Celtic on this Day – The Lions First Roar

The Celtic Star

·14 Januari 2025

Celtic on this Day – The Lions First Roar

The Lions first roared on this day in 1967 where the Celtic team that faced St Johnstone at Muirton Park in Perth was Simpson, Craig, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld, and Lennox. The rest as they say is history…

25th May 1967: The Celtic team line up before their European Cup Final match against Inter Milan in Lisbon. They went on to win 2-1. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

14 January 1967 isn’t really a celebrated date in the history of Celtic football club, but it would prove to be a significant moment as it saw the first collective outing for a group of players who would go on to become the most iconic side in the club’s illustrious unbroken history.

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The Celtic team

The names Simpson, Craig, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld, and Lennox will roll off the tongue of every Celtic supporter, as they are of course the immortal Lisbon Lions, the Champions of Europe in 1967.

The players of course all knew each other as they trained on a daily basis, but this was the first time that they would start a game together.

Muirton Park was the second home of St Johnstone before they moved to McDiarmid Park, can you name their first ground? Answer below..*

The venue was Muirton Park Perth and the opponents were St Johnstone in a league match as the Hoops looked for yet another victory as they challenged for honours on all fronts.

Celtic would comfortably win the game 4-0 with the goals arriving late on in the game through a Jimmy Johnstone brace and solitary strikes from both Stevie Chalmers and Bobby Lennox.

The 19,000 supporters witnessed history

Little did the supporters among the 19,000 crowd know that they were witnessing a bit of history, as only four months later those same 11 players made history that immortalised them in Celtic and Scottish football folklore.

St Johnstone 0-4 Celtic. 14th January 1967. Press cutting

Muirton Park – St Johnstone’s second stadium

* Muirton Park was the second of three football stadiums the football club St Johnstone from Perth, Scotland, have occupied in their history. It was preceded by the Recreation Grounds(1885–1924) and succeeded by McDiarmid Park (1989–present). Muirton Park stood between 1924 and 1989, at which point it was demolished and replaced with an Asda supermarket.

Don’t be surprised if McDiarmid Park is not around much longer with talk in Perth of the land being used for housing development and the club moving to it’s fourth stadium which will be purpose built further out of town with a smaller 5000 capacity.

This is all the more likely to happen as sadly St Johnstone looked doomed for relegation this season as they are now nine points adrift at the bottom of the Scottish Premiership.

Just an Ordinary Bhoy

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