Celtic

Festive Favourites #2 – No hassle at Tynecastle.

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Our festive favourites series continues as Block 102 examines a Boxing Day win at Tynecastle

Boxing Day. December 2004.

On this day, the Indian Ocean Tsunami was destroying many homes, businesses and tourist offices. The devastation caused was catastrophic. Some say Indonesia has never recovered. Yet, the biggest doing dished out to our fellow man which ranked above that in the damage scale was handed out by Celtic at Tynecastle.

Celtic had already gubbed Hearts earlier in the season and with the Edinburgh club struggling for form with one win in five games, you would normally expect us to come away with a solid performance and three points.

However, this was a season in which we’d lost twice in a month to a very average Rangers side, complete with Alex Rae and Hamed Namouchi starting in their midfield, still without an established number one goalkeeper as David Marshall and Magnus Hedman did absolutely nothing to prove they could be trusted with holding your pint as you headed off to the toilet, never mind a ball. And there was even a chance of having to field the abysmal Henri Camara at some point, guaranteeing dropped points. Recently out of Europe completely as well !  Things weren’t rosy at all at the club at this point in the year.

To make things even better, this match was the first league start of the season for Robert ‘Sma Baw’ Douglas. A man who didn’t usually save his best displays for Tynecastle. Ulrik Laursen was also making his first starting appearance of the season at left back, a position cemented by Jackie McNamara. The rest of the team was fairly solid however.

For the most part of season 2004/2005, Celtic tended to play very much within themselves and creative, free flowing football was extremely limited. Our games on the road often turned out to be struggles, with teams now becoming increasingly aware that the once solid defence O’Neill lay his foundations on, were there for the taking.

But the negative feelings among fans going into this fixture quickly disappeared from the off, when a fired up Celtic side immediately stamped their authority all over the pitch and took the lead within ten minutes when McGeady tapped in a Petrov centre.

Usually, this would be the call for a stand of hateful defiance from the Hearts supporters to get behind their team. But with their midfield being completely dominated in supplying anything to Mark De Vries up front, they could do nothing but watch on with seething silence as we tore them apart and threatened to wrap the game up by half time.

Speaking of which, I remember a very funny incident at half time when one of the neds at the corner of the Wheatfield stand tried his best to wind up Celtic supporters by flying a Union Jack at us and performing a solo ‘bouncy’. He ended up falling off his seat and scudding his cranium off the deck, resulting in a mass ‘LOL’ from everyone in the Roseburn who witnessed it. He sat back down and promptly got on with being a complete irrelevance in peace and quiet.

The second half began like the first half was from start to finish, with Celtic in total control. Only Craig Gordon kept the score down with saves from Sutton and Hartson. But the duo linked up well to set up Stillian Petrov who smashed home midway through the second half to give us a 2-0 lead and an excuse to spend the next 20 odd minutes trolling the home support more instead of watching the game on the park.

How we couldn’t produce more performances like that in 2004/2005 is a shame. The best all round away performance on a par with this match was in March 2005, when we tore apart Hibs 3-1 at Easter Road.

On the plus side, we did get rid of Camara. We did bring in Bellamy. We did win again at Tynecastle.

Best to stop there and focus on the positives. The pain of 04/05 is still something we should never have encountered.

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