The Immortals by Phillip Vine

Author:Phillip Vine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

HALF-TIME ENTERTAINMENT

Stopping the Ten: 1998

IN CELTIC’S previous 110 years of history there may never have been such a frantic and febrile atmosphere at Celtic Park as the one that prevailed on the Saturday afternoon of 9 May 1998.

Henrik Larsson, signed from Feyenoord at the beginning of the season and later to play for Barcelona and Manchester United, reviewing his career from the perspective of retirement, said it was the most pressurised game he had ever played in.

The sun shone, as it had done all week, and inside Paradise it burned. Bodies sweated and sweltered and minds frazzled with the multitude of permutations and possibilities to be played out on the closing day of the season. At Tannadice, where Rangers were the visitors, those of an Ibrox persuasion were wishing and hoping for a Celtic slip-up at home to St Johnstone at Parkhead.

If Rangers defeated Dundee United then only a win would do for Celtic to stop the ten as Rangers had overtaken the green and whites’ earlier lead on goal difference but still trailed by two points going into the last day. A Rangers win and a Celtic draw would hand the title to the Ibrox club for a tenth successive season. A repeat of nervous and distracted performances by Celtic – as in the recent drawn games, 1-1 at Dunfermline and 0-0 at home to Hibernian – would surely deliver the championship to Rangers.

Young fans trooping down London Road, the ones who had never tasted the sweet fruits of success, superiority over Rangers, joshed and jostled each other, settled nerves with swigs from cans of Tennent’s or bottles of Irn-Bru, sang Irish rebel songs to make them brave before the battle. Older fans tutted at the bairns’ behaviour, talked of perspective, reflected on life’s cycles of success, how things would turn in Celtic’s favour soon, if not this very afternoon; they recalled how Robert Tennent began brewing in Glasgow in 1556, and some smart arse said that made it the oldest continuous commercial concern in the city; they reminded each other of the charitable foundations of Brother Walfrid and how God was a good Catholic and would bestow his blessings on Celtic Park this very afternoon. The know-all said Tennent was a Catholic too as his brewery opened before the Reformation. ‘So let the kids enjoy their bevvies.’

‘What about Irn-Bru then?’ someone else said. ‘Were the Barrs Catholics too?’ No one knew the answer.

The talk was of anything but the match ahead, anything to avoid thinking of the dread possibility of Rangers’ record-breaking ten.

Fans already inside Paradise sweated and sung their songs. Right up until kick-off, the youngsters, in particular, were celebratory, jubilant as if the title was already won, but there was an undercurrent of something akin to terror in the hearts of all, and nausea in the pits of stomachs that swirled and swilled with lager and with Robert Barr’s sickly fizz.

The tension was so thick it could never have been cut with any knife. A win, a win, a win, any kind of win would do, but it had to be a win.

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