Making the great leap between playing Scottish Premiership teams and the likes of Inter Milan will always be a challenge for Celtic. We have done so many times in recent years, Milan were held home and away in the Champions League knock-out stage, Barcelona were beaten, but whenever we have carried the game to opponents of this stature, instead of reverting to our own style of catnenaccio, we’ve lost heavily. Quicker, more skilful, players, could make us look statuesque by comparison.
This is not a criticism. If the only way you can compete with a team with ten times your resources is to defend your 18 yard line, you should do so.
Things could have gone either way on Thursday. We were defensively inept during the opening minutes as Inter found space goal-side of their markers. I don’t know if Ronny had a moment of self-doubt at that point, perhaps he did, but was simply unable to unwind the attacking instincts of his players, but Celtic are all the better for the way they picked themselves off the floor.
I’m sure the odds on Inter progressing will be short, but I’m also sure Ronny Deila will know his players can win in Milan.
I arrived home late last night to read that Tony Conway, son of our own RWE, lost his battle against Motor Neurone Disease/ALS. I met Tony, with dad John and brother Martin, three years ago. Tony was still fit enough to walk, but evidence of the pain the family shared was evident. The three of them travelled back from their US home two years ago, along with mum Pauline, to see Celtic, and meet some family.
They bought hospitality tickets and minutes before kick-off, Celtic’s Iain Jamieson nabbed Tony and asked if he was able to make the halftime draw. Tony knew this would be the last time he would see Celtic, so his journey up the tunnel and onto the park was, to put it mildly, a very special Celtic Park moment.
859 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- ...
- 23
- »
Captainmoonlight et al,
I have a season ticket and am at every game I can attend but I have said on here before that I can’t on Sundays @ 1 o’clock kick off. It seems the support voted for this so I’ll just have to put up with it, I suppose but it seriously has me wondering about renewing my season ticket as there have been umpteen games at this time recently. I wouldn’t be so annoyed, if it were the TV people demanding it but it seems to be other supporters.
Good afternoon friends.
There are 4 competitors left standing in LMS3. And it remains squeaky bum* time for the 3 games that are taking place today. Aberdeen and Chelsea both have a 1 goal lead whilst Inverness are drawing.
The remaining selection should be safe – Celtic play tomorrow
* – pardon the French;-)
Belfast Bhoys,
I’m in Biddy Duffys just now if anyone fancies a beer or 2!
Oh and in other news I finally bit the bullet there and cancelled Sky Sports from my Cable TV. And I feel so much better for it. I now have a monthly kitty of £29.25 to cover the expense of watching any Celtic Sky games in the pub ;-)
New – spanish tv cover Egm story
http://youtu.be/iFA4XosR4Zs
Part 2
Condolences and thoughts with RWE and family/friends.
RWE – sincere condolences for you and your family.
Aberdeen 1 up
!!bada bing!!
15:55 on 21 February, 2015
I will always admire the player but as you say if he wants too make a name as pundit for slating a club that was good to him says more about the person, Jim Delahunt said something interesting in SSB last night, think it went under the radar, he said “from experience about hiring pundits for 20+ years Chris Sutton done his job” the question is was Chris trying to start a debate or just suit the perceived audience ? Anyway enough airtime, as I said in last post I have a large group of family, & friends and have yet to hear a negative word about the outcome of Thursday, nearly to a person we were all gutted after 12mins but after 94mins to a person, all delighted
Charles Patrick Tully
Celtic Wiki:
While the history of Celtic has featured many great characters, it is doubtful if many others have been as colourful as Charles Patrick Tully.
Blessed with a rare abundance of skill Tully was the darling of the Hoops fans for over a decade and his cheeky approach to football has made him one of the best loved Celtic icons of all time.
Tully moved to Parkhead in June 1948 from his hometown side Belfast Celtic where he had been idolised by the support. His journey across the Irish Sea – for a then sizeable fee of £8,000 – triggered a frenzied response from fans in Glasgow.Celtic were really in the doldrums at this point in their history and Charlie with his magical skills and “Cheeky” personality lifted the whole club and helped Celtic to start winning honours again. There is as strong case for claiming that Charlie was really the first “Celebrity” footballer long before the arrival of George Best, David Beckham and such like. At his peak with Celtic it was possible to buy items like Tully ties,Tully cocktails and Tully ice lollies which were obviously green and white in colour. It was “Tullymania”.
