Here's my thoughts on Seattle.

Left Sunny Vancouverland at 8am, got through the border without too much trouble & had my first Guinness of the day in Kells in Seattle at 11:30am.

spent the rest of the day farting about Seattle, meeting Tims & seeing loads of various jerseys from all over the place. Seen tons of Engerlish jerseys, national team & just about every other team that would usually be knocking lumps out of each other mingling pretty nicely.
It was a bizarre scene, Christ only knows what we all looked like to the average Seattleonian!!!

The day progressed merrily on its way, as you would imagine, all the watering holes (hardly any of them, you could tell you were in Starbucksland & not StarBuckyland) were hoaching & the sunburn was coming along nicely as well with quite a few pink folks stumbling around the city.

It came to 6pm & we decided to head up to our seats (section 335 & fantastic seats, I'll get the pics posted soon). There were a few red tops around us, but it was obvious that we were in the Celtic end :-) The beers kept flowing (around $7 US for a bottle of bud or various others (GLASS bottles, it's obvious that there's a different kind of sports fan over there))

The number of ManU jerseys: The yanks have not got a clue, I think the TV showed it up as there being loads of red jerseys, that's how it looked to us, but as fans, they were hopeless. Maybe they're at day 1 of being Manc fans & they'll get into the singing & all that sort of stuff, but it was obvious who the football fans were last night. Fair play to ManU PLC though, they must have sold shitloads of jerseys (the real fans all had "sharp viewcam" tops from the early 90's), but most of the ones that have the new ones were hopeless  as far as supporting the team.


Celtic's marketing dept: They need a helluva boot up the arse. I wish I had taken all my old hoops tops down with me since I personally got asked where I bought my hoops top from 6 times by folks with all kind of accents (possibly not Seattleonians). I don't think the response of "Scotland" went down too well, & there were disappointed new hoops fans who couldn't buy the hoops anywhere.
I saw Tony Hamilton & the Banshee Margot and asked him where people could buy hoops merchandise.
"In the stadium & there's 2 t-shirts & a baseball cap".

Why the hell they never had those Artics that are at parkhead full of offishul tops & stuff, they could have made a killing from folks that have a disposable income & want to spend it on Celtic stuff. Marketing/sales, get your heads out of your collective lazy arses & make this club some money.


The game: They had 3 quick breakaway/shite defending goals & that was that. If Thommo had scored that penalty, we would have been more into it, the decibel level would have been a helluva lot higher & we could have REALLY showed the yanks (there wasn't even an amazing version of YNWA, our section had one that had the goosebumps going, but nothing compared with Valencia or one of the other many excellent parkhead renditions) what supporting a football team is all about.


The history lesson/flashbacks:

Great to see so many old hoops tops... I should have worn my 1990 away strip abomination (the one that looks like... well, shite really, the flash across it, with "peoples" on it I think. I'll dig it out for the Vegas convention next year I think :-))

saw many types, & a wee description of what I saw.. pride of place had to go to the woman that had the 1982 green with white pinstripe away top... I asked her if she was Davy Provan :-))

Also seen the CR smith black vertical pinstripes (mid-90's)
the "crsmith black & white vertical for the top half of the jersey" one.
A guy sleeping/coma at 4pm outside a coffee shop with the bumblebee top.
Saw a guy with one of those Davy crockett hats as well.
A couple of Henrik masks.

It was scary to remember all the rubbish that we used to buy as weekly visitors to Parkhead & now gets treated like the holy grail because we're thousands of miles away & can only rarely get over to see the hoops.

I scared my Canadian gf with my knowledge of away tops & when they were from.. she sort of understands what Celtic is all about, bless her :-)


On the "we were pish/it's only a friendly/they got 4 lucky goals" argument, we were absolute shite in the first half until the game was over, then in the 2nd, we sort of upped our game  a bit thanks to Lambert/Miller doing a better job in midfield that Lennon/Stan.
What I think was unforgivable was the lack of fight in the Celtic team.. I don't mean the handbags stuff at Giggs's testimonial, but for the distances that people had come for their "once in a lifetime" chance of watching Celtic, the performance was total bollocks & was not acceptable. some of the flags I saw were the "Texas fenian Bhoys" , Denver CSC, South Saskatchewan CSC, for the guys on the east coast, it's probably the same time to get to Seattle as it is to get to Parkhead.
I know the game technically meant feck all to Celtic, but there is NEVER a time when Celtic means feck all to us. It was excellent seeing the hoops live again (recent convert to Canada), but for the folks that came from Calgary, Fort McMurray, Arizona & EVERYWHERE else on the planet (I was looking for some UlsterBus's in the parking lot!!) & this was a one off to see the hoops it was bitterly disappointing.


anyhoos, that's my thoughts. discuss, or delete,


John