Goodbye from Broony
Scott Brown waved farewell to his time with Celtic at the place where his professional career kicked-off, Easter Road. The game didn’t live up to the occasion, and ended goalless.
HIBS 0
CELTIC 0
Scott Brown signed off his illustrious Celtic playing career in typical style – with a smile and a wee barbed comment for good luck.
“It was nice to come back to Easter Road and play my final game for the club here,” he said at the end of a match which was considerate enough to do nothing to distract from the occasion.
“It’s a sad time because I will miss playing in front of 60,000 fans and I didn’t get the chance to wave goodbye to them.
“I will be back at Celtic Park with Aberdeen next season and I will maybe wave at them then.
“I will get a cheer back – or I will get booed off the park!
“It is time to reflect on this season but also the other 13 as well.
“I would rather be in my situation than anyone else’s. We have gone proper Invincible throughout the entire season.”
His reference was to the allconquering 2016-17 season under Brendan Rodgers when Celtic went unbeaten in all three domestic competitions and one that will not be missed by fans of Rangers and Celtic alike.
“We have gone Treble after Treble after Treble after Treble – and that is not easy,” he said.
“It does take its toll on everyone’s body and that is what happened this year, I had decided at the start of the season it would be my last with Celtic.
“We gave it everything we could but we just couldn’t get the ten.”
If the game itself was flat, Brown was able to appreciate the symmetry of his last game for Celtic being against Hibs when his final appearance for the Leith club, 14 years ago, had been against the Hoops.
Yesterday, emotional day notwithstanding, he still had a game to play and he went about his business just as if it was any other.
He floated around in the middle of the park, directing traffic and making sure all of his teammates took care to be in the right place at the right time.
Ofir Marciano, was also making a goodbye as he is off in the summer, and he had cause to be grateful to Darren McGregor for bailing him out with a header off the goal linewhen he was beaten by Moi Elyounoussi who he had darted out to shut down.
The Norwegian is another whose future is still to be decided.
His loan deal from Southampton is up at the end of the season and, while Celtic would like to buy him on a permanent deal, there would be a lot to be sorted out in terms of fee and wages.
Thoughts of things to come hung over this match throughout with a huge week coming up for both clubs.
On Saturday Hibs will contest the 136th Scottish Cup Final with St Johnstone, a match that looks genuinely too tight to call.
By then Celtic could well have a new manager in place with Eddie Howe’s long anticipated appointment reported to be close to complete.
In terms of situations it was probably an easier one for Jack Ross to deal with.
He left his best players, with a couple of notable exceptions, on the substitutes’ bench and told the players he gave a start to go and make themselves impossible to drop next week.
Consequently there was no shortage of effort or energy from the home side.
John Kennedy for his part just played it straight – as he has done throughout his time as interim manager.
There were no real surprises in the starting line-up and the substitutions, a couple on the hour and a couple more with 10 minutes to go to give Adam Montgomerie and Karamoko Dembele a run, were pretty predictable too.
With Hibs strengthening up their ranks too, it added a little spice to a game that was otherwise meandering to its conclusion.
A little, but not enough.