the Celtic End was a visit from Morton in 1964. Morton had taken the old Second Division by storm the previous season and been getting 10,000 crowds at Cappielow. They had got off to a good start in the top divison and were above Celtic in the league table. They would bring a good support to Celtic Park.

It was my mate Peter who suggested we go to the Celtic End that night. He had heard stories of these wild men from the shipyards who came to games armed with rivets and knives! So to the Celtic End we went and there we stayed for what would be the most glorious decade of Celtic’s history.

As Brendan indicated there could be friction on occasion among the inhabitants of the Celtic End. A large group of us used to stand in the middle of the Celtic End. That was also a spot for the Shamrock team. One day, for some unknown reason, one of them took a dislike to the way one of our guys had said something so he banged a bottle over his head.

The crowd parted, the police and ambulance men arrived. The culprit and his mates had fled the scene and our mate was carted away for treatment. Forunately the damage was minimal and he caught up with us at the end of the game.

(In those days we used to play a corner sweepstake game. Before kick off about 7 or 8 of us would chip in a few bob and then agree on an order for the kitty to be passed around each time there was a corner. Whoever was holding the kitty at the final whistle kept the money. On this day the guy holding the kitty at the time was the one who was bottled. In his absence we continued the corner count and then got the money off him at the end of the game!)

After that game we still stayed at the Celtic End but moved along to the next entrance way to avoid any further possible contact with the Shamrock. I was getting a bit older by the the time the Jungle was becoming the place for the “Choir” and being a traditionalist I did not fancy moving so generally stayed at the Celtic End until I developed a liking for a bit more comfort and ended up becoming a “standite” despite my scorn for that part of the support in my younger days – but that is another story!

Incidentally David Potter’s new book, Willie Fernie – Putting on The Style will be out shortly on Celtic Star Books and you can pre-order below…