Another turning point?

I originally submitted this to the Celticquicknews blog run by Paul67 just after we had beaten Hibs at Easter road in one of our best performances of the season to date.

Following Saturday's debacle I suppose that we can either view what happened at Easter road as a false dawn or as a harbinger of what our team, our manager, supported by all of us are still capable of.

I'll take the positive view because to wring our collective hands in anticipation of failure is simply not acceptable nor is it the Celtic way!

Anyway to the post!

"It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment that both my real enjoyment of football returned and our team’s attitude and approach to the game conjured up flickering reflections in my mind’s eye of hooped clad heroes of years now gone.

I suppose it goes back to the depressive aftermath of the poverty stricken, ambitionless, desert of desire that was the 20th February 2005.

Like the surviving pilot emerging from the crashed and burned out mangled wreckage of a once graceful, sleek, supersonic machine of beauty we simply had one objective and that was to get back into the air again in an attempt to recapture however forlornly the exhilaration of soaring amongst the eagles rather than grubbing around in the inelegant company of flightless blue and white clad dodos.

And so it was that Paul, Tony, and I approached the Excelsior stadium in Airdrie on the evening of the 22nd February with the aim to reclaim ‘something or anything’ back into our hearts which would kick-start the purgative process of erasing the painfully recent memories; namely that the ‘Boys from Barrowfield’ would see off the ‘Murray Park Minions’.

That evening, apart from actually enjoying the childish but enduring experience again of witnessing our targeted insults being heard (and hilariously at times being reacted to) by each adversary in blue, we witnessed a long cherished phenomenon of a Celtic team not so much just playing slick one-two type football that I recalled from my own youth in the sixties and seventies, but playing it in a way that capitalised upon rather than constrained their own strengths, with the welcome by-product that for most of the game we forgot about the freezing breath, and numb bums on the hard and icy plastic seats.

And more than that, I watched as they played with a smile on their faces, each and every one. Marshall, O’Dea, Juninho, Sylla, Wallace, Maloney, and the two outstanding players of that night, Fernandez and McManus, supported, cajoled, encouraged and led by the timeless Paul Lambert.
(By the way, what a great name is Rocco Quinn. To me it is the sort of name that beats a full-back all on its very own. I hope he makes it because it is also surely a name that requires a special and personal tribute song!)

Anyway, that night the likes of Rae, Namouchi and Malcolm could do little else than chase their own shadows , and reserve game though it may have been, it warmed a little the cockles of my heart and fuelled a few embers of hope for the future.

The feelings of emptiness returned a few days later in the soulless first half against Clyde at Broadwood. The Wee Brazilian was playing, but disappointingly for me (a lone voice among the Celtic Diaspora I admit) neither Fernandez nor Maloney had been given a chance, albeit that Shaun was on the bench. Once again I could have sworn that the ball and the ground must have gone through some form of metaphysical divorce such was the absence of any relationship.

Up the ball would go, and back it would come, up it would go and back it would come. Clyde scored, and by some streak of good fortune the referee (who was abysmal to both sides on the day) had decided to blow far too early and we were reprieved. Oh we scored in the later stages of that first half where Big Stan nodded one in, but to be honest my eyes kept wandering to Shaun on the bench, David Fernandez standing watching at the corner flag, and most disturbingly to the postcard green and white capped Campsie hills.

And then something happened. Big Chris took a knock and went over on his ankle, and at half time on came Wee Shaun, and as if by magic I became involved again in that involuntary habit of every real football fan, of not only watching but taking muscle-twitchingly part in every movement, pass, turn, trap, chase, tackle, shot and goal. Once again I witnessed what I had always been brought up to expect was my rightful inheritance – A Celtic football team playing football the ‘Celtic Way’.

First division opposition! It doesn’t matter. The difference between the first and second halves was as wide as the gap at the one end of the neat but incomplete stadium.

And so to the next game, Dundee the visitors; and a sudden return to the huffing and puffing unproductive efforts that have frustrated us over the recent months!

Or was it?

Having removed the negative motes from my eyes before the game, what I actually witnessed was indeed a return to the favoured individuals, but I also experienced the seeds of a complete change in style just starting to germinate. I observed players deliberately foreswearing the potential and (say it quietly) potentially productive long-ball in favour of the shorter ground-hugging forward pass to feet, the ball being held up back to goal while awaiting the supporting diagonal thrust from mid-field in anticipation of a return pass, the wide-swept change of direction behind the back line to meet the incessantly creative runs of players desperate for the ball, the desperate lunging defensive blanket of a tremulously stubborn Dundee defence and mostly I believe that I saw a team following deliberately and perseveringly, the strategy and tactics of a manager questioned and hurt not only by results but also by some of the untrusting barbed arrows fired by many of us who have memories shorter than that of a particularly dense goldfish.

Many and most times that evening the moves and ambitions, the thought and strategies just didn’t work and at half-time the potential for a disastrously unfruitful stalemate probably blinded most of the onlookers to what was going on.

We got through that night thanks to Stan P and Big Bobo, but I believed that what we had witnessed had been a sea-change in approach which was and is to set us up for the games to come, the most pressing of which was Hibs. Just remember how they had outplayed us at Celtic Park in December.

But let’s be honest, most punters didn’t. Why that was the case is a subject for another time, but that evening while having a drink back in Sharkey’s I was more upbeat than most.

And so to Hibs and the real difference between that game and the Dundee game?

The passes started to come off, the runs through a little more familiarity were anticipated, the passes were sharper, the confidence was higher, the bandwagon began to roll, and although Chris got injured again, this time it was as a cog in a well oiled fighter-plane which had us frustrated top-guns back in the air again. On came Aiden and if anything it got better. (selfishly I was delighted to see David F coming on. Whether he does make it or not I don’t know, but believe me this boy can play a bit).

Three going-on six– one.

And then Dunfermline at Celtic Park. Our game plan remained the same and to all those who have criticised the first half performance please remember a few things.

Firstly the Pars game plan also remained the same – the same as Dundee’s that is, even then against a back six verging on nine at times we should have scored more, so the approach was still making chances!

Secondly, we believed in ourselves and those of us stuck in the crowd but actually still even in the autumn of our years, wanting to be on the park seemed to sense that!

Thirdly Aiden McGeady was breathtaking throughout, Craig Bellamy and Stan Petrov were merely brilliant!

And finally we used Aiden McGeady, Ross Wallace, Craig Beattie, and David F was on the bench.

Let’s get behind our team, our manager, but most of all our club. Let’s rekindle the fires of hope for the future from the flashing sparks of the past few weeks, and come what may let’s see if we can persuade through our own actions and support the likes of Craig Bellamy to realise that any where else would simply be a step down. That’s WE as in US. The Celtic supporters, The TGFITW! We as a support CAN do this and notwithstanding all the money that flows from our own seemingly bottomless pockets to the corporate coffers, this would be quite simply the biggest contribution we could make to Celtic’s future.

Let’s make Craig Bellamy and every other player feel part of this club, part of it’s future, part of it’s success, and that we are there with them ‘win lose or draw’.

I think we’ve got a lot to look forward to. I know that whatever happens, starting in Inverness on Wednesday, I’ll be there if at all possible.

The future’s bright, it’s Green and White!

(And if you are listening God to the these ravings of a senile madman, please can you show Thommo where he mislaid his form! Amen)"