Peterhead vs Celtic B - 4 goals, and 4 reasons

to make you shake yer heid....

That won’t be what you’d expect….

Celtic B team (Development squad is what it’s now being called internally) took a wee trip up to Peterhead today (Saturday) to play a testimonial game for Peterhead’s Jason Brown who scored 2 on the day. Congrats to Jason on his testimonial.

The young team started well going 1 up. Lucas Clearie goal in the first 10 minutes, the young man continues to shine when a chance falls his way, he’s got goals in him and appears to be a player who is developing well, having scored a ridiculous amount of goals for the u16s, u19s and now for the B team.

Now, if you want some of the match details then the Peterhead feed on twitter is where you’ll find it, nothing from Celtic.

Anyhoo....The young Celts eventually lost 3-1 against a Peterhead team that seen ex-Celt Niall McGinn get some game time for Peterhead. We made some changes throughout, and finished with some players totally out of their known positions.....It was weird because we had other players who could have been playing in their natural roles who hadn’t come on when they were expected to.

Now, it’s well know here that I am no fan of how our Academy setup is run, and that my views on people like Chris McCart are not exactly full of kind words and praise.

Today is just another little example of why I look at our setup and shake my head.....

Peterhead is a 4 hour drive give or take.....so that’s 7 to 8 hours on the bus to get there and back.

At half time there was a unexplained delay. Half-time lasted for about 30 minutes….odd. I messaged a friend who was up there to find out what went on because I knew who had travelled and I had a rough idea of who was expected to get minutes, but I noticed a lot didn’t get any minutes in the end. A long way to travel and not play in a friendly game.

No one seemed to know what was going on and I had wondered if the Peterhead feed had maybe missed some subs which is not unusual during these games, but to be fair to the Peterhead media team they were better than most when detailing the subs that were made, and even named our goalscorer instead of just saying Celtic goal. When I checked in again after the game I was told that a few players had warmed up, looked absolutely fine, but hadn’t come on.

Well, after a wee bit of digging, it turns out the club had forgotten to register 4 players who travelled all that way. Including our new signing from Ireland, Shay McGarry. I’m led to believe that he and 3 other young players had to explain to their parents that they didn’t play because the club had forgotten to register him.

Now, I know how supportive the families of the young players are, so it’s likely he wasn’t alone in doing that, with 3 other 16 year old players who have recently signed pro-terms also apparently left off the registration list. Parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles…. the backing and support these young players get is unreal, and often grossly underappreciated by the club.

So, it appears that the extended half time was caused by our staff trying to find out what bucket day it was, so confused by how something so simple could have been forgotten. I’ve no idea what Chris McCart was trying to do during it all. I’m told he was roaming about the place like a fart in trance, probably hoping the ref and Peterhead would somehow allow the cock-up to be overlooked, but it achieved the square root of hee-haw beyond extending their time up north.

World-class basics. Only when you employ people who actually understand what those words mean.

Alternatively, you can leave them in the hands of people who don’t, and watch as they make the club look amateur.

RH