An education of sorts

 

An education of sorts

When I was a lad, I caused a war in our house by taking the Subbuteo pitch my brothers and I played with and making a Celtic banner out of it. Some broad white tape made a saltire on the green background and a Celtic crest cut from an older flag was stuck onto the centre of the banner. I thought it was pretty good and I took it to a match between Celtic and Aberdeen at Celtic Park on an April night in 1977. Celtic were already champions after clinching the title at Easter Road a few days before and there was a party atmosphere in the stadium. The old place was rocking and Celtic responded with a performance worthy of champions as Aberdeen were swept away 4-1.

I watched from the centre of a noisy, raucous Jungle as Glavin, Dalglish and Conn ripped Aberdeen apart. As a schoolboy it was one of my first forays in there with my mates. Normally I would only go in there with my old man and uncle with us as it did have a reputation as being a rough and occasionally dangerous place to watch football. On that night though, the mood was good, the songs filled the air and it was strangely beautiful to see so many people united behind a common cause. A bunch of us stood by Exit 7 watching the game and I noticed beside us two grey haired old chaps in their bunnets, fags hanging on their lips as if glued there. They were clearly into their 70s, yet they roared and sang along with the rest and I calculated in my mind that they had probably seen McGrory, Thomson, Tully, Stein and the Lions in their time and here they were still roaring their team on.

On any occasion when linesmen gave dubious calls against Celtic some voice or other would boom out from the Jungle and give the poor chap a hard time. I recall one match when the flag went up and a man with a voice like a foghorn shouting, ‘Linesman! I’ll come doon there and shove that flag so far up your arse you’ll be farting oot affside decision for years!’ As the flag went up again moments later, he was at the poor official again, ‘Linesman, don’t think I cannae see that masonic ring ya wee runt!’  This continued for most of the game with each new insult and threat growing in ingenuity and drawing on an extensive vocabulary of Glaswegian swear words and anatomical features. Eventually as the game was nearing its end the poor man raised his flag again and the foghorn boomed out again, ‘Linesman!’ The official braced himself for another verbal onslaught but instead the Jungle denizen roared, ‘Ye got wan right for a change, ya dick!’

As that match with Aberdeen ended all those years ago the supporters refused to leave and chanted ‘Jock Stein’ over and over until the great man returned to the field to take a bow. It was to be the last hurrah at Celtic Park for Stein who would lead the team to Hampden seeking to claim the Scottish Cup to complete the double.

A couple of weeks after that thrilling league win over Aberdeen, I headed to rain drenched Hampden to watch Celtic win the cup. It was a tight, edgy game which was decided by a penalty kick converted by Andy Lynch in the 20^th minute. The game was shown live on TV and the same teams who had attracted 122,714 fans to the final just 4 years earlier played in front of 54,252. Hampden looked tired and shorn of any faded glory it might have possessed around that time. The cinder terraces were awash with mud and most of the spectators were soaked by the relentless Scottish rain. As a kid that doesn’t bother you as it was all about seeing your team, roaring them on and hopefully seeing them winning. In my mind’s eye I can still see Kenny Dalglish raise the cup aloft in the old wooden stand with its quaint press box on the roof, a huge cheer going up from the Celtic faithful.

As we were leaving the stadium, I heard some fans shouting at someone up in that small north stand which was oddly perched above the north enclosure. I could see an old man with a shock of grey hair spitting down onto the Celtic fans below. He was red faced with rage and I found such displays of hatred strangely odd. I was brought up to see other teams as rivals and not enemies. It was an inkling of how deep seated the dislike of all things Celtic was to some in those days. There may be some among the Celtic support who harbour the same malice towards Rangers but as I left Hampden that day, I had my first real inkling that this all went far beyond football for some.

A few moments later as we turned onto Somerville Drive just outside the stadium, I could see that a pitched battle was already in progress as bottles flew and insults were screamed out. The Police were further up the Drive trying to stop Rangers fans charging down and both sets of supporters had enough hot heads in their ranks to make it an ugly scene. My old man guided my brothers and I away from the trouble saying, ‘That’s the difference between us and them; we don’t like them much but they hate us.’ His own life experience was in those words and it went way beyond his experiences at football.

Watching football in those days was an education in not just the arts of the game, but also in social attitudes, staying safe in tricky situations and learning about the culture surrounding Celtic since the club’s inception. Supporters buses were places where the older generation passed on the stories and songs of their youth to the new generation. It was here the older generation passed on their stories and their songs about Celtic. It was here we learned of Tully scoring with two corner kicks, John Thomson’s tragic death and a hundred other episode’s in Celtic’s history. For some youngsters, there would also be an introduction to history or politics and sometimes radical views were aired. You could find yourself discussing James Connolly as much as James McGrory or Jimmy Johnstone. Celtic songs were interspersed with historical Irish ballads and the Croppy Boy was as well known to us as the songs about the Celtic boys we were travelling to cheer on.  

That Subbuteo pitch banner made it to Hampden for that 1977 cup final but was sadly lost on a supporters’ bus the following season and never seen again. Knowing the retribution of my older brothers would be forthcoming, I had to flip the Celtic rug my old man bought in 1967 and carefully drew a pitch on the reverse side with a felt pen. It wasn’t the emerald perfection on the Subbuteo pitch but at least we could still play. That rug is still in the family and the pitch is still there on the reverse side.

I sometimes look at it and smile at the lifetime of memories that have revolved around such items. The old brigade have gone to their rest and I guess folk like me are the old brigade now. What have I learned in all these years?

Well, let me start by telling you about the great gift my old man gave to me on that first day he took me by the hand and led me up Kerrydale Street…