Tannadice was so packed out this afternoon it looked like a Rangers creditors’ meeting and the Scottish Cup tie on show didn’t disappoint. Dundee United had the better of the opening period but four second half goals from an irresistible Celtic decided outcome.
Jon Daly headed wide early on after a Willo Flood cross early on but the first great chance of the game fell to Johnny Russell on 25 minutes. Gary Mackay-Steven got free on the left and crossed for Russell who mishit his shot, allowing Fraser Forster to make an incredible save and claw the ball away.
With Dundee United clearly on top defender Robbie Neilson received a straight red card for a forearm smash into the face of Georgios Samaras.
It took Celtic 36 minutes to make an attempt on goal. Joe Ledley’s shot from a corner was blocked and James Forrest shot over from a corner seconds later.
Celtic stepped up the pace after halftime. Charlie Mulgrew jinked to create space on the left side of the United box but Ledley couldn’t reach his cross. 8 minutes after halftime the visitors were ahead after the best move of the game.
Adam Matthews passed back to Fraser Forster who played the ball out to Joe Ledley. Ledley moved forward after playing the ball onto Samaras, who passed to Mulgrew before the ball moved onto Stokes. Anthony Stokes fired a low cross into the box which Gary Hooper dummied for Ledley, who never stopped running. The midfielder won the ball by nipping in front of his marker and shot home from 7 yards.
Samaras shot over before a Stokes shot after 64 minutes from 25 yards was saved by Pernis, the first save the keeper made in the game.
United had a great chance to draw level when substitute Milos Lacny latched onto a long through ball but his shot from 16 yards was weak and off target.
Georgios Samaras made it 0-2 when he got on the end of a Mulgew free kick to bullet a header into the top right corner of the net.
Two minutes later Johnny Russell had a great chance to pull a goal back but his shot from 15 yards flew narrowly over.
Stokes should have tied the game up 11 minutes from time when James Forrest combined with Hooper before Forrest cut the ball back to Stokes, who contrived to hit the crossbar with his shot with an empty net waiting.
Samaras and Forrest both had chances to add to the scoring before Ledley threaded a pass through the middle of the United defence for Stokes to clip past Pernis into the net.
With a minute of the game remaining Samaras beat Dillon, who pulled the Greek international down inside the box. Scott Brown rolled the resultant penalty into the net to make if 0-4.
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;-)
Lasley…
Been telling folk for seasons he’s a thug.
I am so turned in my view that…
after the 2-0 game where they won and Lasley and a forgotten other basically kicked the shit out of us
… that he would have gotten away with that tackle against us today.
He still gets paid for that today?
Shameless thug…
U
1-0 Barca
And guess who scores – Messi
.
Lenny on Sammi..
“He Will Get Me a Sack..of Trophies..”
Summa of Samaras
Y’know…I really believe that when scum like Lasley try to do the damage that he’s deliberately done to a youngster,then they should be thrown out of football….permanently.
The ethos of Hun violence/win at all costs mentality makes me sick.
Did i mention
I really really hate Higdon
HH
Mike
Never have I wanted a Scottish team to beat another one so badly.
The pundits on Snyde are willing on Motherwell for an equaliser
Wonder why
Cmon the sheep
ooohhhhh Brother Craig Brown… tut tut…. cover yer work ya wee fat baw a’ sh*?!e
Theres were Scottish football ( and society) has went extremely wrong!!!
Published on Sunday 11 March 2012 00:00
Re-post from this morning.
They celebrate St Patrick’s Day with unrivalled pride and passion in Coatbridge, but some locals still recall when it was wiser to keep their heritage to themselves
PADDY Banks is sitting at the bar of the Columba Club in Coatbridge, eyes gently watering, nursing a whisky, while decorative shamrocks glint above the gantry. “I used to give up the drink for Lent,” he says, “but for Paddy’s Day I’d always make an exception.”
For all the Coatbridge bhoys….
Scotland On Sunday–Big In Little Ireland by Peter Ross
St Patrick’s Day, 17 March, is – thanks to the Irish diaspora – a global celebration. There are parties and parades from Brooklyn to Benidorm, Kilburn to Christchurch, and, of course, in Ireland itself. There is, however, one corner of North Lanarkshire where the saint is celebrated with particular intensity. Coatbridge is, according to the map, just a little to the east of Glasgow, but spiritually and emotionally the town is located somewhere across the North Channel.