The winger’s debut was a low key 0-0 league draw at home to Morton on August 14th but soon the crowds would be flocking to Parkhead to get a glimpse of a true football showman.
On his game Tully would relentlessly tease the opposition with his outrageous ability and his ball skills would bamboozle opposing defenders and thrill the crowd. In a League Cup match at Parkhead in September 1948 Tully’s skill simply savaged the feared Rangers rearguard whose brute force was simply no match for an on-song Charlie. Time after time the Irishman danced around the blue clad Iron Curtain as Celtic won 3-1.
His antics on and off the pitch soon became the stuff of myth and legend, and could take up a whole site on its own. Tully was the most talked about player in Scotland (if not the whole of the UK & Ireland) and he loved the limelight. When Tully was in town everyone wanted to be there. The Celtic support adored this cheekiest of heroes. One famous incident involving Charlie was when he and Bobby Evans came to blows in the dressing room over an article Charlie had written for the Daily Express which had a veiled pop at Bobby Evans – Sean Fallon had to intervene and it subsequently transpired that the said article had been ghost-written for Charlie and he hadn’t read the proof before it was even published!
Charlie loved to play up to the crowd and loved nothing more than hearing the crowd roar their approval as he left another embarrassed defender trailing in his wake. Nothing typifies the skill and impudence of Tully better than his goal in the Scottish Cup at Falkirk on February 21 1953. With Celtic awarded a corner the Irishman surveyed the scene in the penalty box before whipping the ball straight into the back of the net. The perplexed referee insisted that Tully had taken the kick from outside the corner markings and ordered a retake. Tully duly obliged and again whipped the ball straight into the net – goal! This goal from a corner was no fluke as Charlie also did this in an international for Northern Ireland against England.
For all his delightful tricks and undoubted ability Tully could also frustrate and his happy-go-luck approach to the game made him an inconsistent performer and at times he would contribute very little to games. Jock Stein and some other fellow players were often incensed by Tully’s lack of commitment to track back and help whenever the defence was under the cosh. His game was also not helped by a love of “the good life” off the field.
But those faults did little to affect his hero status among the Celtic support. When he left in the summer of 1959 for Cork Hibs, he had won one league title at Celtic and two Scottish Cups. He also won two League Cups and was a key member of the side which destroyed Rangers 7-1 in the final of 1957. Tully was also capped 11 times by Northern Ireland.
In truth, his medal haul was a vast underachievement respective to what he could have achieved with the talents he was gifted with. One man does not make a team but some sure can push a side to their limits. Tully wasn’t to be the great talisman for Celtic but in fairness the club was poorly run during much of his tenure. The coaching was poor and constant board meddling was undermining the side.
On the other hand, many players (including Tully) could have pulled their weight more for the team, but instead blaming the management alone was an easy excuse. The legendary coach Jimmy Hogan was brought in by the board to assist the first team, yet was poorly used by players. Tommy Docherty described various players’ attitudes as follows: “It was in the days of Charlie Tully and players like that, and they looked upon coaching as a bit of a joke.” Tully (and a number of his peers) wasted the valuable resources in front of him, and that marks him down. Some who knew Tully actually say that it’s a myth that he hated training but actually he just hated the type of training as was exercised at the time (which compared to now was primitive consisting of loads of sprints and little ball practise). He was said to also love Jimmy Hogan. According to some sympathisers, Tully was a hard training player, you can’t be as good as he was without practise. However, other reports say if he could get out of training somehow he would (he was full of devilment). It’s a mixed picture.
There is some misfortune in his career as well. He missed the final of the much celebrated 1953 Coronation Cup through injury but it was actually a typically sparkling Tully performance that inspired the Hoops to victory against Manchester United in the semi-final which got the team to the final. His absence left him out from one of our most celebrated successes but it’s players in the cup final sides that are remembered most (similarly Joe McBride wasn’t in the final Lisbon Lions side of 1967 yet played an invaluable part in earlier rounds).
Admittedly, we were hardly hitting the heights the decade prior to his arrival having not won the league for the ten years beforehand, but with the talent at the disposal of the management we still vastly underachieved despite Tully being on our books. One league title (and a few cup wins) in that time is not as great a return as should have been expected. This doesn’t help in retrospectives on Tully’s career.
