It has been an emotionally charged week for the players and focus around the club will be on weighty matters of history, of what we are all about. You can be sure, however, that Derek McInnes and his Aberdeen players have only one thing on their minds.
Aberdeen can win the Scottish Cup on Saturday. They need to play at their very best, and will need Celtic to perform as they did earlier in the competition against St Mirren, but 90 minutes passes quickly at Hampden, and you and I both know to take nothing for granted.
No one is going to drink in the celebrations of 1967 more than me, but we have won only two trebles since then. The current team deserve every inch of preparation possible. They are already one of the great Celtic teams, with an undefeated treble they can look the Lisbon Lions straight in the eye.
CQN presents Lisbon Lions and wives, Greenock Celtic Supporters’ Club, Friday 26 May 2017
The Lions were paraded on a coal lorry when they reached Celtic Park on 26 May 1967. We have a coal lorry, we have the Lions. This will be an incredible event. There’s also a live band.
Admission by ticket only, get yours here. They will be posted until tomorrow or collected at the door thereafter.
Lisbon Lions and other former @celticfc players, chairman and Lord Provost at civic reception in Glasgow city chambers pic.twitter.com/5xup83FgRl
— Ronnie Esplin (@RonnieEsplin) May 24, 2017
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VFR:
I didn’t go to the Semi so no, no tickets for the final. The (not so) wee guy isn’t happy, we could have had tickets for the semi but his Mum wouldn’t let him because of the opposition and not being at Parkhead and I hate Hampden anyway. We had a long discussion about ticket allocations and on what basis they were distributed including more than 60,000 trying to get about 12,000 tickets. He listened carefully and thought about if for a wee while and then came up with a solution: “but you could just go somewhere and buy tickets:”. I”m still trying to come up with and answer to that :-)
GG
Xorrect ;-)
HH
James Doleman in Court this morning,
it appears ( Hope Im right ?), that the Big Tax Case wasn’t mentioned in the Purchase Share Agreement.
Findlay to McLean ” So Murray had NO INTENTION to take responsibility for the Big Tax Case,. That’s the END of Rangers , and we don’t care ?
It also appears that the was a “RULE 16″, within the Purchase Share agreement, and Findlay asked about it to McLean, who answered ” Rule 16 is in place to ensure that there is EQUAL INFORMATION” ?????
Sorry I can’t copy and paste ALL of Mr Dolemans tweets.
VFR:
When it comes to the devious deceits and faints of lawyers, I hold my hand up and admit I don’t play their version of chess, however, even as probably the most naive layman, I don’t wonder too much as to has the prosecution lost the plot as opposed to – did they ever have a plot?
Always in the back of my mind though is Edinburgh – and its fit and proper.
GERIHATRIC on 24TH MAY 2017 11:28 AM
Tickets are very hard to come by; I would imagine that those that are “for sale” may be quite pricey! There are some going for over £500 online!
KTF
And Charlotte lives in Edinburgh and Charlotte has some big friends.
A STOR MHA CHROI on 24TH MAY 2017 11:40 AM
There never really was a case to be honest!
KTF
Janice Atkinson,ex UKIP MEP,has demanded the return of the death penalty after yesterday’s suicide bomb attack in Manchester.She’s obviously the brains,as well as the heart,of the party.
Deary,deary me.
Morning all.
Some great posts this morning.
I’m looking forward to reading some fun and possibly some poignant tales from Lisbon.
Have a blast everyone.
Hail Hail
VFR:
Much as I’d like to be there I wouldn’t pay over the odds for a ticket, I’ll probably end up in Richie’s to watch it with some beer and whisky to celebrate if we win.
Great article from Kevin McKenna, republished in The Guardian today:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/may/24/celtic-lisbon-lions-50-greatest-success-story-scottish-sport
Extracts:
“I’m not sure if the concept of a pre-school education was fully formed in Scotland in the 1960s, but in my neighbourhood it began and ended with the legend of the Lisbon Lions. There was geography and history; word recognition and recall; heroes and villains. How many exasperated primary school teachers all over west central Scotland in the late 1960s fretted over the inability of Tam and Rab to read Janet and John or add two plus three yet somehow talk freely and with some authority of Simpson, Craig and Gemmell; of Zurich, Nantes and Vojvodina Novi Sad?”
and
“In the early years that followed Celtic’s triumph in Lisbon, one book came to be recognised as the bible on all that occurred around the game. Celtic Triumphant was written by the highly respected football journalist Ian Peebles and remains to this day the ultimate authority on the matches Celtic played that season, and the anecdotes and recollections of the players and people who were there. Many other books have been written in the decades since but the freshness, authenticity and sheer sense of wonder of Peebles’ work, penned as it was in the immediate aftermath of Lisbon, will never be matched.”
