SPL Sunday April 16th

Celtic 1

Hibernian 1

0:1 Fletcher 35
1:1 Zurawski 76

Att: 60,047

MIB: Kevin Toner

Celtic: Boruc Telfer Varga McManus Wilson Nakamura Lennon Petrov Maloney Hartson Zurawski
subs
Maloney for Petrov 45
Dublin for Hartson 66
Pearson for Keane 82

Trophy lifting days can often fall flat (O'Neill's last was a dismal 2-1 defeat by Dunfermline) and this threatened to do like wise. But after 70 minutes Telfer finally got bored with scudding the ball off the face of the nearest Hibs player and swung the ball in for Magic to level things.

We could have had a winner, but the Hibs goal led a bit of a charmed life.

Not that it mattered; a point to them puts them a bit closer to the hun.

After the final whistle Billy Connolly presented the championship trophy to Neil Lennon and everyone could relax and look happy (especially since we didn't have to go to school the next day, and could therefore get sparkled on strong German beer). Unless of course your name was Stilian Petrov, in which case you stood at the end of the group with a face like a fried shoe.

A couple of years ago Martin O'Neill said in an interview that his biggest regret was not being in the team photo after the 1979 European Cup final because he hadn't played and pride was nipping at his head. Now when he looks at that photo he thinks what a fool he was. If Petrov really is determined to leave will he look back in 20 years at his last medal won with Celtic and think he really enjoyed it to the full? What we needed today was an Ollie to give Stan a good clip round the lug.