Just Another Saturday

I used to love games against Rangers. There was nothing like the atmosphere at those matches and as a teenager I couldn't get enough of it. There was no feeling quite like scoring against them and the euphoria of beating them would last for days.

I used to love standing in the Jungle and belting out all the rebel songs as the Huns were put to the sword on the pitch. The drive on the supporters' bus to and from the game was brilliant too - giving their buses the finger as we overtook each other on the motorway, then the hairy experience of getting stuck in traffic outside the Louden Tavern near Parkhead Forge, or waiting in a traffic jam as we drove through Dennistoun on the way back.

Those games were without a doubt the highlights of the season and two games at Ibrox in particular stand out for me. There was the 2-1 win in March 1988 when goals by Paul McStay and Andy Walker all but guaranteed the league in the Centenary Season.

Paul McStay was footballing perfection that year and he scored one of his best goals that day, a left-footed volley from the edge of the box past Chris Woods. There was also a sublime turn in midfield which from the Broomloan Road Stand seemed to send the entire Rangers team the wrong way.

The other was in March 1992, in Liam Brady's first season as manager. It had been a difficult year, but from about January he had us playing some great stuff and that day at Ibrox we passed them off the park. We won 2-0 and they were lucky to get the nil. Charlie Nicholas scored a breathtaking volley from about 25 yards and Gerry Crainey added a second, going past Richard Gough in the box before finding the inside of the back post with his left foot, leaving Goram helpless.

Long before the end the Huns were streaming out, the "Oles!" greeting every Celtic pass. It seemed in that moment that things might be getting better after three very poor seasons. They barely got a kick of the ball in the second half and it was like watching one of the continental teams that regularly hammered them in action. Anyone who was there can confirm that is no exaggeration.

But as magic as those games were, the fixture had a habit of turning round and kicking you in the teeth, as happened two weeks later in the Scottish Cup at Hampden when despite David Robertson being ordered off after about 90 seconds, they still managed to beat us 0-1 on the kind of horrible rainy night that Hampden seems to specialise in.

The nineties gave us many more days/nights like that Hampden shocker against them and no Celtic fan who lived through it can say they weren't permanently scarred by the experience. The personal low point for me was the New Year's Day match in 1994 when we lost 2-4 at home. The Huns were two goals up inside 3 minutes and when Charlie Nicholas scored on 81 minutes it was the first goal I ever saw against them at which I could barely raise a cheer.

By this time I was in my 20's and was in the middle of my university years. My university had a large Irish contingent and to my initial confusion, very few of them were interested in the rebels, even the Catholics from the north. Most of them saw Celtic as no more than a quaint second team at best as well but that's another story.

It was around about that time I lost my enthusiasm for the rebels and my illusions that Celtic was Ireland's team.

If university broadened my horizons it was around this time that I started to feel that the matches against Rangers, as thrilling as they could be, were more about hatred than anything else. The atmosphere was something else, but it wasn't healthy. The kind of feeling that pervaded those matches was the same kind of feeling that motivated Rangers to embark on their EBT fuelled corruption of Scottish football.

That overriding need to beat Celtic that we see so clearly in everything the successor club does today is not motivated purely by footballing rivalry. It's about putting Timmy in his place. It's the WATP mentality that cannot stomach playing second fiddle to Timmy. The same kind of mentality that sees people hospitalised after every game we play against them.

By the turn of the century, I'd fallen out of love with the O** F*** game.

I still never missed a game against them but I no longer enjoyed them. They were a chore to get through. Something to be endured. I welcomed the relief of the final whistle and the end of it for another month or two.

I used to feel uneasy about them for about a week beforehand. It was the one domestic game with an uncertain outcome. It had the potential every time to be a real sickener, watching their bigoted fans celebrate beating us with bucketloads of sectarian bile. Usually as a result of the kind of refereeing display we saw from Mike McCurry at Ibrox in 2008.

And with the knowledge that something was not quite right in how they went about their business. We didn't know what they were doing exactly until the Big Tax Case emerged, but we knew something wasn't right.

Never more so than in the summer of 2008 when they failed to qualify for the Champions League but still splashed out millions on the likes of Mendes, Davis, Bougherra and Miller. We knew they were deep in debt then. Yet still they were splurging millions on players. This lot became the spine of the team that won them three titles in a row from 2008/09 - 2010/11.

They weren't paying their debt down, and unbeknownst to us at the time, they were putting nothing aside to pay their enormous bill to HMRC. In the summer of 2010 they even paid out £4m on Nikica Jelavic, whose goals would fire them to a third title in a row and a League Cup Final win over us.

Rangers gave us competition alright, but it wasn't honest competition. Not by a long way. They had the governing body, match officials, the media and the bank in their back pocket and were operating an industrial scale tax evasion scheme, just to keep up with Celtic. And the end justified (in their minds) the means.

Rangers destroyed the integrity of Scottish football just to put Timmy in his place.

