IT’S THE small details that decorate your memory of Celtic’s sacred moments.

I can still remember all the attendant elements of the day when they won the league at Love Street in 1986. It remains my favourite and most vividly recalled of all the club's championship run-ins. The 4-2 game in 1979 runs it close – not least because this was my first derby – but for the sheer, unexpected joy of triumph, Love Street 86 tops the lot.

After three successive home draws in February and March that year, followed by an incredible 4-4 game at Ibrox, Celtic appeared to have blown any chance they had of catching an excellent Hearts team who would have thoroughly deserved to have won their first title since 1960. The Jambos had drawn three and beaten us once and we could have had no complaints if the title had gone to Tynecastle.

Many years later, I watched a television documentary about that Hearts team which included their players’ reflections on the agony of losing out to Celtic on the last day. John Colquhoun, a former Hoops winger, was one of the stars of their team and shed tears when recalling the way they (his boyhood team) had pipped Hearts.

After that ruinous run of drawn matches, Celtic needed to win all of their last eight league games, a feat which had been beyond them at any previous stretch in a stop-start season. And Hearts just kept on winning, including a 3-0 win at Tannadice the week before Love Street which seemed to put the title beyond our reach.

On the last day, they needed only to draw with a mediocre Dundee side at Dens Park and we needed to rattle in at least four at St Mirren.

I’d been at each of the seven victories that preceded Love Street, including a win at Pittodrie (rare in that era) but the feeling persisted that we’d simply left it too late to discover our form. On the morning of May 3, though, the fight had gone out of me and I wasn’t intending to go. And, besides, I was committed to working on my new flat in Govanhill prior to moving in two months later after my wedding.

The rain that fell persistently throughout that day simply helped to make up my mind for me: Celtic would have to do without my assistance. The league was lost and nobody could have doubted my commitment to the cause throughout the season. I also had unhappy memories of Love Street. I remember being there on the last day of the 1979-80 season in a dismal 0-0 draw while Aberdeen were demolishing Hibs 5-0 at Easter Road to be crowned champions.    

My friend Bill, who’d accompanied me to most games that season, called me in a bid to chivvy me towards Paisley. It was either that or try to strip five layers of paint from a 100-year-old flat that hadn’t been touched since the day it was built. And so Love Street it was.

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You didn’t require tickets back then so there was no bother getting into the game; many other Celtic fans, it seemed, had also opted for something else to do that day. The first-half performance when they scored four without reply – each goal more breathtaking than the last – had you wondering why we hadn’t won the title already. That 86 team was a very fine one: Paul McStay, Brian McClair, Tommy Burns, Maurice Johnston, Danny McGrain. It was a testament to the excellence of the Hearts team that they remained unbeaten against us that season.

Those four first-half goals alone made the trip worthwhile but, as the second half began and no news came from Dens Park, we all kind of accepted that the league was lost. And so did the players, who added only one more goal as they eased up a little in the second half.

And then came those moments late in the game which will never be repeated. It’s difficult to describe to a younger generation of supporters the fever which grips a large contingent of supporters at a match when it first senses that a result elsewhere in the country is falling in their favour. It was the uncertainty of the moment which added to the thrill. Now, when news of Rangers losing comes through, it’s carried instantaneously on dozens of different media platforms. There can be no doubt.     

Back then, it was conveyed by the wee man five rows back trying to listen to a battery-powered transistor radio the size of a brick. How many times did we break into raptures at the news Rangers or Aberdeen had conceded a crucial late goal only to discover minutes later that BBC Scotland’s excitable commentator, David Francey, was merely describing a throw-in? So when a pocket of supporters down near the front started cheering you had to be wary. Surely not? It was too good to be true.

But within seconds, those first startling shouts had become a wave that began to move across the entire terracing behind the St Mirren goal, building into a crescendo. This was the real thing.

Dundee had scored, but with seven minutes still to play there was plenty of time for Hearts to secure the equaliser they needed and probably deserved.

And then the second eruption, greater even than the first because, 1) we were still singing about the first one and 2) it meant the title was ours.

I’ve never experienced anything remotely like it before or since.