SEND IN THE CROWDS

Celtic’s attendance records from days gone by

- Joe Sullivan

WE’RE all missing turning up at Paradise on matchday and being part of the biggest crowd in the country as up to 60,000 unite as one to urge the Celts on.

And while having the biggest stadium in the country is an achievement we can all be proud of, it’s worth remembering that Celtic have played in front of crowds of over twice that size.

The matches were mainly at Hampden as the old stadium regularly held crowds of over 100,000 for cup games and internationals – in 1937 Jimmy Delaney played for Scotland as they beat England 3-1 in front of 149,407 and just a week later he was back in the Hoops in front of 146,433 as Celtic beat Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup final, meaning the Celtic winger played in front of just short of 300,000 inside a week in two record attendances.

In 1970, Celtic played Aberdeen again in the Scottish Cup final and in midweek played Leeds United in the European Cup semi-final at the same Hampden venue drawing an aggregate crowd of 244,939 – a quarter of a million people just four days apart.

Of course, due to other means of entry, the most semi-official of these being the old ‘lift-ow’er’ at the turnstiles for kids, many of these attendances will have been bigger than reported in those pre-all-seated stadia days.

That means that prior to, and after, our first official six-figure crowd, other attendances credited in the 90,000s may well have sneaked over the 100,000 mark, and can anyone who was in the crowd when the Hoops clinched the centenary title against Dundee 1988 honestly consider there to be any fewer than 100,000 inside the old Celtic Park that day?