There’s a lot of talk amongst Celtic fans just now about the possibility of this season yielding the domestic Treble of League, Scottish Cup & League Cup. Our next two games will go a long way toward determining our fate in the two cups, with an increasingly congested SPFL programme ahead to decide the outcome of our League challenge. It’s a tricky thing to achieve, especially for a Celtic side notoriously prone to concentration lapses & with a pretty dire recent record at Hampden. I’ve only ever seen us achieve the Treble once, in 2000/01: that season proved memorable for me in ways that can never be repeated, as much as I enjoyed the football I had some other stuff going on which, as hard as it is to believe, hugely outranked it in importance.
Martin O’Neill arrived at Celtic in early June 2000. At that point morale amongst the support was pretty low, having endured the largely painful preceding season of the Barnes/ Black/ Dalglish fiasco, Henrik’s leg-break, & the notorious Inverness defeat that was to keep tabloids & TV stations in raptures for decades to follow. I should have been brimming with enthusiasm at the arrival of one of the most admired & coveted managers in Britain, soon to be followed by multi-million pound signings the likes of which had never been seen at Celtic Park. I should have been, but I was distracted by some major challenges at work, which were making me spend 4-5 days a week down in That London. As well as that, I found out I was going to become a father for the first time. Never a dull moment round our place that summer…
The early part of that season for me was a bit of a part-time exercise if truth be told: I wasn’t able to attend midweek games because of work, and my weekends were pretty hectic & revolved around making sure my wife was ok & slotting in football if I could. I didn’t go to the 6-2 game, coming at the end of a particularly long & very stressful week I decided to watch it on the TV instead & spend the time I would have getting to & from the game at home instead. Great decision that one. As the season wore on, & the lead at the top of the table started to grow, I started to entertain fanciful notions that this might turn out to be a very special year for Celtic, recollecting that the last treble had been completed in 1969, the year I was born, therefore it was only natural & fitting that 2001, bringing with it the arrival of my progeny, would bring another. Thankfully I wasn’t conceited or anything.
The only midweek game I managed to make it to in the first half of the season was at Tynecastle, as we put a team out basically consisting of the youth team plus Lubo & horsed the Jambos 5-2 in the League Cup. The scoreline barely tells the story: it was one of the most entertaining & thrilling Celtic performances I can ever recall witnessing, certainly away from home, as a young team playing totally without fear utterly dismantled a fairly decent Hearts side in front of their own fans. I enjoyed that one immensely!
2000/01 brought with it another major event that had a big impact on me at the time, and still does. I was asked to be Godfather to my friends daughter, still probably one of the greatest honours I’ve ever been given. The godparent thing may be ceremonial mainly, but its very humbling to think that someone values you enough to ask you to take that role with their kid. I’m not sure I’ve been that great in the role to be honest, I’m not particularly great at keeping in touch with my friends & my recollection of birthdays is especially rubbish, but I still take the responsibility seriously & it’s a source of no little pride to see her turn into a confident & accomplished teenager.
My musical obsession at the time was Radiohead, with Kid A & Amnesiac neatly bookending the 2000/01 season in release dates. I was a big fan of the transition from anthemic guitar stuff to brooding, plinky-plonky soundscapes that began on OK Computer, and Kid A was the plinkiest & plonkiest mainstream album I could have anticipated. They played a big top tent on Glasgow Green in late September, with myself & my trusty sidekick Iain undertaking an eventful pre-gig pub crawl around the Gallowgate/ Barrowland area, culminating in an utterly mesmerising gig & a spectacularly failed attempt by Iain at blagging a backstage pass for afterwards. I still listen to Kid A regularly: it conjures up memories of travel, endless flights to and from London, the Underground, the hustle-bustle of the commute, lonely nights in hotel bedrooms eating really bad food & drinking lukewarm beer, stressing endlessly about work and home. I’m glad I don’t have to live that way now, but listening to Kid A strangely makes me realise it wasn’t anything other than a good time in my life. There’s a song on there, How To Disappear Completely, that I still tend to go to if things are getting too much: I read an old interview with Thom Yorke where he told the story of how he wrote it after a particularly bad bout of stage-fright, and it helps me to listen to it when I’m feeling anxious or have a sense of dread about anything on the horizon, usually professional-related. Music as therapy, cheap but effective.