and
“Before Celtic won the European Cup, the only prolonged exposure Scotland had ever enjoyed in front of a mass audience would have been the Hollywood classics Whisky Galore and Brigadoon. On the afternoon of 25 May 1967 a global audience sat down for two hours to watch an authentically Scottish product prevail under the most searching conditions. The product was seen to be charismatic and attractive and, in the minds of 40 million foreigners, a mental recalibration of previously held thoughts about Scotland and Scots took place.”
and
“Until 1967 the experience of my dad’s generation of lowland, working-class Scots was of heavy industry for poor wages; of ill-health and premature death. It was to be thwarted by the failure to access a university education and a secure profession. It was the frustration of being unable eloquently to express their character and their intelligence. It was the resentment of always being portrayed by scholars, writers and film-makers as ill-educated, malevolent and unsophisticated. Nye Bevan and Harold Wilson began to give them hope as they started the process of unstitching embedded privilege and opening doors that had always been closed in their faces. I like to imagine that Jock Stein and the Lisbon Lions might have made a contribution to that process.”
and, finally
“Distressingly, I have heard murmurs among some that they have had enough of celebrations to mark landmark anniversaries of Celtic’s triumph in Lisbon. We’ve had festivities to mark the 19th, 21st, 25th, 30th, 40th and now 50th anniversaries. And until the last one of them takes his last breath I hope we will continue to honour them and throw banquets for them. It is the least that these 11 anointed men deserve for making a nation walk tall once more.”
GERIHATRIC I’m sure that will be a reasonable substitute!
KTF
interpreting fairy tales and pieced together tales told around the oasis during primitive bronze age times
that’s 2017
VFR:
Oh! I beg to differ, there was always a case, but the big guy that done it… he was feted away and everybody fixated on Haggis Craigy McOswald instead.
A STOR MHA CHROI on 24TH MAY 2017 11:56 AM
I’ll clarify: there was never really a case against Whyte.
KTF
VFR:
The Scotsman
THE Bank of Scotland has written off nearly all of a controversial £12.2 million loan it handed to its former managing director. Bank of Scotland has written off nearly all of a controversial £12.2 million loan it handed to a former managing director of the bank, according to documents filed with Companies House.
Bosses at the taxpayer-backed bank have recouped just £600,000 of money it loaned to a company owned by former Dunfermline Athletic boss Gavin Masterton, who retired from BoS in 2001 with a £250,000-a-year pension. The former banker’s firm, East End Park Ltd, was given the loan – secured against the club’s stadium – at the height of the 2008 financial crisis and told it would not have to make repayments for the next 35 years. However, the company and Dunfermline Athletic both went into administration last year and documents show the bulk of the £12.2m loan has now been written off by the bank.
Despite being valued at £11.2m in 2011, East End Park stadium was sold by administrators KPMG to a fan-led buyout team for just £700,000. The documents also reportedly show that KPMG has started legal proceedings to recover £116,000 which another of Mr Masterton’s companies owes the now-defunct stadium firm. Liberal Democrat leader and Mid Scotland and Fife MSP Willie Rennie said:
“It’s a bargain basement deal for Pars supporters but is the kind of loss even Fred Goodwin would blush at. Serious questions are being asked at Bank of Scotland about the terms of the original deal. There will still be rough times ahead but Dunfermline is on the right track now
.” Documents lodged at Companies House are reported to show Dunfermline Athletic’s ground was valued at £5.9m in 2007, but this increased to £11.2m the following year, the same period in which East End Park Ltd secured its £12.2m loan from BoS.
East End Park Ltd went into administration last year and a new report by KPMG on this process shows it sold the firm’s only asset, the football stadium, to Pars United Limited for £700,000, with £600,000 of that going to BoS towards the loan and the rest covering the administrator’s expenses.
It is understood the bank does not expect to receive any more money towards the £12.2m it was owed. The report also states that a £116,967 debt owed to East End Park Ltd by its parent company Charlestown Holdings Limited (CHL) – a firm owned by Mr Masterton – has been passed to legal agents to chase. CHL, which is ten months late in filing its accounts, was also reported to have failed to repay a £600,000 loan from the taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland – around half of which was personally guaranteed by Mr Masterton.
The Dunfermline-based firm is also subject to an ongoing court action by its former chief executive William Hodgins and owes Stagecoach tycoon Sir Brian Souter nearly £1m in a loan due to be repaid later this year. BoS’s £12.2m loan to Mr Masterton’s East End Park Ltd came just four years after the Edinburgh-based institution had written off a £4.5m loan to another firm partly owned by Mr Masterton, Wood Investments (Scotland) Limited.
Mr Masterton could not be reached for comment tonight. RBS and BoS declined to comment.
