| Match Pictures | Matches: 1972 – 1973 | 1972-73 Pictures |
Trivia
- Connelly absent with flu with McNeill (leg strain), Murdoch (knee) and Macari (ankle) all still on the injured list.Murdoch was given a run out in the Reserves game
- Kenny Dalglish played for Scotland in midweek against Denmark at Hampden. Scotland won 2-0 with Dalglish scoring the first goal. Peter Lorimer scored the second goal and was also sent off.
- Rave reviews for Jinky's performance.
- Hearts play in an Ajax style strip. This was the only occasion they played in this strip at Celtic Park.
- Ex Celt Jim Craig, who had left at the end of the last season, was back in Scotland and training at Celtic Park. He was said to be headed to Germany.
- On the same day Celtic drew 2-2 with Hearts in a Reserve League match at Tynecastle. The Celtic team was Connaghan, J. Davidson, Watt, McNamara, MacDonald, Murdoch, Wilson, V. Davidson, Hancock, White, Prentice. Sub O'Hara. Both of Celtic's goals were scored by Hancock.
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Report
This was an excellent game watched by an appreciative crowd in very cold conditions. Snow was expected.
Hearts took the game to Celtic and the defence looked uncertain without McNeill and Connelly and twice the excellent Ford took advantage to score for Hearts.
Dalglish's goal was a thing of beauty when he played a one two before lashing in an unstoppable shot.
In the second half Hood found form and set up Johnstone for a fine goals after Deans had equalised during a scramble in which Garland appeared to be impeded. Hood scored a glorious goal to finish it off after calmly guiding in a Johnstone cross.
Johnstone was lucky to stay on the filed after a confrontation with Menmuir.
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Teams
Celtic:
Williams, McGrain, Quinn (Lennox), McCluskey, Hay, Brogan, Johnstone, Deans, Dalglish, Hood, Callaghan
Goals: Dalglish (40), Deans (65), Johnstone (73), Hood (83)
Hearts:
Garland, Sneddon, Clunie, Thomson, Anderson, Brown, Park, Menmuir, Ford, Carruthers (Lynch), T Murray
Goals:- Ford (13, 50)
Referee: J Paterson (Bothwell)
Attendance:- 28,000.
Articles
- Match Report (see below)
Pictures
Articles
Glasgow Herald November 20 1972
Stein’s men silence the dark mutterings
Celtic 4, Hearts 2
The ultimate heresy was heard inside Parkhead's press box at the end of a match that filled the mind and stirred the imagination writes lan Archer.
One of my more hard-bitten colleagues turned round and said:—“You know I would actually have paid money to watch that game.” These are strong words, not spoken lightly.
It was that kind of a match, a reawakening. There have been dark mutterings in a few football corridors that Celtic are not the force they were. Bur there was no twilight of the Gods in this match.
It should be said this early that Hearts were a fine football team, composed and economic, able to use possession with flair and menace. Their reward was to take the lead twice and give the match a hard competitive element so often missing from Celtic's routine league engagements.
Donald Ford, consistently undervalued in any list of Scottish strikers, did the damage both times. His first goal was simple and quick. The second starkly comprehensive.
He started with a header inside the full back, carried the ball past another man on a darting and oblique run across the edge of the penalty area and as Celtic closed upon him hit a shot past Williams who seemed astounded at such skill.
That goal should have won any game. Instead it only served to set up a second half in which Celtic revealed their complete repertoire of skills on a pitch which invited disaster rather than dainty grace.
There was no McNeill, no Connelly, no Murdoch, and no Macari to rescue them, and for any other club in Scotland that kind of absentee list would have been too much to overcome.
But Celtic will probably win another championship this season because they have so many men at Parkhead to cover up for the major stars. Quinn, McCluskey, and McGrain played important roles in this performance. Hay, used as a centre half, never faltered.
But above all, there was the incomparable Johnstone in one of his moods where he can make the ball sing, let alone talk. He had to be good, for it was his needless foul which led to the free kick from which Hearts scored their first goal.
In his long act of atonement, he made the second and the fourth goals as well as scoring the third. This is why Jock Stein persists with him when other managers would simply give up trying to handle such a delicate temperament.
MAGNIFICENT
Dalglish was magnificent, scoring the first goal after giving and taking a pass from Deans before hammering a low shot past Garland. He set up the second running in on a Johnstone cross, placing the goalkeeper under pressure and watching Deans guide home a loose ball.
Hood, too, played his part. After Johnstone had calmly gone round the outside of the Hearts defence for his own goal. Hood struck the winger's low cross fiercely into the net for the fourth.
The match was remarkably free of rancour and devoid of many unforced errors. The script lifted it out of the ranks of good games into a list of the great ones. Hearts, who could not expect to win, played superbly in defeat.
