A Celtic B team XI travelled north on Saturday for a charity match against Fraserburgh FC.
A youthful side led by Darren O'Dea and Stephen McManus took on the Highland League club at Bellslea Park in a fundraising match for Fraserburgh Lifeboat Station. The fixture was first played 53 years ago, when Jock Stein's Celtic headed for the north-east to help raise money for the families of five RNLI volunteers who died when their lifeboat capsized off the Aberdeenshire coast in January 1970.
Saturday was the first time the teams have crossed paths since, again for a charitable cause. In front of a sold-out crowd, and after a minute's silence for those who perished, the friendly finished goalless before Celtic prevailed 5-3 in a penalty shootout.
Among those who featured for the Parkhead side were B team regulars plus some who featured for the U-18s in the Youth Cup Final win over Rangers last season. That included Lenny Agbaire, Corey Thomson, Mitchell Frame, Kyle Ure, Mackenzie Carse and Bruno Davidson.
The first team's pre-season preparations are set to get underway later this month. Brendan Rodgers will meet the squad at Lennoxtown before embarking on a tour of Japan and South Korea.
Earlier this week, Celtic's friendly against Wolves in Korea on July 26 was cancelled after the Premier League side pulled out citing organisational concerns. Organisers Stadium X have since revealed they are arranging for Rodgers' side to play K-League side Incheon United instead.
They said in a statement: "While the visits of Wolverhampton Wanderers and Roma have been cancelled, a match between Celtic and Incheon United is still progressing.
READ MORE: Jota's £25m Celtic to Al-Ittihad transfer could be hijacked by rivals
"We are changing our original schedule and promoting a match now between Incheon and Celtic, who have national striker Oh Hyeon-gyu in their team.
"We would like to express our deepest apologies to football fans in South Korea for the cancellation of some of the matches."
Celtic have other matches lined up against Gamba Osaka and Yokohama F. Marinos, former club of Daizen Maeda and Tomoki Iwata, as well as the club's former manager Ange Postecoglou.
They will return to Celtic Park for the first time under Rodgers on August to play Athletic Club in James Forrest's testimonial.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel