BRENDAN Rodgers’s arrival at Celtic Park was still more than a week away on the glorious day in May when this record-equalling 62-match unbeaten domestic run got under way. But you might say the club’s players, still under the charge of the departing Ronny Deila, channelled their inner Northern Irishman that day.
Mark McGhee’s Motherwell were the opponents on the final day of the 2015-16 season, the Fir Park side’s manager left bewildered and fearing for a repeat of his 9-0 loss at the same ground with Aberdeen when his side trailed 6-0 after just 59 minutes of play. “Of course you were thinking about it,” the former Scotland assistant manager said darkly afterwards.
As sensational as Celtic’s performance was that day, few who trooped out of the stadium could imagine that much of the same players would stand this morning in Perth on the brink of surpassing the all time UK mark set by Willie Maley’s Celtic side 100 years ago. Yet if you look closely at it most of the parts were already in place in a match which seven different Parkhead players on the scoresheet. With the only notables to have flown the nest from that starting line-up that day being Efe Ambrose, Stefan Johansen and Ryan Christie, the first goal was swept in with the right foot of Kieran Tierney. Mainstays of the Rodgers era like Stuart Armstrong, Tom Rogic, Patrick Roberts and Mikael Lustig were all on target, as was Jack Aitchison, just minutes after the 16-year-old became the youngest first-team player in the club’s history.
In truth, however much they are compared, it is hard to draw too much in the way of conclusions when you hold up this run of results to those compiled by Maley’s side between November 2015 and April 2017. It wasn’t unheard of back then for Maley’s team, who showcased the talents of the legendary Patsy Gallacher – whose grandson Kevin would go onto play with distinction for Dundee United, Blackburn Rovers and Scotland – to play two matches in the one day.
The Scottish Cup was suspended during the war years, and the League Cup had yet to commence, while the loss on most sides cast a pall over the sport, with many of John McCartney’s Hearts side – who were top of the league unbeaten after their first eight games – back in that 1915-16 season, perishing on the fields of the Somme.
By comparison with such epic loss and tragedy, the exploits of Rodgers’ side seem mundane in the extreme, but make no mistake about the scale of the achievement should Celtic make it 63 matches and counting against St Johnstone today, who just happen to be the last side to beat the Parkhead side in domestic action, in Perth, all of four days before that Motherwell match. As much as people will disparage the standard of the Premiership competition faced by Celtic on a weekly basis, it has been a triumph of the will as much as talent that this record remains intact.
“Willie Maley was at Celtic for 43 years,” Rodgers said in Belfast this week. “You are lucky to get 43 days now. Knowing he was the first manager and a Northern Ireland man from Newry, I’ve looked into his history. He was the guy who started it all rolling and put us under pressure to win.”
High in the club’s current Northern Irishman’s Lennoxtown office resides a bottle of champagne with the No 27 inscribed on it, presented to him by John Clark amongst others when this side surpassed the Lisbon Lions’ best-ever consecutive undefeated run. It still remains there, on ice, and there seems little chance of Rodgers and his backroom staff cracking it open in the event of victory, or even a draw, against Tommy Wright’s side this lunchtime.
The 44-year-old is a master of re-setting goals for his players to aim for, and so it will continue to be once today’s match is out of the way. How about a second invincible treble, and the chance to make this run so long that no-one will ever be able to hold a candle to it, if they haven’t done that already?
Indeed assistant Chris Davies insists there won’t even be a single word spoken about how they teeter on the edge of the history books pre-match. In fact, he was pleasantly surprised how little was made of this milestone in the wider media until the last few weeks. “To be honest, we won’t talk about it before the game,” said Davies. “We haven’t spoken about it at all.
“I was aware of it when we equalled the Lisbon Lions one in February,” Davies added. “Then around 40 odd, I was thinking ‘why is no one talking about this?’ We were still totting them up. It was good that it was a silent thing but I was aware that it kept on progressing. I think everyone was privately aware it was happening. But it [the run] won’t be something that’s our single motivation for this game. What’s got us to this point is ‘win the next game – focus on that’. Giving everything and doing your best. But hopefully that’s the consequence.”
Still in the after-glow of Bayern in midweek, even if that ended in defeat [“We needed a bit of a kinder draw to get through,” Davies admits honestly], St Johnstone can be guaranteed to keep Celtic honest. Jozo Simunovic and Erik Sviatchenko are back training, though neither is likely to play.
“We’re going to a team which has been top-six for a few years, and it’s away from home,” said Davies. “It’s always going to be a difficult game. We’ve got to make sure we stay top of the league. That’s our motivation. To make sure we stay on top.”
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