NEGANON2
To add some fuel to your SKY spat, an obituary of Vic Wakeling was published in yesterday’s Herald. He was the MD of Sky Sports in the early 2000s. There’s a quote from Richard Keys (sorry to use him as a source) relating to the breakdown in negotiations with Roger Mitchell, the SPL chief executive.” Scottish football doesn’t exist. Shut it down. We’re not interested until they come back to the table on our terms”.
The deal rejected by Mitchell was for £60 million. (2002). I believe the current deal is £18.75 million per season. The English leagues receive £1.7 billion.
Roger Mitchell was foolish but Sky have been harvesting subscriptions with very little return north of the border.
Jo McHugh
Fresh evidence has emerged of just how close Gavin Masterton came to closing Celtic.
In the early nineties, as a director of Bank of Scotland, Masterton was effectively the king-maker of Scottish football controlling the banking facilities for almost all of the top clubs with Bank of Scotland becoming the first sponsor of the SPL in 1998.
Credit was easy to come by in those days for those with the right connections with David Murray, the shining star of the Thatcherite era, the golden boy of the banking community.
Murray International Metals were given limitless funds which Murray channelled towards winning the European Cup for Rangers with Duncan Ferguson, at £4.2m in the summer of 1993 the most expensive player in British football.
The old Celtic board would have struggled to run a corner shop as they lapsed from one disaster to the next with the sacking of Liam Brady and appointment of Lou Macari, who brought in Carl Muggleton, Lee Martin and Wayne Biggins, summing up the direction the club was going.
The early days of 1994 were particularly difficult for the old dynasties with performances on the pitch nosediving under Macari while the malcontents among the support invested their faith in the ‘dream-team’ partnership of Brian Dempsey and Fergus McCann.
Crisis point came after a Scottish Cup third round defeat at Motherwell while the overdraft approached it’s limit with continued backing from fans and sponsors under threat.
Picking up the story in the Sunday Mail Celtic director Brian Wilson reveals McCann’s anger twenty years on at the way the club was treated by the Edinburgh establishment of the Bank of Scotland.
Roland Mitchell, head of BOS Glasgow, was charged with the task of closing Celtic down, no doubt with the approval of Masterton through at Bank of Scotland HQ.
Graeme Souness Rangers newsWilson explained: “On March 3, Mitchell told club chairman Kevin Kelly that cheques would only continue to be honoured if “by 12 noon tomorrow a cash collateralised or otherwise acceptably supported guarantee for the sum of £1million is put in place to support the bank’s overdraft”.
“The other condition was that McCann “superseded” this with “a £5million cash collateralised guarantee” the following week. McCann flew in from Canada to meet that challenge.
“But he remains bitter about his treatment by BoS who, he believes, did not wish him to succeed in buying the club. He recalls: “I had taken them completely off the hook. They were never going to collect the £5.2million they were owed otherwise. Ten months later, after the bank had been fully paid off, Charles Barnett, Celtic’s interim financial director, went to BoS to learn what they could offer in loan finance.
“Their proposal was £2.5million fully secured – little more than an insult. Later, we obtained £10million unsecured from the Co-op Bank in Manchester.
“What I resented enormously was trying to do a business deal in Scotland and being treated that way.”
Masterton’s power came to a halt when Halifax took over the Bank of Scotland and started to examine the unique business practices that were commonplace in Scotland, especially through football.
Further pain came when Lloyds TSB took over HBOS with the banking collapse of 2008 requiring the government to take over the entire Lloyds TSB group.
Without the unquestioning backing of Masterton Murray’s empire came under proper financial scrutiny with Craig Whyte finally buying Rangers in 2011 for £1- five years after Murray had first attempted to sell the club.
Less than a year after taking over Rangers Whyte put Rangers into administration with liquidation following soon after.
BateenBhoy
I’ll be wearing a tee shirt with JOCK STEIN on the front, in big green letters that look as if they’ve been painted on.
Hail Hail
CQN Versus Lisbon LIVE UPDATES
………… forgot travel adapter, bus delayed, then plane delayed, tea on plane frozen, left ear of earphones not working. Still to negotiate Stansted what else could possibly go wrong?
Dear Ryanair,
Nobody will ever buy any scratch cards.
Please stop now CSC
WHITEDOGHUNCH on 24TH MAY 2017 11:56 AM
interpreting fairy tales and pieced together tales told around the oasis during primitive bronze age times
that’s 2017
===
Pretty much,but you forgot to mention the ubiquity of wine which,i’m sure,would’ve helped focus the mind of the storytellers.
BBC saying that Jock Stien was dismissed from his job as Celtic reserve team manager on account of his religion?
Really?
A STOR MHA CHROI on 24TH MAY 2017 12:10 PM
Jo McHugh
Wish I had a teener for every time I have posted that the game was up in Govan when THEY could no longer rely on the application of the Monkey’s Paw persuading the Bank of Scotland to bail them out without any questions asked.
