Justice at last
BY CIARAN HEAPHEY
There is not a lot of sport to write about this week.
Well, maybe there is, but you don't get to see an awful
lot of sport over the Christmas when your arse is glued
to a bar stool. So we'll just have to gloat over
another victory for the cause of right thinking and
progressive people everywhere.
Celtic have finally broken the near infallabilty of a
Rangers side hoping to stroll to ten titles in a row by
ending a ten-year famine of victories over them on New
Year's - and their first since 1995. In the first 20
minutes the match was an even enough affair, after
which Celtic stepped up a gear.
In the midfield battle the limitations of Rangers was
tested by Craig Burley, Paul Lambert and big Dane,
Morton Wieghorst.
In defence Italian Enrico Annoni, the much improved
Stubbs and Boyd and McNamara blotted out the Rangers
attack, even the normally rampant goal-scoring Marco
Negri failed to get a look in.
Up front new £2m striker Harold Brattbakk could have
bagged a few goals with better finishing and a little
luck. We look forward to hearing more from Harold in
the future. The goals when they did come were crackers.
Craig Burley's 76th minute strike sent Parkhead ablaze
and Paul Lamberts 25 yarder nipping in inside the
left-hand post was pure genius.
The nearest Rangers could come to a goal or even
threatening Jonathan Gould's goalmouth was a penalty
appeal after Stubbs was supposed to have stepped across
Laudrup on the edge of the box.
With a trip to Motherwell at the weekend this game
looks ripe for the three points. Remember, however,
what happened at St Johnstone before the Old Firm game.
And as manager and players alike have been saying,
there is definitely no room for complacency after
beating Rangers. Using the victory as a springboard to
league success would be a mistake, after all it's only
three points like any other game. Now that the
pychological barrier in beating them is broken
confidence is I'm sure sky high. The last time Celtic
beat Rangers on New Year's day in 1988 they won the
double...
d what about Paul Gascoigne? This poor clown hasn't
learnt a thing from a previous encounters with an
imaginary flute a few years ago. Does he even know
what's it all about? I doubt it. And so what if the
crowd guiled him by calling him a ``wife beater''? It's
only the truth.
I must admit to a period of chuckling at someone else's
misfortune when I saw that the World Cup Final this
year is to be played on the Twelfth of July. I was
quite relishing the prospect of soccer-loving Orangemen
having to miss the match in favour of kick-the-Pope
speeches and ice cream cones at the field. But then I
heard that the Twelfth falls on the Sabbath this year,
so the marching is on the Monday, which means it won't
be a quiet day for isolated nationalists after all.
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