Return from the wilderness

If you've seen the film Marathon Man, you will never forget the scene where Dustin Hoffman, strapped to a dentist's chair, is slowly and systematically tortured by mad Nazi Laurence Olivier, who is exposing nerves with a drill, trying to extract information of which the hapless Hoffman has no knowledge.

For the past two months every Celtic fan on the planet has been pinioned to that chair, sweating and screaming from the torture of watching their team fumble opportunity after opportunity to clinch the Scottish Premier League championship and deny Rangers a record 10th successive title.

At 12 minutes to five on Saturday evening, God finally awakened from his long slumber and pronounced that our years wandering desolately in the wilderness had come to an end. Only the winning of the European Cup in 1967 has generated greater elation than this most unexpected of triumphs.

I think back to the start of the season, to defeat in the opening two games under a new manager, Wim Jansen, whom nobody had ever heard of. Rangers had just spent £16 million bolstering an already large squad of players; Celtic had signed Henrik Larrson for £750,000.

Things had to get better, and they did - for a time. A run of 12 domestic victories was embarked upon, punctuated by two honourable draws against Liverpool in the UEFA Cup, before the season's first clash with Rangers. It was yet another re-run of a well-worn movie. Rangers goalkeeper Andy Goram played out of his skin, Richard Gough hit one in off the sole of his boot, and we knew in our heart that stopping 10-in-a-row was an impossible dream.

Then something faint began to stir. A team playing gritty, passing, percentage football was emerging and, when the League Cup was lifted after an excellent 30 victory over Dundee United, hope flickered. When Celtic played Rangers off the park in the New Year fixture and won 2-0, we really did start to believe.

But two months ago it all went pear-shaped, and a team which had looked a good bet for the championship suddenly developed the yips, dropping unexpected points and generally playing as if they had become scared to win. The drill was plugged in and the mad Nazi wielding it was Rangers manager Walter Smith, that nice man in the cardigan who is, some say (including me) the acceptable face of satanism.

We stormed Heaven with our prayers, but every time the Huns dropped points so did Celtic. And so it crawled to Saturday's last game of the league season and the longest hour of my life, that eternity which stretched between Larsson's first goal and Harald Brattbakk's second. But, like a mother who gets her baby in her arms for the first time, I have forgotten the pain already. All I feel is unconfined joy.

For the irony is that Rangers' nine-in-arow means nothing. We did it first and at a time when Scottish football was a power in Europe. Celtic were kings of Europe in those days, winning the European Cup and reaching another final and four semi-finals. Rangers themselves won the Cup Winners' Cup after qualifying only as beaten Scottish Cup finalists by (you've guessed it) Celtic. Scottish teams like Dunfermline and Kilmarnock routinely reached the last eight in Europe and, on one remarkable occasion, St Johnstone (yes, St Johnstone) stuffed the mighty Hamburg 3-0 in Perth.

Compare that with Rangers' miserable record, spending millions to buy the title when every other club in Scotland was impoverished by fulfilling the requirement for all-seated stadia demanded by the Taylor report on safety at football matches; when, as a consequence, the record of Scottish clubs in Europe has become an embarrassing joke, with Rangers having become the biggest joke of all. (Will anybody forget those Wednesday night laugh-ins, otherwise known as Rangers in the Champions' League?)

They had to win 10-in-a-row to have something to crow about and they failed, failed utterly. They will now never beat our record. Celtic are back and the forces of darkness have been repelled. All together now: "Low lie the fields of Athenry . . ."