Henry Winter joins The Herald for titanic Celtic vs Rangers derby

It’s the reason the acclaimed sportswriter was keen to come to Scotland to cover the match between Celtic and Rangers this weekend and write three pieces under a masthead he’s admired his whole career.

After all, a mid-1980s visit to the old offices in Albion Street helped spark the passion that was instrumental in building a phenomenal career at The Telegraph and The Times and has seen him accumulate both awards and social media followers at a remarkable rate.

“It’s always good to be associated with The Herald having done my student years in Edinburgh, you were the big sponsors and judges of the student awards then,” he said warmly. “So we’d traipse across respectfully and pray that we won something.

“I remember when we won the sports side of it in the 1980s. One of the treats, as well as a night out in Glasgow, was being shown around the offices and the print side as well. I’ve always had ink in the veins and that only added to the desire to have a career in football journalism.”

Winter’s trip to Glasgow won’t be a foray into uncharted territory. In fact, his first derby in the flesh was over 30 years ago. While the game was forgettable, everything that surrounded it was not.

“My first one was 1993,” he recalls. “It wasn’t a classic game, it was 0-0 at the end, but just to feel that energy and passion, the urgency and feeling of walking into Parkhead and that sense that nothing else in the world mattered, that everyone who was inside the stadium just assumed that everyone who was outside the stadium, six or seven billion people would just be focused on that and that was all that mattered. And that every corner, every little nutmeg, every tackle was more important than life itself.

“It was extraordinary for someone like myself who’s spent my career covering English games and it’s fair to say the atmosphere in English games, whether the reason is all-seater stadiums, gentrification, ticket prices, the 18-24-year-olds becoming a lost generation in terms of the Premier League. I know that’s a societal thing, a broader thing but just going into those Old Firm games, the memory of them is just being plugged into the electricity of the occasion.”

While the financial gap between the top flights in England and Scotland has grown enormously since Winter’s first dip into the Glasgow cauldron, there is still enough attraction in the perennial battle between Scotland’s giants to attract professionals who have made their names down south.

Both goalkeepers, Joe Hart and Jack Butland, are England internationalists while Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers is no stranger to the correspondent having brought Liverpool to the brink of a title and won the FA Cup with Leicester City.

“Those are three individuals I respect as human beings as well as great professionals,” he said. “I will take Brendan first. He’s fascinating, not just about the games, but about the issues in the game. I remember when he was at Liverpool and talking to him in a general press conference about the problems in English football at the time. He spoke for about seven minutes on everything that was wrong tactically and technically with the players, issues in academies and the pathways to the first team.

“There was a lot of focus on Luis Suarez at the time and he also spoke about him, so the quotes didn’t get used. I later wrote a piece using them and included it all in a book I was writing about English football. He was absolutely spot on. They are all issues that have been subsequently addressed in terms of keeping the hunger and accelerating the tactical and technical prowess of the young players coming through – and if you look at the players they have now, it’s phenomenal.

Brendan Rodgers, when he was Liverpool manager in 2014 (Image: Getty)

“He was always ahead of the game. He’s a very personable individual. Some of the criticism he got down south is unfair. When he was Liverpool manager, he was doing some work for the League Managers Association at the World Cup in Brazil. I saw him walking along the Copacabana in glorious sunshine. He stopped and we stood in the shade and for 10 minutes just chewing the cud over the Liverpool players doing well for England and Stevie Gerrard. He could have been out on the beach or with the LMA but he took the time, I found him a very civilised individual.

“Coming onto the two goalkeepers, first I’m just really pleased to see them do well. I thought some of the tributes to Joe when he announced his retirement were very heartfelt. Joe is supremely respected as a goalkeeper.

“I remember one England briefing with Joe where he sat down, brought his phone out and put it on record. I said to him at the end ‘We are not really used to that, have you been misquoted or whatever?’ He was just a little bit wary. He was at West Ham and I went down and had a coffee with him a couple of times and he was far removed from the occasionally guarded individual he had been with England. He opened up on really deep technical and tactical things in the game and he gave me such insight. To get to the top and stay at the top you have to understand your craft and really analyse it and Joe’s done that.

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“I got to know Jack at Stoke City. Stoke has issues as a city, as many British cities do, and Jack was really good. He was the go-to guy to go and lift someone’s spirits in the community. He was absolutely brilliant at that because he was such a lovely guy. It’s great to see him do so well now.”

The sheer magnitude of these two Scottish clubs and the titanic nature of this specific clash, with only three points separating the rivals with three games to go, is something that few outside of Glasgow truly grasp. Winter though, has seen through his own experience how far and wide its influence spreads, even across the Atlantic Ocean.

“I don’t think people down south quite understand the size of Rangers and Celtic. I got it a little bit from my book with Sir Kenny Dalglish. The publishers send you a breakdown of sales from all over the world and there were 5000 sales in Canada. I was speaking to the sales director and he said ‘Yup, Celtic.’ It’s extraordinary. Rangers are the same. One of the plusses of being an outsider is, because you can take a step back, you get to appreciate just the size of this derby.”

You can read Henry Winter’s thoughts on the game online and in print over the weekend, exclusively with The Herald.