There surely will not be a single Celtic fan out there who needs an introduction to Scott Brown.
The now 38 year old had an incredibly storied and successful career at Parkhead following his arrival back in the summer of 2007 for the princely sum of £4.4 million from Hibernian. With well over 500 appearances to his name for us, his position as an inspirational skipper in our incredible success has made him a true Celtic icon.
He finally moved onto Aberdeen as a free agent in the summer of 2021, hanging his professional playing boots up as we ticked into the New Year of 2023.
He was undoubtedly one of the main men at the club during his 15 year spell and posted the sort of stats for tackles won that would have represented good odds for an offer for new customers to use on the Betvictor website.
His association with us will live long in the memory, so with us having faced Aberdeen at Hampden Park last weekend, in our Scottish Cup semi Final, Brown was naturally a good go to for the media to preview the game.
Appearing on a special edition of the Scottish Football Podcast, he talked about some of his favourite and most famous memories, not least Tom Rogic’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ moment in the 2017 Scottish Cup Final as he turned a very tightly poised encounter in our favour as we completed an ‘Invincible’ season and claimed the first of our quadruple trebles.
“Tom just does what Tom does, doesn’t he? He’s a magician with the ball. I’m thinking, ‘he’ll sclaff it, we’ll get a corner’. Tom very rarely used that right foot, it’s for standing on. His other one is an absolute wand. But at that moment, he has gone on the outside…great finish.”
Brown went on to joke that nobody knew who had been booked during the celebrations with the fans, but nobody cared as they all realised just how important the opportunity of an Invincible treble was to the players.
Obviously it was not his only Aberdeen battle during his playing days for us, and he went on to recount how former team mate Barry Robson was ‘horrible to play against’ but having had great battles in training, the fact he was prone to ‘elbows’ meant that he enjoyed taking him out and sending ‘him flying’ even more and that it ‘put a smile on (my) face’ when he was about to score. The fact it then led to him scoring in the game made it even sweeter and he thanked the fan who launched a pie at him, because he was able to take a bite after catching it, before returning to sender.
“The amount of things I did to those Aberdeen fans back in the day and for them to still actually come over and support me when I played (there) is unbelievable and shows they support their players no matter what.”
But that is fans for you, at some point we will all hate you until you pull our colours on.
Perform and give your all, and all is (at least) temporarily forgiven – but you have to perform and give your all first.
Brown was all about giving his all and it formed part of his decision to leave us and take up the player-coach role when he turned 36. He knew his days were numbered, that he didn’t have the legs for it anymore, and that Celtic needed to move on, just as he needed to look forward to the world of coaching.
Ever the model pro, he had no intention of just picking up a wage.
“I was getting too old, too fragile. I could have probably stayed and held on to me being a 36-year-old – ‘watch me, I can still do this at the highest level’. But I didn’t want to disrespect the fans when I knew I couldn’t deep down.”
Brown is definitely a dying breed in the game, we can only hope we see someone with his commitment again at our club in the future.
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