When Rangers died in 2012, it's no exaggeration to say it was one of the most memorable moments of my life. It was beyond my wildest dreams just a year or two before but the reality of it was that Rangers was now gone. Deceased. A former football club. Now defunct. Dead.

Then the Frankenstein's Monster that is Sevco, fashioned from the re-animated body parts of Rangers Football Club, were given a helping hand into Division 3 and while we had four blissful years without them while they toiled to win promotion against part-time bricklayers, plumbers, firemen and postmen, they were like a dark cloud on the horizon again.

Whenever we've played Sevco, it feels an awful lot like the old days. There are the same horrible, bigoted fans who have only too willingly allowed the club to convince them they are still Rangers.

There's the same media hyperbole about the "O** F*** match" as they crank up the hate in the week before, then tut-tut sanctimoniously about the consequences they helped to create (but only if Celtic win).

There are the same friendly match officials bending the rules to their benefit.

I hate games against Sevco almost as much as I grew to hate matches against Rangers.

The real difference between a match v Rangers and a match v Sevco though is what happens on the pitch. Their financial shenanigans always ensured they were pretty evenly-matched affairs. Of our five matches v Sevco so far, all but one were a stroll in the park. Even the one we drew but lost on penalties should have been won.

I'll never be overconfident before we play Sevco. Barrie McKay is right in one thing he says in the papers this morning - they can beat us.

Just like on any given day ICT, Kilmarnock, Hearts, Aberdeen, Ross County or any other Premiership team you care to mention can beat us. What that does not mean though is that they will.

I'll be very surprised if we go through the season unbeaten domestically. We're bound to have an off-day sooner or later. It might have been Motherwell a few weeks ago when we went in 0-2 down at half-time. Our comeback that day won't happen every time we go 0-2 down.

But when that defeat does come (as surely it will), it's every bit as likely to be at the hands of a Partick Thistle or Motherwell as it is to Sevco.

Saturday's game went pretty much as I expected it to. Sevco came out of the traps like men possessed. With high energy levels  and aggression, they troubled us for the first 20 minutes or so. Just like ICT or Hearts can.

They even managed to score in that period, just like countless diddy clubs have in the past.

But just like you would expect against a Hearts or a Dundee, Sevco couldn't keep that level of intensity up for very long. Not only did Celtic's class begin to tell around the 25 minute mark, they'd also run out of steam by then. They'd given it their best shot and now had an hour to face a vastly superior opponent with only a one goal lead to show for it.

A narrative has quickly been pushed in the media that Sevco dominated the first half. They didn't. By the last 15 minutes of the first half the tide had well and truly turned.

The second half was a procession towards the Sevco goal. We carved them open at will and only very good goalkeeping and the woodwork saved them from Barrie McKay's proverbial "doing." Not to mention some very dodgy offside calls stopping the game with Celtic in promising positions.

But the biggest difference for me was my reaction as the goals went in. When we scored against Rangers, even in my own living room, I'd be going absolutely mental. I mean bouncing around the living room, fist-pumping at the telly, screaming at the top of my voice mental. That's what it meant to score against Rangers. Not only the horrible stuff surrounding them, but our biggest and oldest rivals. The ones my father and grandfather before me had had the exact same experiences of.

When Dembele scored on Saturday? Don't get me wrong, it elicited a very loud "YES!!!" and a fist in the air, but I stayed very much on the sofa. It just wasn't that big a deal. Same when Sinclair scored the winner. It was great, but no greater than when Rogic scored his winner against Motherwell a few weeks ago.

A match against Sevco is not just like any other match and as long as they're with us (hopefully not too long) it never will be. But that's only down to their fans, the crazy officiating, and the desperate media hype in the build up.

It's nothing to do with them or the alleged threat they pose us. The day will come when they beat us. It's inevitable. But when it happens, it won't signify anything more than when we lose to Hearts or Kilmarnock.

There was a period of time in the O'Neill/Strachan eras when we seemed to lose one match every season to Hearts. It didn't mean they were title contenders, it just meant that with plenty of effort and aggression, and with a big crowd howling them on, on a given day Hearts had enough about them to trouble us. We'd still finish 20+ points above them at the end of the season.

So I'll never head into a Sevco match, especially at Ibrox, confidently predicting a four or five goal victory because anything can happen on the day. But I'll never head there feeling any more trepidation than I would heading to the Caledonian Stadium or Rugby Park. Because that's the calibre of player at Sevco and that's the level of threat they pose to us.

We're supposed to need Sevco in the top league to provide Celtic with competition, but they have fewer points today than Aberdeen had at the same stage last season. The gap this season is not just wider because Celtic have immeasurably improved, it also this wide because Sevco are actually less competition for us than Aberdeen have been the past four seasons.

It's not out of the question that they'll beat us but it'll have no more than symbolic significance if they do.

Sorry Sevco. You might look, feel, behave and smell like Rangers, but you're not Rangers. You're an also-ran.