It has been named “the least Scottish town in Scotland” on account of the huge numbers of residents with names of Irish origin, but according to local genealogists that particular survey actually underplays the heritage. The Irish started arriving in Coatbridge in the 19th century, especially during the years of the great famine, looking for work in the mines and the iron industry. The town was black with soot in those days, and it was said you could read at night by the furnace light. The clusters of streets where the Irish settled had nicknames which still express something of the fervent, febrile Klondyke spirit of those times – Paddy’s Land, O’Neill’s Land, and especially The Slap-Up, a square-mile slum which at the turn of the century had a higher population density than New York.
The 1851 census shows that while the Irish-born population of Scotland as a whole was 7.2 per cent, in Coatbridge it was 35.8 per cent. Now, several generations down the line, it is reckoned that around 70 per cent of the population have Irish roots. Many residents find their family history extremely meaningful. According to a survey by the Coatbridge Irish Genealogy Project, some 93 per cent of those sampled were actually able to identify the county from which their forebears came. A chat with locals in the street confirms this. Derry, Kerry, Dublin, Down – these names and others are proclaimed with pleasure and passion. One man, 87-year-old Tommy Sharpe, is telling me that his grandparents came from Donegal when a passer-by, happening to overhear, can’t resist adding, “The pride of them all.”
Little wonder, then, that Coatbridge has come to be known as “the heart of Ireland in Scotland” – the phrase of Mary McAleese, the then Irish president, during a visit to the town’s St Patrick’s Day Festival. This year is the 10th anniversary of the festival, a two-week celebration comprising music, theatre, sport and other events, culminating in a street party this coming Saturday, which draws around 20,000 people, many of them tricked out in tricolours. It is, locals are keen to assert, an expression of cultural pride rather than nationalist politics. “If anyone comes here believing this is some sort of free-for-all with rebel songs then they are very wrong,” says Martin Brennan, a 47-year-old electrician. “This is a celebration of being Irish.”
Ten years ago there were no St Patrick’s Day festivals in Scotland, the thinking being that such prominent declarations of ethnicity – and, by extension, Catholicism – would invite trouble from bigots. “As children our only expression of Irishness was going out to mass on St Patrick’s Day with a bunch of shamrock on,” says Janice Sullivan, 55, a Coatbridge native whose father and maternal grandfather were Irish. “Other than that, the culture was ‘Keep your head down, don’t mention it, and you’ll be fine.’
“I have a brother who is 50 and was born on St Patrick’s Day, and my mother refused to call him Patrick because he would never get a job. You were very proud of your heritage, but it was kept within the community. I was astonished when the festival started. I remember two old men in the street that day saying, ‘I can’t believe we are getting this.’ So, yes, we do have something special here.”
I am talking to Sullivan in the festival shop in the Quadrant shopping centre. It is a fiesta of green, white and gold. Already, at half-ten in the morning, there is a steady flow of folk buying programmes, tickets for shows, and no end of Irish merchandise. A wee boy leaves clutching a green “Padraic” teddy bear. A youngish woman enquires after a Celtic badge which she plans to add to a funeral wreath in the shape of a Hoops top. You can buy shamrock sunglasses and deely-boppers; tricolour feather boas and leis. There are novelty ties with “Kiss me, I’m Irish” written upon them, and – the Irish equivalent of the “See-you-Jimmy” bunnet – a “Who’s-your-Paddy?” top hat in the shape of a pint of stout. A sign outside the shop points in the direction of Coatbridge, Dublin and Belfast. Inside, a CD player blasts out a techno version of The Wild Rover.
This is all a bit of fun for the festival. There are, however, more authentic expressions of culture ongoing in the town. Coatbridge has Gaelic football teams and runs an extensive youth development programme with 15 participating schools. The town has a branch of Comhaltas, an international organisation promoting traditional Irish music and language. There are also no fewer than five Irish dance schools, although admittedly the diamanté-heavy costumes these days are rather glitzier than the traditional celtic designs which were once the norm. “They’ve blinged up the Book of Kells,” laughs Arlene McLaughlin, a teacher at the McLaughlin Cannon Academy.
Gordon Canavan, a retired publican of Irish descent, who once kept a pub called The Blarney Stone, is working in the festival shop when I visit. “No matter where you go in the world, if you say you are from Coatbridge, people will say ‘Oh, Little Ireland!’” he notes with pride. “My great-grandfather Peter Hannaway used to tell me wonderful stories about how they came over on the boat with nothing and worked hard to make something of their lives.”
The Scots-Irish of Coatbridge have a definite sense of themselves as the descendants of grafters, important in an area of high unemployment. Whatever the psychological reasons, there is no doubt that people feel their Irishness strongly here. Michael Reilly, 52, who runs the Genealogy Project, is planning to apply for an Irish passport. “It’s a wee bit of me claiming myself to be Irish,” he says. “It’s something I feel and I can’t explain.”
