KILMARNOCK, SCOTLAND - JANUARY 18: Celtic Manager Martin O'Neill during a Scottish Gas Scottish Cup Fourth Round match between Auchinleck Talbot and Celtic at BBSP Stadium Rugby Park, on January 18, 2026, in Kilmarnock, Scotland. (Photo by Alan Harvey/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Ahead of a Hampden semi-final Martin O’Neill has relived his Auchinleck Talbot fear.
When Celtic were drawn to play the Ayrshire club it looked like a quaint, unique match up.
Giants of Ayrshire Junior football against Scotland’s most successful club.
With every passing match of Wilfried Nancy’s disastrous reign the tie took on a new look. Jeopardy.
Celtic fans were relieved that the match had been switched to Rugby Park. Very rarely are Celtic supporters looking gratefully on Kilmarnock’s plastic pitch.
On January 5 Nancy was no more. Sacked, alongside Paul Tisdale.
Nancy had lost the League Cup Final and four out of six SPFL matches, costing Celtic 12 points.
Nancy wouldn’t be taking Celtic to Ayrshire in the Scottish Cup.
O’Neill returned, again.
O’NEILL REVEALS HIS BIGGEST FEAR
In his third match in charge he had to face Auchinleck. Placed in charge of Celtic’s Scottish Cup hopes.
Across Europe national cup competitions have been devalued. An afterthought for the richest clubs. But not in Scotland.
The Celtic Way reports O’Neill saying:
I think the tradition in Scotland is you want to win it. You want to try and win, so you go as strong as you possibly can. The earlier round, where I did make changes against Auchinleck Talbot, playing on the plastic pitch, in our first round, that game worried me to death.
I wanted to see what a couple of players were capable of doing, but I didn’t want to disrespect the competition, I wanted to get through. And I was really worried beforehand. We managed to win, not convincing at all in the game.
I made a mistake after Liverpool when we beat them in the UEFA Cup in 2003, and we had ten changes, because we played on a Thursday night, went up to Inverness Caledonian Thistle, and that’s a big regret.
Goals from Johnny Kenny and Sebastian Tounekti saw off Auchinleck.
The Scottish Cup route has been full of obstacles for Celtic.
It took the only goal of Junior Adamu’s Celtic career to take Dundee to extra-time.
At Ibrox in the quarter-final Celtic had to go to penalties to progress.
O’Neill is two matches away from his fourth Scottish Cup triumph. He knows better than anyone that it will have to be earned by grafting 100% on the pitch. Nothing else will succeed.
Celtic have been labouring throughout the season. Their last two matches have been single goal wins against bottom six sides.
Last Saturday St Mirren were comfortable in possession, had the edge in second half possession but barely created a chance. In the League Cup Final they went in front after three minutes. Celtic never properly recovered from being spooked.
The winners of today’s semi-final against St Mirren will face Dunfermline in the final on May 23.
First point I want to make is regarding the significance and importance of the competition with the Scottish Cup being the second oldest senior professional football championship in the world, where countless epic ties have been won and lost and footballing legends were created. I think it’s wrong to devalue it and treat it disrespectfully.
On rotating players, O’Neil has never been one to alter things drastically and there is an often repeated argument to play safe and keep the ship stable by trusting the same players from now to the end of the season.
The counter-argument is Einstein’s definition of insanity when you persist with the same methods and personnel expecting to achieve different results.
The truth is that we have been absolutely dire all season and appear to be gradually getting worse in recent games so I think it’s essential to make sweeping changes to our line-up for today’s semi final. For example, a 4-4-2 with Saracchi to start and Nygren next to Ianacho up front.
Got to do something or we can expect to see similar or even worse than last Saturday’s game and I see a much higher risk of disaster if MON persists with practically the same line-up (Scales’ suspension maybe being the only forced change).