I'll try to start at the beginning: Football began in Britain in the mid 19th century ... okay, maybe not that far back! There are four football teams in Glasgow: Celtic (pronounced sell-tik, always singular); Rangers (no definite article); Queen's Park and Partick Thistle. Celtic and Rangers are a big deal in Glasgow, they are very wealthy professional teams with obscenely loyal fans. They are called The Old Firm, and you don't want to be anywhere near the stadium when they play each other. That is because their fans are deadly serious about their team loyalties. This is partly because, historically, Celtic is the team of Irish Catholics and Rangers is the team of British Protestants. Yep. You cannot go into a pub in Glasgow if you're wearing football colors. No matter whose team it is, it could be Barcelona and you'd still be kicked out of the pub because of all the fights that have happened in the past. I've heard rumors that the Starbucks located in a Rangers-supporting part of Glasgow changed their logo from green (Celtic colors, you know) to black in order to keep from being vandalized.
Queen's Park is from the south side of Glasgow (Cathcart, where Paul grew up). They're an amateur team, meaning they don't get paid to play, and they are in the Second Division. There are four divisions: Premier (Celtic and Rangers belong here), First, Second, and Third. I have no idea why a second division team played a premier league team, but it happened and I was there.
Anyway, the weather was great, the sun was out and the sky was clear, no snow to be seen! The game was at Celtic's home stadium, Parkhead, in Glasgow's east end. We were very close to the pitch (field) and had a good view for the match (game). Unfortunately, since QP is such a small team, there were only 1,000 seats allotted for the QP fans in the away stands - and they sold out almost immediately. So we had to sit with the Celtic fans and pretend to root for Celtic. The guy who sat next to me for the first half was so funny, he kept yelling instructions to the Celtic players and then, when they didn't follow his instructions, he yelled 'Tha's Dreadful!' I tried not to laugh.
The game was really good actually. Most people had been sure that Celtic would score at least six goals against Queen's Park, but in actual fact the final result was Celtic 2, Queen's Park 1. In the second half, Queen's Park was really strong, they scored a goal (you should have seen the away stands bouncing and shaking!) and attacked the Celtic goal with vigor. The Queen's Park keeper (goalie) was really good and he saved tons of would-be goals! In fact, Celtic was barely hanging on by the end of the match! Their performance was so poor, these professional millionaires against a bunch of amatuers, that their own fans booed them even though they won the game! Vicious!
I got some really good pictures too. (Yay for my camera!)
Jock Stein was manager for Celtic for a period, led them to victory at the European Cup in 1967, I believe. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong!)
Policing matches is serious business. There were so many security guards and police officers in the stadium, I've never seen so many police in one place before. Towards the end of the match, a helicopter appeared overhead!
Celtic are in green and white striped jerseys and Queen's Park are in blue and orange. Their home colors are black and white stripes.
The linesman, doing whatever a linesman does.
Hurray for nice fluffy clouds!
All in all, it was fun and I'm glad I went. It was a nice introduction to football matches, since there were no riots or anything!
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