Sandman’s Definitive Ratings – ‘The Scattering Of The Flocks’ as Prestwick Pele ‘Finally Tucks it Away’

SANDMAN’S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC v SCABBY WEANS…

“Better meddle with the deil than the bairns of Falkirk.” -Genghis Khan.

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty; theRangers, for example.”  Mother Theresa

BANE – 5/10 – “The shadows betray you because they belong to me!” he yelled, bored, into the frigid evening air, completely confusing Cliff Richard. Then proceeded to have even fewer touches than a crack whore allows Alfie for 1000 Escobar Dollarez.

JONJO O’NEILL – 6/10 – It’s the Grand National next week so his fine-tuning began. Seemed to be over his shell-shocked aberrations against theRangers Reprobates. Put in another display of professional competence. But will it be good enough to warrant a hefty wedge for him and Everton alike? The jury muses.

Photo: Jane Barlow

DREXL – 7/10 – Fine, focussed game. No pasaran, and enthusiastic, incessant forward drive, causing multiple problems down their flank. You’d think Falkirk had stolen his stash. Knowing the town, not entirely unlikely…

AJER – 7/10 – Got fed up with the defensive thingmy and turned into a roving midfielder. Norway manager, Dr.Evil, thinks he should be roving around other environs. Maybe so, but perhaps the first miracle we’ll be looking for in a new boss is to retain this powerful northern force. Dazzling Kristiano resurfaced for some exhiblarating wing play,
and his overall chanelling of ancestral pillaging bludgeoned their lines open time and again. Berserker material, this bhoy.

RAQUEL – 6/10 – Del Bhoy’s favourite babe eased through the match quietly confident and beguiled gigantor Broony impressario, Connor Salmon, with her youthful charms.

BROON – 7.5/10 – Captain. Leader. Legend. Sheep-shagga… Eh, soon…The Broon to Winterfell announcement has become known up there as ‘The Scattering Of The Flocks’. All week they’ve been combing the countryside catching alarmed runaways, and the emergency call went out yesterday for Babe The Pig to help find Shay Logan.

The Sheep will have been frothing watching him boss it last night. Striding the midfield like a collossus, keeping the pressure up. Denied a sweet nightcap by the save of the game. The trophy will be his. 24 is coming.

Photo: Jane Barlow

CORPUS CHRISTIE – 5.5/10 – Rough day yesterday, so surprising to see him make the starting line-up. Shooting like he was wearing a shroud over his heid, and numerous flurries of erratic touches had me asking where Judas was when you needed him. Then, finally, the stone rolled and he found a gap for a neat strike; Game over, and he can look forward to seeing his Dad again tomorrow, the wee resurrection…

Photo: Jane Barlow

JAMESY – 8/10 MOTM – The Flash is back! Was there extra zest around Jamesy’s presence? Added a bit of a buzz around the place, as The Maestro observed. Though he started wide right, it looked like Jamesy hasd been
given licence to cause havoc; “Roam about like you’re in a Prestwick Pub and shake them up…” seemed the remit.

So he did. But the Falkirk players stuck to instructions not to look into their empty glasses and remained stoically unshaken. Then Jamesy finally tucks it away.

And after that he scored a deserved goal. Boom-flaming-boom. We’ve missed ya, Prestwick Pele.

EDDIE TURNBULL – 6.5/10 – Last time he played against Falkirk was during the Easter uprising. Cruised around tonight showing his arsenal of talent, but just lacked the killshot. Faded after the break, but more lengthy affect on games may come with time; Progressing into the kind of diamond spearhead Celtic need.

Photo: Jane Barlow

ROGIC – 6.5/10 – Quietly lost among the other hundred midfielders for a while, Oz’s talent came to the fore as the industrious Falkirk rearguard tired; we got some lovely echoes of the past as those magic feet danced, and almost capped some rousing guile with glory. Half-a-dozen more games to see one last hurrah from another legend.

GRIFF – 3/10 – Comical connectivity issues resembling a Guatemalan internet hub every time an opportunity presented itself. He found position but awareness arrived too late for successful eye-to-bit co-ordination. April in the lost TEN season, and he’s still not sharp enough to bag some against league one opposition. Sigh…

Still, there was always the comedy value in Griff swiping at the ball like a jakey swinging a punch at a unicorn.

SUBS:

Photo: Jane Barlow

THE YETI – N/A – You’d think wandering around the Himalayas would be a lonelier experience than playing striker for Celtic. Not so… Pretty unlucky with a run and strike across the keeper; his season in a nutshell.

MAN OF – N/A – Go on, and learn to be gallus from Broon. Surely he will. And surely he will be the replacement?

Photo: Jane Barlow

ELSHAGYONLASSIE – 6.5/10 – Dink! How divine that goal, on a weekend all about divinity. And chocolate eggs. And chickens. And rabbits. And, in presumably sometime ancient, acid…

JFK – 6/10 – Copy and paste Lennony’s team sheet from Easter last year? New plan for defeating humble opposition – 300 midfielders and lone striker. A selection that elicited from French Eddy, ‘Le Foutre?’. And by half
time, mostly everyone else was suffering like Christ on the cross.

But the Easter Bunny JFK pulled out the hat was Jamesy and ‘Le Foutre?’ became Le Difference – the dynamism of The Flash eventually turned Falkirk’s Easter Jolly into a Watership Down bunny slaughter and JFK escaped with his unbeaten record intact but his methods still questionable.

OVERALL – 7/10 – Last time I was in Falkirk, someone threw a brick at my head that he’d torn from his own Brockville merde-hole. He missed. Or maybe he didn’t, considering some of the insanity you’ve had to read over the years. If I recall, we lost that day, one of the most depressing of the early nineties. Dicing with mortal injury on the way out of their sacrificial Thunderdome just gilded the jaggy nettle.

So whenever we throttle ‘The Bairns’ I’m hoping the 90s shot-putter spends a frustrated evening tearing bricks out the walls of his outside lavvy; the proverbial brick waste-house, probably a scale model of Brockville ‘stadium’ come to think of it.

Now that the legendary Broon will depart, my ambivalence to this season’s Scottish Cup has fortified into a burning desire to see Broon go out in glory, lifting the cup after a May Final destruction of the pandemic-immune-FOD-Sporting Wing.

So last night was an irritation on the path to the end of an era. Fortunately, Falkirk offered little threat and we went at it with the requisite amount of verve and tempo to pin them in and eventually break them down. I’m sure the whispered horror, ‘Ross Coonty…’ flitted across the lips of many after Griff failed to open the second-half with a killer strike.

But, thankfully, there were others fit enough and on hand to apply the final flourishes the general effort and play deserved. A comfortable win to deflate watching hordes, and severely disappoint big bull-dyke Emma Dodds, who somehow gets the Premier  Sports gig on top of her theRangers TV (that’s ‘television’, not ‘transvestite’,
mean-spirited readers…) chairpersonship. Still wid, however.

So into the hat we go, and to Easter Sunday evening, which will bring the novelty of cheering on a Rangers win. Howe’s that for a conundrum, Eddie?

Go Away Now

Sandman

READ THIS…Howe David Turnbull Caught Eddie’s Eye in Celtic’s Scottish Cup win over Falkirk

About Author

The Celtic Star founder and editor, who has edited numerous Celtic books over the past decade or so including several from Lisbon Lions, Willie Wallace, Tommy Gemmell and Jim Craig. Earliest Celtic memories include a win over East Fife at Celtic Park and the 4-1 League Cup loss to Partick Thistle as a 6 year old. Best game? Easy 4-2, 1979 when Ten Men Won the League. Email editor@thecelticstar.co.uk

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