"I remember that game very well. Gave Hibs a severe 5-0 tanking. Cadete scored two, Pierre with a free kick, Pat McGinlay with an og after about a minute and I think Brian O'Neill scored the other."
Celtic:
Marshall, Boyd, McKinlay, O'Neil, Stubbs (Hughes, 59), Grant, Di Canio, Wieghorst, Van Hooijdonk, Thom (McLaughlin, 69), Cadete (Donnelly, 61)
Scorers: McGinlay (OG, 4), Cadete (14), Cadete (45), O'Neil (51), Van Hooijdonk (72)
Hibernian: Leighton ,Miller ,Jackson ,Millen ,Welsh ,Joe McLaughlin ,McAllister (Renwick ,78 ) ,Cameron (Donald ,53 ) ,Harper ,Jackson (Wright ,45 ) ,McGinlay
Yellows: Di Canio ,Van Hooijdonk (Celtic) Joe McLaughlin ,McGinlay ,Wright (Hibernian)
Red: McGinlay (Hibernian, 83)
Attendance: 47042
Referee: J. Rowbotham
Celtic fuelled by pace Cadete
Scotland on Sunday 08/09/1996
Celtic 5 Hibernian 0
THE sun splashed down on this fantastic theatre of Parkhead, and before the colour and fanfare of a 47,000 crowd, Celtic created this new low for Hibernian. On such an afternoon as this you felt no-one should be unhappy, but the forbiddingly sorry chops of Dougie Cromb, and Alex Miller's gnarled gloom, made you realise the hurt of being put to the sword by either of the Old Firm.
This was the second time this has happened to poor Miller, after that awful whacking he received at Ibrox last winter. To add irony to his tragedy, he had a player ordered off. Pat McGinlay was once the toast of Celtic's support, having completed a season as top scorer at the old impoverished Parkhead. Yesterday he scored an own goal, received two yellow cards, and was trooping off for an 82nd minute shower with the derision deafening his ears. In truth, McGinlay's second caution for a challenge on Peter Grant looked clumsy more than malicious.
Miller later looked as though he'd been digging up a graveyard but stood with good grace to analyse the match. "We had an uphill battle," he said. "The two opening goals were such simple affairs to give away. Our problem was that we allowed them to dictate the pace and the gap between our defence and our midfield allowed them to exploit us. But Celtic's movement today was magnificent. They have so many threats and a player like Andreas Thom is such a deep thinker on the game."
Tommy Burns, Celtic's manager, looked strangely agitated later. Either it was the fact that Alan Stubbs, a 4.5m defender, was an expensive second-half casualty to depart on a stretcher, or Burns was doing his damndest not to clench his fists and yelp. Whatever the case, he reeled off "swollen ankles" for Stubbs and Grant and decreed that "Big Yogi was magic" before claiming: "These supporters deserve to party because they've put their hard-earned money into this club while going years without anything."
Magic Big Yogi, as those fans will surely remind Burns, faces a stiffer test of his speed and thought on Tuesday night against the Germans from Hamburg.
Of Gordon Marshall, his fitful goalkeeper, there is a quite separate yarn to relate. Marshall here contrived his usual trick of sporadic brilliance with a couple of saved shots before finishing the game by appearing to make slicing gestures towards the press box. Either these were intimations of what he'd like to do to our throats, or imitations of what he's like coming out to flap at a cross. Burns, as usual, commended Marshall like his own son. "He made two or three excellent saves and I'm delighted at the way the supporters responded to this," he said.
Celtic bludgeoned Hibs with goals and threats throughout the match. With their babble of tongues, their various flags of the realm, and even their different styles of boot – including these red dancing shoes that Di Canio likes to flaunt – the home side tore their opponents into multi-coloured, multi-lingual shreds. Marshall could have been off organising a jugglers' jamboree, but when he was occasionally called upon, massive roars went up. "There's only one Gordon Marshall!" the Celtic fans' hymn immediately bellowed, and there certainly is.
Poor Hibs – and how often is that phrase a feature of these despatches – looked a right rabble of pain and confusion. Miller has ended years of solidarity with the old 4-4-2 system to suddenly spring upon his players his sweeper-defence theory. Some of them look as if they'd be more comprehending if Miller had produced a pamphlet on Trinitarian schizms of the 4th century.
On paper, Miller's signings of an initially hard-up, though finally sweet-spending summer, did not look that bad. Many, for instance, have images of Brian Welsh excellence wearing tangerine in their minds, and Ian Cameron has always been a skilful little performer. But here, in this thrashing arena, all of it counted for nought. The Edinburgh side couldn't have been more threatened if Celtic were armed with bayonets.
Between the lumbering gigantism of Welsh and big Joe McLaughlin Celtic's attackers were popping up in all sorts of clearings. Jorge Cadete, hardly the most towering of strikers, got his head to balls everywhere. Thom bore his wretched menace coming from deep, and Pierre van Hooijdonk, when he wanted to bust a gut, perspired the odd bead of sweat. After 70 minutes, the big Dutchman licked the sort of direct free kick past Jim Leighton that had so much velocity it might have trailed some vapour.
Two goals inside the first 15 minutes effectively finished Hibernian. McGinlay lost his footing in the turf, his eyes in the sun, and deftly angled Thom's cross past his own aghast goalkeeper. In the 14th minute, Cadete then sprang an enormous height to bury a header from Thom's cross, and Hibs were looking worryingly vulnerable.
The move of the match was undoubtedly Celtic's third. It was a gushing move, the type Alex Miller extolled afterwards, involving Di Canio and Thom, and ending with Cadete arriving at Leighton's far post to flash another goal past the stranded goalkeeper. Poor Leighton, once more, was watching his career flash before him.
In the 51st minute, Brian O'Neill thumped home a header from yet another cross, this time a corner, off Thom's right boot, and the finale, if we should have that as early as the 70th minute, was Van Hooijdonk's lacerating free kick. Many of the Hibs supporters had left in time to catch the four o' clock from Queen Street.