Celtic Football Club has a long and illustrious history, having always competed in the highest level of football in Scotland, currently the Scottish Premiership. The club was constituted in 1887, and played its first game in 1888. Celtic play home games at Celtic Park, which is the largest football stadium in Scotland. In 2005-2006, Celtic’s home games attracted an average attendance of 58,149, making Celtic third only to Manchester United and Arsenal in average attendance for any football club in the UK.
Celtic Football Club was formally constituted at a meeting in St. Mary’s church hall in East Rose Street (now Forbes Street), Calton, Glasgow, by Irish Marist Brother Walfrid on 6 November 1887, with the purpose of alleviating poverty in the East End of Glasgow by raising money for the charity Walfrid had instituted, the Poor Children’s Dinner Table. Walfrid’s move to establish the club as a means of fund-raising was largely inspired by the example of Hibernian who were formed out of the immigrant Irish population a few years earlier in Edinburgh. Walfrid’s own suggestion of the name ‘Celtic’ (pronounced Seltik, according to the Glaswegian dialect), was intended to reflect the club’s Irish and Scottish roots, and was adopted at the same meeting. The club has the official nickname, “The Bhoys”. However, according to the Celtic press office, the newly established club was known to many as “the bold boys”. A postcard from the early 20th century that pictured the team, and read “The Bould Bhoys”, is the first known example of the unique spelling. The extra ‘h’ imitates the spelling system of Gaelic, where the letter B is often accompanied by the letter H.
In 1967, Celtic became the first British team to win the European Cup, which had previously been the preserve of Italian, Portuguese and Spanish clubs. Celtic remain the only Scottish club ever to have reached the final, and are one of only two clubs to have won the trophy with a team composed entirely of players from the club’s home country; all of the players in the side were born within 30 miles of Celtic Park in Glasgow.
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