While I am not an expert on the history of Celtic FC, or an expert on anything for that matter, I felt that it was great to be part of the history of the club.
In the build up to the match v Hearts, there was the possibility of the current team beating a 50 year old record that is older than the Kingston Bridge! The trams had only stopped running a few years prior to the original record being made.
After the record of 26 games without defeat, Celtic have made it to three European finals (1967, 1970 and 2003). The point I am making here is that the record is a really old record and a lot of great Celtic teams have been and gone since the original record was created.
As the full time whistle blew against Hearts and we were celebrating a 4-0 win, I started to think about some of the players who were part of the team that created the 50 year old record that the current team had just broken.
Players who are European Cup winners and players who stopped playing football before I was born. Players that I grew up to hear stories about from older family members. Despite the fact that I have never saw these guys play for Celtic, there’s plenty of them that I would recognise even today if I walked by them in the street.
Some are no longer with us, some of them I have even been lucky enough to have met and spent a few seconds chatting to.
I am 34 years old and the record of unbeaten matches in domestic football is amazing.
While I get that I could well be rambling on a bit here, I think it is important to think about how big an achievement it is for the current team to have gone so long without defeat in domestic football.
Who knows where Brendan Rogers will take us. Some people are talking about making it through the whole season without defeat. Others are talking about us winning a treble.
I won’t see the season as a failure if we don’t get a treble or an undefeated season. I already see that the season has been pretty good. Especially when it’s compared to other recent seasons.
I guess a big part of things to consider is whether or not we can keep our main players or if they want to stay with us. I read a tweet today that was quite amusing, it was a list of the players who the Scottish media have told us will be leaving in this transfer window.
Some of the players in question are Kieran Tierney, Moussa Dembele, Craig Gordon, Jozo Simunovic and Nir Bitton. There have been others mentioned but that’s five who are regular starting players.
Next season may well be even more difficult for us. Will we be able to keep the majority of players together ? Will they all want to hang around to try and get into the Champions League again? Would they prefer to move on to another league and to earn a higher wage ?
Not many people know the answer and of course we don’t know what the future holds. For now, I’m just loving life as a Celtic supporter and I am going to enjoy every minute of it.
Like most fans, I have supported the team while we were barely able to string a few passes together never mind get a few victories. Recently, some have suggested that football is boring right now because Celtic are so far ahead of the rest of the teams in the league.
It’s up to them to step up their game and try and catch up with us. If we are playing in the Champions League again for a few seasons, other Scottish teams will see the benefit too – some will get a large cash payment that they can use to keep some of their better players and ultimately the overall game may improve in the country.
I don’t really care too much about whether or not it does but I do care about the fact that whenever our amazing run comes to an end, I will be able to say that I have been a part of watching it.
Who knows, when I’m an old man, well an older man than I am right now, I can be the guy in the pub who remembers the great Celtic teams of the past. Each and every one of us can say that we witnessed the 2016 / 2017 team breaking a 50 year old record.
Well done to all of the players and staff who were involved in creating this record. Who knows how many games we will go without defeat before this record comes to an end?