On the subject of Tax raised through Tobacco in the UK,
The tax, both excise duty and VAT, raised through the sale of tobacco products continues to be a major source of revenue for the Government, contributing around £12 billion annually. This is, according to the Treasury, equivalent to more than 2 pence on the basic rate of income tax or over 11 pence on the top rate of income tax.
without the benefit of this tax paid to the government,the basic rate of Income Tax would have to be raised by 2P.
12 Billion per year,is a lot of bombs and bullets for the UK government for use in its foreign wars.
A Tribute To John Terry https://theclumpany.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/a-tribute-to-john-terry/
SPEARMAN on 24TH MAY 2017 12:21 PM
BBC saying that Jock Stien was dismissed from his job as Celtic reserve team manager on account of his religion?
Really?
A disgraceful misrepresentation. Otherwise known as a lie.
http://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/these-celtic-legends-are-lisbon-lions-too/
Afternoon Celts
VFR…..Hobbes ‘state of nature’…..the ruthless pursuit of human desires.
Yesterday…..Mrs Green Man….presented me with a wonderful, beautiful gift.
On the bag…The Lions in Lisbon….inside the bag,….. a Celtic Jersey, for the Green Man:)
As i swagger down Maryhill Rd……looking like a million dollars:)
Cmon.
HH
QUONNO:
I’ll be 100% honest with you, at the time I was only privy to rumour, ok rumour that was voiced by people I trusted, or at least wanted to trust, but at the time I found it hard to believe that a bank of that (purported) standing would dare jepordise its global reputation by indulging possibly sectarian favour.
It has long since been made common knowledge that it did but even now I still find it hard to get my head around what they actually did. Not only that, but that they got away with it.
The power of Freemasonry is powerful indeed.
I hope hell has a warm welcome for them. All of them.
Everyone in Lisbon,
Laugh, sing, cry, drink, cheer and do it all again as often is possible.
Make memories that will stay with you forever, just like Celtic fans did in Lisbon 50 years ago.
Hail! Hail!
BABASONICOS71 on 24TH MAY 2017 11:44 AM
Janice Atkinson,ex UKIP MEP,has demanded the return of the death penalty after yesterday’s suicide bomb attack in Manchester.She’s obviously the brains,as well as the heart,of the party.
Deary,deary me.
But not obviously for the British soldier who took a POW into a field and shot him dead.UKIP have been at the forefront of the protest to get him released.
TURKEYBHOY…
The backing of the squaddie highlights the jingoism,xenophobia and hypocrisy of UKIP but demanding the death penalty for people who blow themselves up seems like uber idiocy.Why do so many right wingers respond to murder by demanding more deaths?
I wish evolution would speed up a bit.
HH
BABASONICOS71
Worked perfectly and the second page added so much more
O.G.RAFFRTY…
Good good.The first page is enjoyable but the second part just elevates it,a heartwarming wee tale.Glad you enjoyed it fhella.
HH
Does anyone know what James Doleman did to vex that weird, ever so well connected, totally not a tool of a PR company, moocher-in-exile John James so much?
DAVIDOPOULOS on 24TH MAY 2017 1:22 PM
Successfully crowdfunded based on doing on honest days work rather than made up pish would be my guess.
DAVIDOPOULOS:
That guy’s hubris will be his ticket to jail. He too thinks himself above the law and some of his ignorant accusations are repugnant.
I’ve never know anybody plagiarise so much and present it as their own and then demand payment for his
And the sad part is that people are either bullied or suckered into donating.
And it would appear that it those who can afford it the least that are his most gullible contributors.
“Nobody at City has been in touch. They want me to enjoy the final, get the trophy, and we’ll talk after that. Could I stay? It’s hard. One thing my mum has always said is that you want to be adored by fans and I’ve always wanted to get people off their seat, that’s what I enjoy, putting on a show. It is great to hear the fans sing my name and to feel that love is something I could only dream about. I have said a few times now that in football you don’t know what is going to happen. I take it day by day and we’ll see how it goes. Any player will tell you that to get that much love in football is hard to come by these days. Fans like ours have so much love for me – I adore the fans here. I appreciate what they have done for me and makes me play better for them. If you go to a place and you don’t get that love, and every footballer will tell you this, it can be difficult and times can get tough. But the love you get here at Celtic is second to none. You won’t get this at most places. I am enjoying being here, the admiration they have given me and I just want to play well for them and make them happy on Saturday. For me, I enjoy playing football. I let my feet do the talking and show everyone how good I am. That’s the mindset I’ve had since I was a kid. To have the love and support from the fans is huge for me. I didn’t really know what to expect when I came up here so for it go it as well as it has is amazing. Now I want to finish this season with a cup final win.”
Patrick Robert’s