Former Celtic striker Simon Donnelly has revealed that the social element of Wim Jansen's side was key to stopping Rangers winning ten-in-a-row.
It is 20 years today since Celtic's 2-0 win over St Johnstone enabled them to win their first title in a decade and stop the Ibrox side penning a unique chapter into Scottish football folklore.
"We went out on the Tuesday night!," said Donnelly. “It’s well documented that we were a social team and out every Tuesday and Saturday.
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“We decided - rightly or wrongly - to go out on the Tuesday night. Nowadays we’d all have been caught on mobile phones.
“We had the Wednesday off and then worked hard on the Thursday and Friday."
Celtic had scorned a chance to tie the league up against Dunfermline on the penultimate day of the season when Donnelly looked to have given the Parkhead side the desired three points in a nervy game at East End Park. A late leveller, however, from Craig Falconbridge took the title into an antsy finale against St Johnstone with Henrik Larsson and Harold Brattbakk taking Celtic over the line in an edgy 90 minutes.
“I curse [Jonathan] Gouldy to for not stopping it!" joked Donnelly.
“It was one of these things - it could have been my goal, but maybe it was a perfect send off to actually win the league at Celtic Park.
"I do have to say though that it felt as if every Celtic fan in the country was at East End Park.
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“But yes Craig Faulconbridge will go down in history as the man who killed a dream for myself.”
“The most nerves I had was when I was taken off for Harald. At least on the park you can do something. I just then became like a fan and for the final 20 minutes that was when the real nerves kicked in.
“It was only 1-0 and St Johnstone had a stramash in our box and we knew that Rangers were winning so it was tight.
“When Harald scored it was just such a relief. I jumped on John Clark’s back and nearly took him to the ground and thankfully we got over the line.”
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