The club was founded in 1971 by a group of students at the Uni, with Robert O'Connell the instigator, and has been going strong ever since. Robert has recently been in touch and kindly offered us this insight into how the club was formed:

"When I placed the notice on the board I had already met several supporters in the Beer Bar and this gave me the idea that there might be even more if only we could find them. I was in the Arts faculty studying English and most of the people I knew had come from my school Holyrood in Glasgow. Through the ad I met guys largely from St Mungo's Academy, St Pat's Dumbarton and St Mirin's in Paisley, gradually our ranks were swelled by students who came from all parts of the country but the four schools were the absolute bedrock of the club's support. The first bus we ran was to a game at Dundee in 1971, we hired a 14 seater and it took 16 of us to the match. From then on we ran bigger and better buses and at the high point of my tenure as President we had more members than we could ever hope to carry. For major games like Cup Finals we often had to hire two double deckers and even then there were people standing everywhere, you wouldn't be allowed to do it nowadays but then the rules were much more relaxed.

At the first AGM we drew up a constitution and elected a four person executive. This consisted of myself, a boy called Michael Connolly and two others who are both now politicians so I have to be careful about naming them because I haven't okayed it with them. There probably wouldn't be a problem with this but when politicians are looking for votes there might be some people who would be deterred from voting for them because of their affinity to Celtic, I'm sure you understand this. All I will say at this point is that one is an MP at Westminster and the other is an MSP in Edinburgh who was a Cabinet Minister in the government before the SNP took over in May. The latter person (let me just call him H) knew a lot of people and was absolutely vital to the club's success in the beginning but because he was also active in poitics he didn't have as much time to spare as myself and he increasingly came to take a back seat and let me get on with building up the club's status.

As time passed and the membership grew with each yearly intake, new members were elected to the exec with fresh ideas on how to raise finance and expand our activities. We virtually took over control of the Union by using our voting power to get ourselves elected to the Board. At one time of the 17 elected Board Members 14 were Tims including myself and H. We kind of helped ourselves to the Union's facilities making it easy to arrange meetings and our biggest fund raising event the annual Player of the Year soiree. This always attracted many of the first team probably because they seemed to like being associated with an institution like Glasgow University and the large number of females present. Who in turn had been drawn by the famous football players who would be there. We had Dixie Deans, Bobby Lennox, Davie Provan, the late great John Doyle and many others. Roy Aitken told me his chat up line with girls was "ask me what I do for a living......I play for Celtic". I think it usually worked.

In 1974 we ran our first bus out of Scotland to Liverpool for the testimonial match for the Liverpool captain Ron Yeats. That was the game when Bobby Charlton played for Celtic. It was the greatest experience we ever had . I could tell you stories until Xmas about that one believe me. And Celtic won 4-1 as well. By this time I was being more than assisted by two fellows I must mention, Charlie Duddy and Allan Leithhead, they both did a power of work. Allan came from Hawick which is a rugby playing town but he only had eyes for the Hoops. He would have run buses during the close season if we'd have let him. In 1976 I thought the best thing I could do to ensure the club's future was to get out of the way and let Charlie Duddy take over so for the next two seasons I travelled to the games merely to see the match. Then in 1978 with no little regret I took my leave and followed the team privately. Only very very occasionally did I go to the Union but I am still a Life Member there. In 1991 the chaps who were then running the club organised a dinner to celebrate its 20th anniversary and they were kind enough to invite H and myself along with Sean Fallon and Jim Craig. I made a little speech recalling some of the things I've written here but it was already clear that the torch had been passed to a new generation and few people had ever heard of H and myself.

"Money.The perpetual problem right from day one.I should know because it was my job to open the club's account with the Clydesdale Bank in Gibson St and the only funds I had were what was left of my student grant. It wasn't much but at least we got a grant in those days. It was from these meagre resources that our fortunes began.

Well you may be surprised to learn that Brian Wilson was not involved, never at any point to my knowledge. No,maybe not so high profile people but solid just the same. So here we go. The person I referred to as H was in fact Hugh Henry who amongst other things was the Minister for Education in Jack McConnell's government before it was replaced by the SNP in May.Hughie is the MSP for Paisley South and still a season ticket holder. If I have done this correctly there should be an item from the Celtic View showing us as we were back in 1972 not long after we started up.Oh the days when I had (long)hair.Incidentally one of the others in the photo was Vincent Jack whose father, John Jack, was Jock Stein's replacement at centre-half and who played in the Hoops first ever League Cup winning side in 1956, a half back line that read Evans, Jack and Peacock.Check it out. The other politician believe it or not was a girl. Her name was Bridget Corr. She married a man called Gordon Prentice who was President of the Union and so became Bridget Prentice. She is now the Labour MP for Lewisham East and is a Minister for Justice in Gordon Brown's government. On her website she confesses to be a lifelong passionate supporter of Glasgow Celtic. And when she became an MP she founded the Westminster CSC which she proudly says is the biggest supporters club in the House of Commons. One of her members is Dr John Reid the new chairman.Bridget flies up to as many home games as she can and when I last spoke to her she was worried she might not get to the game against Shakhtar but she made it.(By the way Gordon Prentice is the MP for Pendle).You can check Hughie and Bridget's websites if you want more info on them.

I have also included a pic from the club's Player of the Year soiree in 1976. It's pretty self explanatory and typical of the kind of response we used to get from the first team in those days. And boy did that swell the club's coffers. I nearly got my grant money back!"

Robert's pictures to follow...

The present committee took over in a bloodless coup in 1994. Other previous committee members include:

Joe Dunn
Gerry White
Gerry Dunbar ("Not The View" founder)
George Shanks
Jeff Harris
Brendan Orr
Stephen O'Neill
David Jarvie
Peter Feechan
Jim Williamson
Tommy "Doo" Lally
Paul Shiels
Greg McMillan
Ian McMillan
Stevie "Bobo" Boland
Andrew H Smith (ex-Celtic View editor)
Chris McComb (editor of "Henrik's Tongue" website)
Brian McIver (Ace Evening Times reporter)
Gerry "Freeway" Hart
Manus "Manny" Gallagher

Honorary president of the club is Bobby Lennox (although we're not sure if he knows).

We used to meet in the Beer Bar in the Union Building (pictured on the right), but moved to Tennents because it is handier and easier to find for non-members. And there were too many bloody students in the Beer Bar! We still hold some meetings there though, and you can find a map here, where it's shown under its trendy student name of 'The Hive'. To get into the Beer Bar go up the stairs in the picture into the union building, then down the stairs again and turn left. Then look for the old gits - that'll be us.

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