By soon after the turn of the year, the Treble was on: the League was looking pretty much won, the League Cup semi final was coming up, and we started to make progress in the Scottish Cup. By that point I was on a ‘confined to base’ work pattern ahead of the new arrival, due early February: my boss at the time had given me some very sound and long-lasting advice about the real priorities in life, and as such had banned me from leaving Edinburgh until after the baby had safely arrived, something I was and remain very grateful for. This meant amongst other things that I was able to be at the League Cup semi-final against Rangers, managing to pick up a few tickets from a Falkirk-supporting friend of the family who had invested the previous year in Debenture seats at Hampden for him & his sons before realising he wasn’t likely to get much use from them outwith Internationals. The agreed protocol with the by-then heavily-pregnant Mrs T was that if she called, I came home immediately: I didn’t drive back then, so this would involve rushing to Queen Street Station as quickly as I could, from wherever I was, to get the next train home. The phone went about 6pm as I stood in a bar in St Vincent Street prior to heading down to Hampden: I froze then, extremely nervously, answered as I moved towards the door. “Is everything ok? Is it happening??” I spluttered, absolutely bricking it as I stood on the pavement outside the pub. “This was a test. Enjoy the game!” came the reply.
The game itself was brilliant: Henrik’s lob over Klos, arguably better than the 6-2 goal given he then rounded him & blasted it into the empty net on the volley, and the mass brawl at the end when the game was already won, were particular highlights. The 3-1 win got us to our first Final under MON & set us up for the home League game against them the following Sunday. A pretty humdrum game was eventually settled by a right-foot toepoke by Alan Thompson from 6 yards out right in front of their supporters: back-to-back victories against the Huns were always good fun, but those two stick in the memory more than most. I got home that night, tired & emotional, and announced that, after much deliberation, if the imminently arriving bambino was a boy, I’d be happy to call it after my wife’s father, which we had been debating for some time. After an initial few minutes of happiness from Mrs T, she saw through my dastardly plan: “Wait a minute…who scored for Celtic today….you bastard!”. Well, it was worth a try: I was still banking on slipping Henrik onto the birth certificate when I registered the birth anyway…
Her waters broke the following Thursday morning. After the usual to-ing and fro-ing with the Maternity Unit, she eventually was kept in the hospital on the Friday morning & the process of inducing the birth began. By this point it was clear I wasn’t going to Dunfermline for the Cup game on the Saturday. After a very long & profoundly difficult labour, my daughter was born on the Saturday evening, 17th February 2001. Anyone who ever doubts just how superior & more resilient women are to men, witness childbirth. My pre-event gags about comparing it to “a really bad shave” were swiftly forgotten as I became engaged in what essentially is trench warfare. It’s terrifying, stressful, bloody, clearly excruciatingly painful, and the most amazing experience I will ever be a part of, however small. The moment when she arrived was heavenly- this wee thing that’s a part of you emerges, and your life changes forever. Unfortunately I didn’t get long to savour the moment, as my wife was rushed from the labour ward into the operating theatre next door to deal with some internal bleeding that was worrying the doctor. I have a vivid recollection of sitting there, my newborn daughter in my arms, nobody else there but us, then glancing up to see what looked like a scene from Platoon as I glanced round the room where my life had changed forever. A scary hour or so ended in good news as the doctor came back to tell me that they had resolved the issue successfully with my wife, and I went off to call my family with the news of my daughter’s arrival. We drew 2-2 at East End Park, Henrik got them both.
In the lead-up to the birth, my wife & I had been watching a BBC drama called Glasgow Kiss, a complicated love story about a Celtic–supporting Glasgow football journalist (I know, I DID say it was fictional) and the newspaper executive sent up from London to implement corporate restructuring on his paper. The theme had a lot of resonance for me as at that point I was spending a lot of time down south doing the same in reverse, representing a Scottish company taking over an English one. Anyway, the key thing about this was the lead female character was called Cara, and when it came to finding a name for our daughter, that’s where we settled. My second daughter would grow to resent this romantic little story some years later, when she found out she was named, by my eldest, after her school pal’s dog.
