Charlie Christie: Inverness Caley Thistle’s famous win over Celtic 25 years ago laid foundation for future success in Scottish Cup
Like so many former football players I relish the opportunity to reminisce about past matches and it was nice to be reminded earlier this week that tomorrow, Saturday, February 8 is the 25th anniversary of one of my most special playing memories.
I refer of course to the night when Inverness Caledonian Thistle went ‘ballistic’ at Celtic Park causing one of the most incredible upsets in the history of the Scottish Cup.
As manager Steve Paterson commented after-match that result was a groundbreaking moment for Inverness football with the realisation that this six-year-old merged club from the north of Scotland could indeed go far in the game.
When I look back at the occasion and the circumstances surrounding it, I often think that the stars were aligned for us. The postponement of the initial tie due to storm damaged guttering at Celtic Park meant the game was played 10 days later with Celtic having lost to Hearts at home only three days earlier.
What made that league defeat even more concerning for the Parkhead faithful was that their team had led by two goals at half-time and you could sense the unease of the home support throughout our match the following Tuesday.
That said, nothing should detract from the performance of every player in our side as we went toe to toe with the Glasgow giants from the off.
As anybody who has played in a Steve Paterson side will tell you, his philosophy was always to play on the front foot as much as possible, and his team selection that evening was a perfect example of that.
Wyness, Wilson, Sheerin, Teasdale and I were all instructed to get forward at every opportunity with ample support in the wide areas from Tokely and Golabek.
Steve knew he had quality defensive cover in deep lying midfielder Mark McCulloch and central defenders Mann and Hastings. Then we had former Thistle centre forward Jim Calder between the sticks and Jim had an exceptional match allied to a touch of good fortune at the right times for us.
Barry Wilson’s opening goal was a thing of beauty with Stuart Golabek’s quick free kick catching Celtic napping and Paul Sheerin’s early cross was met perfectly by Barry and the unthinkable had become a real possibility.
Mark Burchill’s equaliser two minutes later wasn’t in the script, but we managed to get back in front quickly with that Lubo Moravcik own goal although Bobby Mann still claims to this day that it’s ‘his goal’.
Seeing out the rest of that first period unscathed was vital as we knew that would increase the pressure on the home side along with fortifying our belief that we could win the game.
Steve’s half-time talk was in his usual relaxed manner with the emphasis on how we performed, and no thought given to trying to defend what we had.
I remember him openly stating that he felt there were more goals in the game for us and that proved spot on as Barry Wilson was tripped by Reggie Blinker in the 57th minute and Paul Sheerin made no mistake with his spot kick.
We managed to see out the match relatively comfortably and the expected onslaught from Celtic in that last half hour never really materialised. When the final whistle went, I must admit to immediately thinking that we had achieved something very special for the club and it was quite an emotional moment.
The celebrations were legendary – both on the trip home that night and the following day as we savoured the reverberations from the game throughout the football world.
Inverness Caledonian Thistle would go on to lift the Scottish Cup in 2015 and I genuinely believe the semi final victory at Hampden over Celtic on route to the final surpassed our win, but nobody should ever doubt the significance of that result in February 2000 – it laid the foundations and belief of much of the future success we would go on to achieve.