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Ange returns to Bodo, here’s Matt Corr’s Arctic Circle Celtic Diary

Originally posted on The Celtic Star | By Matt Corr | Last updated May 8, 2025 11:19 AM ET

’s Arctic Circle Diary…We’re all off to Bodo in the snow, in the snow! Thursday morning 3am is not a Simon & Garfunkel ballad. It’s my wake-up call. Matchday beckons in Northern Norway so here we go again. We’re on the road again…

Wednesday involved a 10-hour Granda shift followed by a late dinner then a mad panic to stay on top of book sales and promotion activity as we finalise our plans for the 2022 offerings from Celtic Star Books. I guess J K Rowlings faces similar challenges. So, it’s hitting 11pm before I hit the sack for a few pointless hours trying to sleep.

Mrs Norman Naemates CSC has gone above and beyond again and has offered to drop me at the airport for a 4am check-in, despite my half-hearted protests that “I’ll just take the car.” With a day pass secured, my smug grin is soon removed as I clear security and head through to Beardsmores. The bar is not open so my traditional Guinness and roll and sausage at table 45 at silly o’clock is not an option. Bad news. We footballers like our routine. We don’t do change.

Perhaps it’s just as well. I’ve been on medication for several months now, having sustained nerve damage in my neck, back and arm as a consequence of spending crazy hours at my computer researching and writing my last book, the Harry Hood biography, Twice As Good. So, having run four of the World Major Marathons in my fifties and playing five-a-sides weekly/weakly before the pandemic closed that down, I managed to injure myself writing a book! You couldn’t make it up.

My plans to run the fifth major in Chicago in October were in ruins even before the US authorities decided they weren’t letting us into the country a few weeks beforehand. Having run the last couple in New York and Tokyo for the Celtic FC Foundation three years ago, this latest attempt at self-torture was to supplement our fundraising efforts for Marie Curie from the sales of Harry’s book, so that was a real disappointment. God willing, I will be fit enough to run it this coming October, albeit that feels like a stretch at the moment.

So today it’s Captain Sensible CSC. Well for now, anyway. I look around the departure lounge for the usual faces, but it seems to be a much younger crowd today, more Green Brigade than Grey Brigade and noticeably few of my colleagues in the Nae Brigade. Other than Iain Hynds, I’m struggling to recognise anyone. I’m travelling with Hynds again for the first time since not-so-wonderful Copenhagen two years ago. The Milngavie-based operators always run a good trip and have been doing so since Iain’s dad Harry took Celtic supporters abroad several decades ago. We’re waiting at Gate 26 and there’s a snow blizzard going on in Glasgow, so we’re leaving Chilly Jockoland and heading to the Arctic Circle for a heat! Well, that was the theory anyway.