Almost a month to the day after my daughter arrived, we had the League Cup Final against Kilmarnock. I was in the Debenture seats again that day, and had the added bonus of blagging my way into the Hospitality area for pies & free drinks before the game and at half time. We won the game 3-0, Henrik with a fabulous hat trick & despite a ludicrous sending-off for Chris Sutton. The first leg of the Treble was won. The second was to follow a couple of weeks later, when we finally wrapped the title up in a very nervous lunchtime kick-off against St Mirren at home, with the eternally effervescent Tommy Johnson, TB’s last signing for Celtic, fittingly scoring the winner. I can’t remember ever being as happy for any single player as I did that day- never universally popular, and probably quite limited as a player, he was however someone I really enjoyed seeing in the Hoops & it was great to see him have his day in the sun. A week later we beat Dundee United 3-1 in the Scottish Cup semi-final & set ourselves up for a tilt at the Treble v Hibs.
In the couple of months following the birth I’d hauled myself back onto the corporate treadmill, and was back to spending extended periods during the week away from home. This put a heavy burden on Mrs T, who understandably was ready to pretty much throw the baby at me when I arrived back on a Friday night to give her some well-earned respite. I enjoyed the fatherhood thing: I could essentially play her good tunes (albeit quietly) and talk to her about anything I wanted, her wee face pretty much making the grind of work & travel melt away when I saw her. I even got quite adept at nappy changes, and when I was there the nighttime feeds became opportunities to watch the Star Wars movies together without maternal interference (original trilogy obvs). To this day I still see my role as a sort of “Cultural Ambassador” one, introducing them both to good bands, decent movies, and entertaining books. That, and the whole rearing them, keeping them safe & secure, making them good contributors to society, stuff. But the cultural aspect more so…
I didn’t get a ticket for the Cup Final. Well, not initially. My source for the other Hampden games that season had given his debenture seats to a Hibby doctor he worked alongside, and I had missed too many games to qualify for an allocation from the club. I flirted with the idea of buying one for the Hibs end then decided against it & resigned myself to watching it on the TV. I got a call around 8pm on the Friday night from my pal Dave, a Hibbee: his wife had queued all afternoon at Easter Road on his behalf to pick up two tickets from the last remaining in the Hibs allocation, and he was offering me one, along with a mutual friend of ours, Terry, who was also a Celtic fan, back from Norway for the weekend & desperate for a ticket. After quickly getting the thumbs-up from my wife, I accepted the offer with thanks. I was going to the game!
I met Dave & his pals, all of whom I knew well from previous exploits, in the Queens Park Social Club the following lunchtime. I’d settled on a green shirt to wear in the scorching Glasgow sun that day, reckoning that was passable to fit in amongst the Hibs fans. There were a few other Celtic fans in the company that day & we were mocked mercilessly yet good-naturedly by the packed bar full of Hibs fans, clearly enjoying their day but under no illusions as to the scale of the task they had taking on a seemingly unstoppable Celtic side. As we headed off toward the South Stand just before kick-off, I noticed a commotion at one of the turnstiles: a Celtic supporter, short-sleeved Hoops & shorts on, getting manhandled away from the Hibs end by a steward. As I got closer I realised it was a guy I knew from home, Frankie, and he recognised me & held his arms out pleadingly ”Paul, can you fuckin’ believe it, they’re no goany let me in dressed like this!” Ten minutes and the purchase of a “Hibernian Scottish Cup Finalists 200/01” T-shirt later, I’d got him into the ground & headed off to find Terry & take our seats. As we sat there chatting, the guy next to Terry turned round & asked where he was from. “Partick”, said Terry. “Partick? That’s quite unusual for a Hibbee!”. “Aye, it is” said Terry, as the realisation dawned on the guy’s face. He didn’t speak to us again. The game itself was pretty straightforward for us, a 3-0 win with 2 again from Henrik & a Jackie Mac goal. The Treble was won!
I ended up in The Dolphin on Dumbarton Road that night, celebrating with Terry & friends & a pub-full of delighted Celtic fans. I ventured back to Queen Street via the underground in time for the last train, phoned my wife to tell her I’d try & get a taxi home from Linlithgow, but she informed me the baby was still awake anyway so she’d come & pick me up & hopefully the car journey would settle her down for the night. I don’t remember much about the journey home but I vividly remember seeing her wee face in the back of the car at the train station, grinning at me, and convincing myself that she knew just what a momentous day it had been. I sat the following morning reading the papers, Cara alongside me, and savoured the year I’d had since finding out we were going to have her. There may be further Trebles ahead, I certainly hope so, but none will ever mean as much to me as my first one did.
Well I Wonder... 