Former Premier League whistler and resident Sky Sports resident ref watch expert Dermot Gallagher has told this week’s Celtic View about his love of the club and how he was still going to games up until lockdown.
The referee has been all over the world plying his trade but his heart belongs to Celtic, ever since his dad took him to his first game against Leeds when Jock Stein’s Celtic took them on in the semi-final of the European Cup.
Gallagher spoke about how he didn’t get to go to many games when he was younger because their family was quite poor. The pilgrimage from Ireland to Glasgow was a special occasion for the Dermot when he was younger.
“We only went a couple of times because my dad wasn’t very rich,” he explained. “We lived in a council flat in Dublin and we didn’t have a lot of money.
“Then I started playing football when I left school – I would still go when I could – but then, when my refereeing started in earnest, that stopped me and I became a television supporter, so to speak, because I couldn’t get the time and couldn’t allow for the two days.
“You have to remember that, when I go to Celtic Park, it’s a two-day trip for me. So I couldn’t take two days off from training midweek, or anything like that -Tuesday and Wednesday were either training days or a matchday.
Now retired from refereeing, the former man in black does a lot of work in the media but it doesn’t stop him from getting to Celtic games.
“It was only when I finished refereeing that I started nipping up now and again, one or two games a season at first, and that turned into three or four, and then five or six. I just tried to go to the midweek games as much as I could.
“I went twice in a week before the lockdown. I went twice in a week – to the Hearts game when we beat them 5-0 in the cup, and then the Copenhagen game, when we lost to them.
“I can only go to midweek games because Saturday and Sunday is taken up with my media work, and I get the 10.32am train from Banbury that goes to Birmingham and then to Preston, and up to Glasgow. “I get into Glasgow about quarter past five. I take a little rucksack with me that has a change of clothes. I’ll go to the hotel I’m stopping in for a quick shower. By about six o’clock I’m back out, I get picked up by some friends and we got for something to eat.
“Then we go to Celtic Park, watch the game and then go and have a few drinks afterwards. I head back to the hotel and then I’m on the 8.30am train back the next morning, and I get home at two o’clock that afternoon.
“When you think about it, that’s nearly 30 hours, though it’s only an hour and a half football match. But it’s everything about it – the excitement of going, it’s the buzz I get going up. And even when I’m sat reading my book on the train, I’ll drift away and I’ll think about my Dad and when he first took me. It’s just everything about it – the whole adventure, which just makes you feel brilliant to be a football supporter, because it’s the greatest thing in the world.”
During Gallagher’s media appearances calling the big refereeing decisions of the week both north and south of the border, he is as professional as they come.
Calling incidents with Celtic right down the line and showing no favouritism in front of the sky cameras.
The former ref’s Celtic ritual will be familiar to a lot of fans who make the journey from further afield just to watch their club.
Celtic have some of the most passionate fans in the world. Right now, we’re seeing them act out of hurt and frustration after what’s transpired so far this season. Hopefully, we can turn a corner and start winning again.
