SPL Wednesday April 5th 2006

Celtic 1

Hearts 0

1:0 Hartson 7 Celtic

Att: 59,684

MIB: Dougie McDonald

Celtic: Boruc Telfer Balde McManus Wilson Nakamura Petrov Lennon Maloney Zurawski Hartson
subs
Pearson for Nakamura 58
Dublin for Hartson 69
McGeady for Maloney 82

How fitting that our nearest rivals should find themselves at Celtic Park the night we win the title.

By common consent this is the strongest Hearts team for many years. Hibs too have their best outfit for quite some time, while the mighty Glasgow Huns FC strode like a colossus into the last 16 of the Champions League.

So what kind of monicker is being attached to the Celtic side that have won the title by 20 points two games before the split? The best of a bad bunch.

Luckily for us the only important part of that sentence is the first two words.

Hearts certainly went down fighting (you know I mean that quite literally), but an unexpected shot from birthday bhoy John Hartson caught out Craig Gordon and in the end that was enough.

Hearts had a goal disallowed for offside and the ref was looking the other way when Bobo tried to disembowel one of the Hearts forwards in our box, but that aside Celtic were fairly comfortable. Has anyone else noticed that Boruc only tends to make schoolboy mistakes in the smaller games?

After the final whistle the team took a lap of honour to the sound of singing from the stands. No pop tunes specially selected for the day etc. And it was fabulous. Far better to let the fans sing the team round the ground.