Almost one year ago – 360 days to be exact – Sevco were the swaggering conquerors of Hampden.
They had failed to beat us in 90 minutes.
They had failed to beat us in extra time.
A Celtic side everyone said was on its knees had taken them to penalty kicks.
The lottery of the shoot-out saw them emerge victorious.
No “triumph” has ever seemed so hollow, in hindsight, since the assassins of Julius Caesar had their final reckoning at Philippi.
Tomorrow, the assassins of Ronny Deila will have theirs.
I cannot remember a more spectacular unravelling.
When Caesar died in 44 BC it was two years before his heir Octavian wiped away the last of those responsible on that dusty battlefield in Macedonia. It has taken the heirs of Ronny half that time to put to the sword his.
Warburton has gone.
King’s board is on the brink.
A season of trauma has taken its toll on their supporters.
Celtic is on the verge of an invincible season.
The scale of the transformation has been incredible, and yet it was all pretty easy to predict.
I had been writing for months before that game my prediction that Warburton would be found out in the SPL and would find himself in Ronny’s position before long. I wrote a lengthy piece called The Storm Before The Calm in the aftermath of the match, using the Caesar analogy to highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two clubs.
That article boiled down to a simple argument; Celtic would give itself one almighty shake as a consequence of that result, and that would spur us on to a more dominant position than ever. The fundamentals were right at Parkhead.
Our apparent weaknesses were about bad decisions, not about inherent flaws in the machine.
The astounding arrogance that poured out of Ibrox after that game left me honestly baffled.
Talk that we had been outplayed was outrageous.
Sevco fans, and their media admirers, genuinely thought they were a great team on the back of it. A measure of just how they were viewed inside Celtic Park was not long in coming; the result, and performance, so shocked our board that Ronny very quickly fell on his sword.
Some will say he was pushed, but the simple fact is he made it easy for us. He showed the appropriate level of dignity and class.
Tomorrow belongs to Ronny too.
In many ways it is the last act of his revenge and it doesn’t matter that he won’t be in the dugout for it.
Caesar wasn’t at Phillipi either, but Octavian considered it his final victory.
I know only a handful of Celtic fans who genuinely believed, on the back of that match, that we had seen the emergence of a challenge to our dominance in the league.
In the end, the result wasn’t what Sevco fans believed it to be.
Had Celtic won on penalties that day Ronny might well have stayed at the club, instead of being replaced by Brendan Rodgers.
There might be no Scott Sinclair, no Dembele, no unbeaten run, no Champions League pot of gold.
Ronny would have won us the sixth title … but it wouldn’t be like this.
In contrast, Sevco’s triumph lasted one day.
They couldn’t even close the deal and win the Scottish Cup; our own Anthony Stokes, Liam Henderson and favourite son Alan Stubbs helped take care of that, and David Gray did the rest from the last minute corner.
In the aftermath, their fans rioted on the pitch and King proved himself utterly unfit to lead a top flight club when he issued one of the most rancid, rabid statements Scottish football has ever borne witness to. That they were on the road to collapse became apparent, but that road began when Tom Rogic missed his penalty.
We have have secured two titles and the League Cup since then.
We have beaten them three times.
They snatched a draw in the last minute at Celtic Park and on the back of that have convinced themselves they can live with us when we are at our very best.
This is the most foolish belief of all.
Tomorrow we will complete an historic turnaround of truly epic proportions, and in doing so will set up one Hell of a season finale, a meeting with our genuine rivals at Aberdeen, on which a treble will rest and an unbeaten domestic campaign might well depend.
In the process, I think it will begin the unravelling of another Ibrox regime.
I cannot look back but with wonder at where we were a year ago.
Just think of where we’ll be one year today.
Our club’s new slogan was never more fitting; “Tomorrow belongs to us.”
Win or lose (and I think we’re going to enjoy ourselves tremendously) Brendan, his players, and the people who work with them at Celtic Park are looking much further ahead than that.
So much has changed in the last 12 months but one thing remains the same; fundamentally, we’re light years in front of the rest.
That won’t change, either way.