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Details
Title: Keep the Faith: The Story of Celtic’s Treble Winning Season 2000-2001
Author: Ron MacKenna and Carlos Alba
Published: 9 Aug 2001
Synopsis
Product Description
The arrival of manager Martin O’Neill in the summer of 2000 to a demoralized team seemed like yet another tem-porary interlude in the club’s free-fall from grace.
Yet within months, O’Neill had restored a vitality to his squad that could seriously challenge Rangers’ reign of superiority and with it came a growing belief that the club was on the brink of greatness.
Through cancer scares, injury setbacks and passionate clashes with local rivals, Rangers, O’Neill guided his squad with calmness and intelligence to a clean sweep of all the domestic trophies. In the process, he has come closer than any other Celtic manager to being spoken of in the same breath as the legendary Jock Stein.
About the Author
Ron Mackenna is a seasoned journalist and now Chief Reporter for The Scotsman. Carlos Alba is the Deputy News Editor for the Sunday Times Scotland.
Both are long-standing Celtic season ticket holders
Review
(from NotTheView)
Keep the Faith is a chronicle of Celtic’s treble-winning season from Martin O’Neill’s arrival at the end of July 2000 through to the Cup Final.
Historical background and supporters’ anecdotes are mixed in with match reports in an attempt to recreate the atmosphere surrounding last season’s treble winning season.
It has already achieved certain notoriety as a result of mentioning that some Celtic fans refer to Ibrox as Castle Greyskull and because of some mention of Billy Connolly meeting Martin O’Neill when the Celtic manager was just out of the shower and clad only in a towel.
This, it would appear, is enough to get you blacklisted from official club outlets.
This storm in a Celtic teacup aside, the book is certainly exhaustive in its coverage of events. Nothing is missed in the running commentary of the season, although given the fact that both of the authors work for newspapers I suppose this is the least you would expect.
It also explains the match reports. Each game from last season is given a match report. Some of these are lifted from newspapers like the Herald or the Scottish Mirror, but the majority is written by the authors. Unfortunately, reading any match report some distance in time from the actual match deprives it of its immediacy. When you start to become in any way objective about them they look pretty awful. The intended effect is lost, the narrative becomes bitty and I ended up skipping them altogether.
The Fourth Estate in general is given too much space for my liking. This constant need to litter the book with quotes from journalists suggested to me that the authors weren’t entirely comfortable with giving the book over to the fans and players, something which would have lent it more kudos in my eyes, not less.
There are a few inaccuracies in the book as well, which, while not spoiling the book due to their frequency occasionally had me wincing. “The friendly played against Bordeaux was also notable for the Parkhead return of Henrik Larsson”. According to the blurb the authors are both long-standing season ticket holders at Parkhead so they must have been away somewhere else when Celtic played Dundee United at the end of the previous season.
Similarly, although their ages aren’t revealed, when I read that George Connelly and Charlie Gallagher had “seamlessly replaced Bobby Murdoch and Bertie Auld who were the engine room that drove the Lisbon Lions” I began to wonder how long is long-standing?
Ample space is given over to comments from fans, media pundits and ex-players, and these are the parts of the book I found most enjoyable. Co-operation from the present playing staff appears to have been limited to brief words from Boyd, Petrov and Lennon. Ramon Vega must have been extremely helpful as well, though. How else can you explain this description; “Handsome, charming and erudite, it wasn’t long before he became a firm favourite of the fans who dubbed him ‘The David Ginola of Scottish Football'”
Who wrote this bit, Vega’s mum?
As far as being a worthy addition to Celtic literature, it’s a good effort, which hits the woodwork.
Product Details
- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Mainstream Publishing (9 Aug 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1840185473
- ISBN-13: 978-1840185478
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 14.8 x 2.4 cm
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