Schoolbhoys Jack Aitchison and Daniel Church will be the envy of the playground this morning.
Despite being too young to sit Standard Grades the hoops duo passed last night’s Glasgow Cup test with flying colours picking up winners medals to show for their efforts.
Celtic’s 2-0 win over Sevco failed to reflect the gulf in class over their lower division opponents with the hoops in command throughout the match.
For Calvin Miller, Mark Hill and captain Regan Hendry it was a farewell to u-17 football as they move up into the Development squad with two Glasgow Cup winners medals to show for their efforts.
Tommy McIntyre is charged with overseeing the professional side of Celtic’s Youth Academy and was quick to signal out the efforts of two kids making their first mark at this level.
“I’m mostly interested in the up-coming players and tonight we had two u-15 players out there in Jack Aitchison (age 15) and Daniel Church (age 14),” the former Aberdeen and Hibs defender said. “I don’t like singling players out but in this occasion it’s justified.
“Experienced players helped them out, Calvin Miller, Mark Hill and Regan Hendry will move on but it’s about experience for Daniel and Jack.
“Both of them were at school and we picked them up after their classes for the pre-match preparations. They spent a full day in a classroom and then they come and play in a final at the National Stadium- how good is that?
“They’ve not yet sat their standard grades and they are playing in a big match like this. Everything is about development and we can see that throughout the squad.”
Goals from Josh Kerr and Mark Hill gave Celtic the trophy with both strikes coming from set pieces during a three minute spell in the second half.
Goalkeeper Ross Doohan pulled off two outstanding saves over the 90 minutes but the bulk of the action was at the other end of the park.
“Apart from the first ten minutes, where we took a little time to settle in, we dominated and controlled the game- even when we didn’t have the ball,” McIntyre added.
“We took our chances from set pieces, we work hard on them, set plays can be the difference between winning and losing and that was the case tonight.
“Our squad has had a tough time of it recently with a lot of games, their fitness levels have to be top notch and you could see that over the 90 minutes.
“You can clearly see that we are going in the right direction with the way that we play the game, that’s the style of the Academy right through to the development team. It’s only right that we play in the same manner as the first team.
While Church and Aitchison return to their schoolwork fired up by their taste of success everyone in last night’s squad will be looking to take their own steps towards following Liam Henderson and Kieran Tierney into Ronny Deila’s first team plans.
CELTIC (4-4-2) Doohan; Ralston, Kerr, Higgins, Church; Miller, McKenna, Hill, Archibald (Murray 89); Hendry, Currie (Aitchison 63)
SUBS: Aidan McAdams, Lewis Bell, Aidan Quinn, Michael Johnstone, Shaun Bowers