MOTIVATION

Midfielder Mark O’hara drew first blood in Dundee’s 2-1 win over Rangers in February, which gave the Dark Blues their first win over the Glasgow club at Dens Park since 1992 and claimed both goals when they repeated that scoreline last month.

Today he and his teammates will attempt to end a longer-lasting hoodoo by beating Celtic at home for the first time since Tommy Coyne notched the only goal against Billy Mcneill’s side back in September, 1988.

However,aso’hararevealed after their 1-1 draw with Motherwell at Fir Park at the weekend, a Boxing Day victory over the champions would carry much more significance than the wins over their Glasgow rivals.

Manager Neil Mccann’s father, Eddie, died on Saturday morning but the 43-yearold compartmentalised his grief in order to take responsibility for his team just hours later.

The players wore black armbands in honour of Mccann’s father but failed to deliver a valedictory victory. Now O’hara and his team-mates want to rectify that against the champions.

“It shows how strong the

0 Dundee’s Mark O’hara, right, challenges Carl Mchugh of Motherwell at Fir Park on Saturday. manager is, that he was at the Motherwell game,” he said. “We wanted to get the win for him and his dad but we weren’t quite able to do it.

“He’s been brilliant. It would be good to get a big result against Celtic for him and his family. It would mean a lot to us and we’d love to repay him on Tuesday.

“We’ll look to take the positives from our performance against Motherwell into the Celtic game.

“It’s Boxing Day, live on the TV and a great chance to showcase what we’re capable of.”

Dundee are currently in 10th place, just three points above bottom club Ross County but Mccann, right, is determined that they will play their way out of trouble. He has insisted

MARK O’HARA that they embrace a more expansive approach and admitted on Saturday that he now loves watching his charges in action. O’hara accepts that that philosophy won’t change against Celtic.

“We’ve got to be brave against Celtic – our game shouldn’t change,” said the 22-year-old. “Playing out from the back has worked for us so far and we’ll look to do that again.

“Celtic give you the chance to play and, hopefully, our style can be effective against them.

“The win against Rangers will give us confidence because it showed we can do it on the big stage.

“We can also take encouragement from Hearts’ performance against Celtic the other week. It was good to see a team having a right go at them and it paying off.”

Ominously, Celtic have rebounded from that disappointment by beating Partick Thistle 2-0 and, on Saturday,

“He’s been brilliant. It would be good to get a big result against Celtic for him and his family. It would mean a lot to us and we’d love to repay him”