Alisha Crilly, 67, talking in the tearoom behind St Patrick’s church after morning mass, says, “I am Scottish. My allegiances are to Scotland. But my inner being is Irish. The way I think, the way I feel, the way I behave. We are much more open here. The best thing about this parish is the way we all relate to each other.”
Coatbridge, with a population of around 40,000 souls, has a majority Catholic population and ten churches belonging to that faith. Even those with no religion would surely agree that these buildings confer a beauty on the town that it would otherwise lack. In the shadow of a tower block, a white marble statue of the Virgin Mary stands pristine and serene. At times, walking round, Coatbridge can feel like an urban brutalist version of South Uist. In certain corner shops you can buy St Patrick’s Day cards and bottles of Buckfast.
Church attendance is not in decline in Coatbridge, in the Catholic churches at least, unlike elsewhere in Scotland, and faith seems to permeate everyday discourse. A sign outside a card shop on the Main Street declares “orders now being taken for Communion balloons”. Pat Gaffney, who has run the bar in the Columba Club these past 22 years, and who visits Ireland each October to tend the graves of his great-uncles in Navan, says, “I don’t drink in any of the pubs round here. They’re full of eejits. The last time I was in the pub was in Lourdes.”
The people here definitely regard themselves as being very different from their neighbours – Motherwell, Baillieston and especially Airdrie. “We’re an oasis in the wilderness,” is how one man puts it. It is an expressive, emotional culture – “carnivalesque and gallus,” according to the Coatbridge writer Des Dillon, with a love of storytelling and ritual. “My brother died last year and the wake was a four-day event,” Dillon recalls. “There were about 20 of us round his bed singing The Fields Of Athenry as he died.”
The difference is also linguistic. There is a Coatbridge accent, rooted in Irish pronunciation, and distinct from the west of Scotland dialect. People in Coatbridge, for example, tend not to say “toon” for town or “doon” for “down”; they speak fast, and there is a tendency to use the so-called “reaffirmative” in sentence construction; for example this, overheard in the Columba Club, from a man watching the racing on telly: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I should have backed that bloody horse, so I should!”
Before leaving Coatbridge, I call in at a family céilí being held at St Patrick’s church hall. The musicians are all teenagers from Comhaltas, and as they perform a mixture of jigs and reels – The Walls Of Limerick, The Siege Of Ennis – and as the dancefloor throngs with children and adults birling beneath the disco lights, it strikes me that these same dance tunes would have been played and enjoyed in this town back in the 1840s; the rhythms and melodies, the joy of it all, spirals through the local DNA. Coatbridge may indeed be the least Scottish town in Scotland, but it has a spirit than many would envy.
SPF
sheep should have gone 442 to take pressure off
hh
Mike
forget this attack on freemasonry, these peepil who are openly abusing it, are castlemaine xxxx’ed ;)
It’s nervy last few minutes for the sheep!
test
is blog frozen
Dons win
Dandy Dons beat the well 2-1
Yes! Sheep escape from Murderwell!
2 – 1 Sheep
great stuff
eat that Mc (I don’t want to finish second in front of my beloved team) Call !!!
GIRUY Snyders
We want a Celtic v Aberdeen final the peoples final
Now lets hope the warm baws get mixed up
Hail Hail
Draw up next.
So that will be us away to Aberdeen then.
so Black gets onto the pitch…
any comeback ? no…
I have been in Aberdeen end v Murderwell before and they are up for it…
The reason I am pleased is that we won’t be forced to deal with the organised thuggery that is McCall’s Mob.
Are semis played at hampden?
What time is the draw?
JJ
The mullet gets pumped out the cup by the Dons.
Good. He wouldn’t have wanted to win it anyway, surely? By ‘default’?
Yeah….European footie on the horizon for Murderwell,and all McMurder can think about is Ragers…..hunbelievable!
Give us Hearts/St.Mirren in the semi so we can trash the hopes of yet another bitter scurrilous mob of Huns.
Draw imminent.
Paul67 et al
Well done Aberdeen! That is the right result. Hope they enjoy their semi-final in Glasgow, because the SFA will not countenance a semi, or two, outside Hampden! It is wrong, but it is the SFA!
Satander 0 Barca 1, HT
Yes oglach think they are, I was being flippant
Aberdeen v Hibs
and Celtic v St Mirren or Hearts
draw dons v hibs
Celtic V St mirren / hearts
We’ve got Hertz or St Midden!…both of the Hun tendency.
We will gub either!
All Green Final !
Interesting that Neil Lennon went as far as to mention Traynor and referred to the matter being in the hands of the legal department.
Perfect draw. Us and the Dons in the Final. Great advert for Scottish Football without the Huns. Full house, no sectarianism, great atmosphere win, lose or draw.
JJ