The Celtic Rising: David Potter on The Day Everything Changed – Part 4

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The Celtic Star

·24 aprile 2026

The Celtic Rising: David Potter on The Day Everything Changed – Part 4

Part 4 of an extract from David Potter’s wonderful bestseller The Celtic Rising. The Celtic Rising got underway on this day in 1965 when Celtic won the Scottish Cup Final, against Dunfermline our first trophy of the decade. It would not be the last…

But there were still nine minutes to go. If I have no distinct recollections of the actual goal, I can recall with vivid clarity the last nine minutes. Flags waving all around the ground, a growing swell of noise, smiles, cheers but with myself holding on to the gangway 25’s post and unashamedly praying to God, whether he was a Catholic or a Protestant, to let us win today. Surely, we could not be denied now! But 10 years ago, Celtic had been 1-0 up in a Scottish Cup final against Clyde and had lost a last-minute equaliser from a corner kick.

This kept going through my mind, as no doubt it did through the thoughts of so many people – possibly even Jock Stein who played in that game. They were perhaps better at hiding their emotions than I was but were undergoing all the agony just the same. Those who tried to tell me after the event “Ah knew we were OK when Billy scored” are, frankly, liars. Still more hideously wrong was the fatuous statement “It’s just a fitba match!” We still had these minutes to see out.

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Bertie Auld did not seem to be worried though. He took his time, pretending to trip over a pile of police coats placed too close to the pitch, and generally clowning. In truth, Dunfermline seldom got over the halfway line in those last desperate minutes. I kept watching the linesmen. I knew that linesman signalled to the referee about how long to go, usually with their fingers against their black uniform and I kept looking for that.

Eventually, I decided that there was no point in looking at anyone other than referee Hugh Phillips, and so I watched him obsessively as Celtic retained possession. Eventually he turned and pointed to the pavilion, and the immediate impression was of everything going up – players arms in triumph, flags, scarves and people – youngsters lifted up by their parents, arms in the air – and everything was green and white. And everything rose metaphorically as well. There was the glint of silver in the South Stand. This was what it had all been about – the Scottish Cup, and we had won something at last!

Tears welled up unashamedly, as the green and white figures appeared to collect the trophy, and out they came to get their photographs taken. Oddly enough, my feelings were for Dunfermline Athletic as much as anything else – a good team and their supporters were a decent bunch, and we knew what they were going through – and I joined in the polite applause for the Pars. But everything around me was going crazy, and I was particularly careful not to fall down the terracing stairs as the triumphant Celtic crowd swept out. There was no point in getting killed NOW!

The images remain – the seller of “The Shamrock” magazine “the long downtrodden man” as we called him, with a grin on his face instead of the hunted, persecuted look of before, and then the sight of a middle-aged, middle-class man, well-dressed with a tie and a soft hat and possibly a banker or a teacher during the week. He had collapsed over a hedge. He was not in any way under the influence of alcohol, nor did he wear any club colour.

Nor did he use any foul language as he looked at me and a few other bystanders and said with all sincerity and in measured tones, “I couldn’t have taken it if we’d lost the day!” And the two young teenage girls clad in green and white and singing – not The Celtic Song, nor Sean South of Garryowen but the Beatles “She Loves You! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Incongruous, but there is nothing logical about ecstasy!

A few Pars fans were about, clearly disappointed but nothing nasty about them. Handshakes were exchanged and smiles and “We will see you on Wednesday,” a reference to the League game scheduled for that night, and one of them with a transistor radio told me that Kilmarnock had won 2-0 at Tynecastle. The implications of that one didn’t sink in until later, such was the all-consuming rapture of the moment.

The train from Mount Florida to Glasgow Central was noisy and overcrowded, dangerously so in fact but no-one cared. It was then, however, that real fear took over me that this might all be some sort of a dream and that I was going to wake up! Various thoughts of existentialist philosophy coursed through my mind, but they were soon driven out by the words of “the dreary New Year’s Eve” and “sworn to be free.” If I was going to wake up, so too would thousands of others!

But I didn’t waken up, and we got home by about 10.00pm after an idyllic and triumphant journey. The green and whites had returned. Parkhead was Paradise once more. Sunday was spent talking about nothing else, and the whole world had changed. Rangers and Hearts supporters avoided me – Hearts in particular, for that day was the start of untold miseries for them, but Rangers supporters as well knew that the game was up. Jim Baxter, their hero of the past few years, was beginning to play up and cause trouble again. Celtic’s success was one of those things that did not apparently have any direct connection with Baxter – but we all knew that it did. It was almost as if a switch had been pressed and for the next decade, with a very occasional exception, everything would run in favour of Celtic. The world had indeed changed.

It was like what Churchill said. “Before Alamein, we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.” It was apparently based on something that Pitt the Elder had said of the Seven Years War, and it wasn’t 100% literally true – but it was close enough.

We felt similarly about Saturday, 24 April 1965. For the next ten years our defeats would be rare, and our successes would be repeated and indeed expected.

David Potter

An extract from The Celtic Rising by the late, great David Potter. Read the three earlier instalments on The Celtic Star earlier today.

David’s 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…

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