As the Celtic party moved from San Francisco for the final match of the tour, the discussions among the Boss and his staff must have been worth listening to. After all, with one match left, Celtic had three players injured – Cushley, McCarron, Auld – two on leave to get married – Johnstone and Young – and that left just 12 fit players, two of which were goalkeepers! Continue reading →

After the trip to Vancouver for the third match against Spurs, it was back to the US and San Francisco to face Bayern Munich. The team in the all-red strip had recently won the West German Cup by beating MSV Duisburg 1-0 and, as the national Bundesliga only came into being in 1963, they were keen to make a name for themselves in the wider world. That made the match against Celtic an important one and both teams were up for the occasion.

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For this match, it was a trip to Vancouver for the party, the encounter being played at the Empire Stadium and a crowd of around 18,000 turned out for it. The teams were ;

Tottenham Hotspur;
Jennings, Beal, Knowles, Mullery, L Brown, Mackay, Posse, Clayton, Weller, Venables, Robertson.

Celtic;
Simpson, Gemmell, O’Neill, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Johnstone, Gallagher, Chalmers, Lennox, Hughes

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The team had arrived in San Francisco a couple of days before this match, so they were able to get in a bit of sightseeing and some light training. Billy McNeill was fit again after sitting out the match in St Louis and that would be important for Celtic, who were expecting a tough time from not only the Spurs players on the park but also the Spurs’ manager, coaches and directors off it.

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After Celtic’s first four matches in the tour had all taken place on the east coast, the party travelled west to St Louis for the next game, against an All-Stars eleven.

The encounter was played at Roosevelt High School – which unlike the pitch for the Bologna game, looked in reasonably god condition – on a Sunday evening and Jock Stein put out an unusual team of;

Ronnie, Ian Young, Tam, Chopper, Luggy, Pumper, Stevie, Bobby L, Ten-Therty, Joe and Yogi.

Cesar was rested, having received two stitches in an eye wound after the Bologna game, Frank McCarron and Wilbur Cushley were out with injuries, so the number of available players was reaching critical proportions.

Fortunately for the squad, the match turned out to be something of a romp ;-

CELTS MAKE IT 41-2!

 

After the brawl with Bologna, it was a swing-time in St Louis for Celtic when Jock Stein’s storm troops shattered the C.Y.M. All-Stars to the tune of 6-1 last night. In the end all the blues were being sung by the locals.

 

The All-stars proved no test for the Scots in a match which developed into a game of change-partners between manager Stein and the St Louis coach. Before the 90 had run, no fewer than 18 All-Stars had taken to the field and Celtic had fielded 14 players.

 

The Celtic goal-machine has now netted 41 goals in seven tour matches and lost only two. Inside two minutes Celtic took the twinkle out of the All- Stars with a one-two punch from Joe and Bobby.

 

Minutes later the St Louis coach decided that some of his players needed a rest and from then onwards he kept sending on a troop of substitutes. Celtic’s third goal came from Bertie in 23 minutes…and four minutes later, Terry Knox became a real All-Star by pulling one back.

 

By the interval, Joe and Yogi had brought the score to 5-1 and Stevie, who played part of the match at right-back, notched the sixth in the 68^th minute.

Just before the game, John Clark got word that he had been included in the Scotland pool for the matches against Portugal and Brazil ; and after the contest, news reached the camp from Jersey City that Spurs had been beaten 1-0 by Bologna.

It was a happy crew that arrived back in their hotel that night, although the nervous fliers were a bit on edge. The following morning, they would be back in the air again, this time heading for California.

After two matches while based in Toronto, the Celtic party moved back to the New York/New Jersey area for the next game, which would be played in the Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City. This venue was generally used for baseball and American football, being the base for the Jersey City Dodgers and the Jersey City Giants. The match was organised by the Italian community of New Jersey.

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After the previous match against Spurs, held in Toronto, the Celtic party only had a short trip to reach Hamilton where the next match would be played, against a most unusual side.

Hamilton Primo was very much a scratch team, put together by a Scot called Bill Paterson, who had been at centre-half for Rangers in the 1960 Scottish Cup final against Kilmarnock. In the weeks prior to the game, Paterson had made several trips to Scotland to recruit several players for his side and of the eleven which took to the field at McMaster University on a very hot evening, 8 of the side were Scots, assisted by 3 Italians.

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After beating the New Jersey All-Stars 6-0 on Wednesday 18^th May 1966, the Celtic party moved north, to Toronto, where they would meet Spurs on Saturday 21^st May at the Varsity Stadium. Continue reading →

On the morning after the match against Bermuda YMCA, the Celtic party travelled north to New York, their hotel just a few minutes from the Empire State Building in Manhattan. The next match would be on Wednesday 18^th May and would be against the New Jersey All-Stars in Kearney, a place visited by Celtic side in the past. Continue reading →

The next match was only three days away and it was against Bermuda YMCA. The boys did some light training before the match but oh! horror of horrors, three of them, Jinky, Ian Young and Frank McCarron, also spent too much time under the golden orb, went down with sunstroke and had to miss the match. The Boss was apparently fuming and, to put it precisely in Glaswegian, did a Benny! Oh! If only I had been there to see that!

Anyway, it meant that the team had to be re-jigged a bit and the eleven which eventually took the field was Ronnie, Tam, Willie O’Neill ( Pumper), Chopper, Cesar, Luggy, Charlie, Stevie, Joe, Bobby and Bertie.

There was a crowd of 3,000 for the contest and it took Celtic 17 minutes to break down the opposing defence, Joe making the breakthrough but after that the goals came thick and fast. By the interval, Bobby L had scored two more and Joe converted a penalty to make it 4-0.

After the break, Tam quickly got into the act to knock in number 5, Bobby got his hat-trick as he made it 6-0, then Tam made it 7-0 with a 20-yarder. Ten minutes from the end, John Cushley (Wilbur) who had come on for Cesar, stumbled on the bumpy pitch and had to come off with what looked like ligament damage.

On the following day, Wilbur was apparently limping quite badly and he was possibly going to be a passenger for the remainder of the trip. However, the general feeling among the party as they made their way to the airport and a flight north to the US would surely have been one of satisfaction. 17 goals in 2 games was a good start to any tour!

Here in Scotland, the fans were happy with what they were hearing from across the Atlantic….and they were even more delighted with the news that Celtic would play Manchester United in a pre-season friendly at Celtic Park on 6^th August.