Fevered pitch: Celtic return to Tynecastle

Published Date: 02 October 2011
By ANDREW SMITH
CELTIC manager Neil Lennon was asked the other day why, in light of what happened last time out, he thinks he will be the safest person inside Tynecastle this afternoon.
"Yeah, but they have got four armed response units and the tanks coming in," he said. "And two SWAT teams in the dug-outs." It says everything about what the Celtic manager had to endure on the evening of 11 May, and the fallout from it, that there was a split-second before his questioner appreciated the Irishman was speaking entirely in jest.

Astonishment rather than any form of amusement remains the reaction provoked by the night five months ago when Hearts supporter John Wilson launched himself at Lennon, only to later have a jury deliver a not-proven verdict on an assault charge. One of the first on the scene that evening was Celtic defender Mark Wilson, who has vivid recall of an incident that made Scottish football a global news story for the second time in a matter of months, coming on the back of the package bomb sent to the Celtic manager.

"I was speaking to Thommo (Alan Thompson] and the guy ran past him," Wilson said in recounting the lead-up to the "breach of the peace" that followed Celtic's second goal early in the second period. "I think Thommo tried to grab him, just an automatic reaction. I was more or less trying to get the coaches away because the boy was on the ground and I didn't want them getting into any unnecessary trouble. I couldn't get my head round it and afterwards was still in shock. You see scuffles on the pitch all the time, players running in from both sides and the referee struggling to control things, but that is the nature of the game and it gets split up quite quickly. But for a fan to run on the pitch is pretty extreme. I have never seen it in football and you don't see it in many other sports either. Especially a game as high-profile as the Celtic-Hearts. They are almost like Celtic-Rangers games in a sense and you would never get that at Ibrox or here, so it was pretty surreal. I just hope that it doesn't happen again."

Wilson wasn't entirely surprised that an unsavoury incident did happen back in May, even if the nature of it was unprecedented. "You are never going to get a much worse atmosphere than that night; it was boiling away all night," he said. "It was a poisonous atmosphere. You felt it was leading up to something and, there you go. With all the threats against the manager and things, obviously this guy jumped on the bandwagon and thought he would be the big guy. So it was a build up in that sense."

Against this backdrop the 27-year-old Celtic right-back is relieved that it didn't lead to something much worse. "Who knows? They don't check you when you go into football stadiums, there are no metal detectors or anything like that. So he could have been holding anything. It was a poor situation, first of all with the fan coming on, but also with the fact that there should be security round about the dug-out and I think we will see that this time."

Well, no fan is going to pull a stunt like that when they could face such severe sanction in the courts... "Yeah, it was good of the jury, well done to them," Wilson says sarcastically of the leniency shown to Lennon's attacker who was sentenced to eight months for breach of the peace and is now free after serving more than half the sentence while on remand. "You would be scared to go out of the house. You have all the cameras following you and still nothing gets done."

Celtic's longest-serving player doesn't expect the bitterness between the two clubs' support to be diluted because of the heightened security levels and the intense spotlight that will be cast on the encounter.

Neither would he want those in attendance to become subdued. "I am sure there will be an extra bit of spice but we need to keep calm and play the game not the occasion," Wilson says. "I think players enjoy these kind of atmospheres. I would rather go there, or play at Ibrox than, no disrespect, McDiarmid Park when it is half empty and you can hear every shout from every player. A lot of us love going to places where the crowd is on top of you and the fans are the way they are, chanting songs at each other. It is terrific to play in."

After being terrifically up and down this season, the Celtic players won back their own crowd with a creditable performance in the 1-1 draw against Udinese in the Europa league in midweek. The result "felt like a defeat" to Wilson because of the penalty the Italians scored late in the game.

However, the defender is convinced they will feel no after-effects of their European tie come this lunchtime. "It is not a downer, because these games are one-offs," he said. "Our main priority is the league and these games are just a bonus. It would be great to progress through the tournament, great financially for the club and great playing against opposition like we have been, but we can't feel sorry for ourselves."

At Tynecastle today, it has to be hoped that no-one will be left feeling fearful for others.

Taken from the Scotsman