Celtic On This Day – 13th May – David Potter’s Celtic Diary

SATURDAY 13th MAY 1899 – The Glasgow League is a little known about and little remembered competition nowadays, as it was used to fill empty Saturdays, and often used to give reserve players a chance. Today however 5,000 are at Ibrox to see the Scottish League winners, Rangers take on the Scottish Cup holders, Celtic. Johnny Hodge scores Celtic’s goal in a close fought 1-1 draw.

SATURDAY 13th MAY 1916 – Celtic win the Glasgow Charity Cup by beating Partick Thistle 2-0 at Hampden in front of 25,000 fans. This means that Celtic have won every competition they entered for because they also won the Glasgow Cup and the Scottish League Championship. Sadly there was no Scottish Cup in the war years. Patsy Gallacher and Sunny Jim Young score the goals.

MONDAY 13th MAY 1963 – A bizarre game at Celtic Park tonight as Celtic beat Motherwell 6-0 before 5,000 spectators with everyone thinking about the 0-3 defeat to Dundee United on Saturday and the imminent Scottish Cup final replay against Rangers on Wednesday. Yet again the forward line is experimented with, but this time there seems to be some sort of success with Steve Chalmers scoring a hat-trick, a goal each from John Divers and Bobby Craig and an own goal. Frank Brogan is out of place on the right wing, but John Hughes is a success on the left. There is now some sort of hope for Wednesday.

SUNDAY 13th MAY 2001 – Not that it really matters all that much, but League Champions Celtic lose their unbeaten home League record in their last home match of the season 0-2 to Dundee. There are a few changes in the team with Jamie Smith, Alan Stubbs, Tom Boyd and Shaun Maloney given an outing, and the general feeling among fans was that this was a major warning about complacency with the Scottish Cup final against Hibs on the horizon.

SATURDAY 13th MAY 2012 – Gary Hooper scores all five goals (one is a penalty) as Celtic finish the season in style with a 5-0 win over Scottish Cup finalists, Hearts, thus giving Celtic a measure of revenge for an unlucky semi-final defeat. It is a fine performance by a man who has not always lived up to his expectations.

David Potter

David’ Potters bestseller The Celtic Rising ~ 1965: The Year Jock Stein Changed Everything is completely sold out in print on but is available on Amazon kindle, with all the photographs of the hardback edition, for HALF PRICE at just £3.49…