Curiously in 1959, Tully signed for Rangers! Okay, not exactly the true whole story and not how it reads literally. On 11 March 1959 Tully, together with four other Celtic players, signed a short-term deal with Rangers to allow a Rangers/Celtic XI to play Caledonian FC in a friendly to mark the turning on of their new floodlights. This was due to Scottish FA rules requiring all players fielded by a club to be signed to that club. Therefore, this was a Rangers team with Celtic players as guests.
Overall, Charlie played 319 times for Celtic and scored 43 goals. He performed many wonderful tricks and treats on the pitch which all fortunate to have seen them will fondly cherish those memories.
Many players have won more than Tully ever did as a Celt but very few will have ever claimed the hearts of the Celtic support the way the Belfast Bhoy did. His name is still recalled in the great “Willie Maley Song”.
If only he had applied himself more fully during his career with Celtic to have helped his teams to win more than they did, then his name would be celebrated as much now as is done for many other luminaries from the club’s history, yet somehow his name has been more of interest for the avid Celtic historian than to anyone else. However, following the establishment of the Belfast Celtic Museum in Belfast followed by a memorial walk for him in 2011, there has been a sympathetic revival and a fair reassessment of his time at the club. His name is of great importance to the N Irish support and in that way his name will live for evermore.
A very interesting character in our history.
You know what I hate folks.
On a Saturday it takes hours and hours to catch up on the blog from a friday night.
I blame that Roy Croppie bloke , and the links he provides.To be honest I usually don’t open up the links but Roys are special where he gets them from I don’t know.
Although I am sure I seen myself in one of them a while ago. It was the one from the jungle in the 70s/early 80s. I was the guy with the black hair and the moustache.
Love yer stuff mate more than one of your pics have either had me crying or laughing.
Keep up the good work.
H.H
Now that’s what you call timing :-)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-Om19lIUAAb_ea.jpg:large
Victory Parade
HH
50 Shades of green
very kind sir :))
she’s just warned me to “get off that blog”…shop time I think!
Emeraldbee 13:30
Good on ya pal – that’s the way any of us would want to be treated if we found ourselves in an away end somewhere.
Home end rather!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-OcxQ5IQAAxc0l.jpg:large
CELTIC 1972
HH
This upcoming game against the sheep is gonna be massive
The sheep aren’t going away
Now 3-0
Murderwell, as it stands are bottom…..ach well.
Patrick27
Till next Sunday :)))))
roy croppie
Annoyed with myself on the last pic named them all apart from Jimmy Quinn
are the dons now joint top or three points behind ?
Swansea 2-1 up v manure
GlassTwoThirdsFull
16:21 on
21 February, 2015
Emeraldbee 13:30
Good on ya pal – that’s the way any of us would want to be treated if we found ourselves in an away end somewhere.
I also would like to thank you, fantastic behaviour shown. You are a credit to Celtic Fc
jackie mac
joint but we have 2 games in hand
jackie mac
16:30 on
21 February, 2015
are the dons now joint top or three points behind ?
joint top
Leftclicktic
Here’s hoping aha, must win game
Next 3 league games, all at home, 9 points needed
HH
Prayers said for Tony Conway rip.
Also for RWE and family.
Stay strong bhud.
Good afternoon all.
RWE
Sincere condolences on your loss. Very sad. Tony YNWA. RIP.
On a brighter note from our camp, the mrs CT scan result came in this morning, all clear. Phew.
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
The sheep are scoring for fun just now, can’t see them attacking us full pelt though. Should be a cracker and close to a full hoose , fingers crossed
QI
Aberdeen have scored 1 goal less than us, whilst DU sitting in 4th have scored the same.
Roy Croppie 16.20
I was at that as well, although i wasn’t on the lorry :-)
:-)
Weefra
Great news, delighted for both of you.
Maybe see u 2moro.
Weefra-some good news, all the best
Weefra – great news for you and ewes ;-)
pedro
Hoping to make it. Depends on the weather, the risk of heavy snow is a no no for me. Hope you and yer bro are well. :-))
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
Weefra
Fantastic news for you both
weefra
Great news
HH