RANGERS supporters have recently taken exception to an innocuous reference to their club in the Coronation Street scripts, but this episode of EastEnders went exactly as expected. Celtic were toying with Hamilton by the end, having run in four goals. The pick of them was the last, created by Shaun Maloney and scored by Aiden McGeady.

The League Against Cruel Sports would perhaps have intervened had they seen the series of stepovers with which Maloney, coming in from the left, befuddled first Simon Mensing and then Martin Canning before almost running out of space on the touchline. His feet and mind were still quick enough to provide the cutback which McGeady rolled home to finally get the goal his own excellent performance merited.

The late excitement, which included a controversial penalty missed by Hamilton, was welcome as the game appeared to have died midway through the second half with Celtic comfortable at 2-0. Then McGeady, perhaps because he was as bored as everyone else by this lengthy lull in the action, came back to life. He drew a good save from Tomas Cerny with a left-foot shot and then slanted a ball into the box which Canning pursued with Scott McDonald. The centre-back appeared to have the Australian cor-alled, but McDonald surprised him by sliding to take the ball and then getting up quickly and picking his spot to score. He patted his belly in celebration, a humourous response to recent accusations that he is looking rather portly this season.

Hamilton never looked likely to score until they were awarded what looked a sympathy penalty by Steve Conroy with 10 minutes to go. It came when James McCarthy stumbled through Stephen McManus’s block tackle on the edge of the box and straight into another, this time inside the area, by Gary Caldwell. The Scotland centre-back seemed to get a fair bit of the ball, but Conroy p o i n t e d t o t h e s p o t . J a m e s McArthur, though, saw his kick saved low to his left by Artur Boruc and was then denied again by the Polish goalkeeper as he tried to follow up with a header, before Barry Robson completed the clearance.

“That just sums up James McArthur’s day,” said Billy Reid, Hamilton’s manager, in an impressively honest appraisal of his side’s performance. “That’s probably the worst game he’s played for me.” Reid spared few of his players afterwards and even substituted two of them, David Grah a m a n d C h r i s t o p h e r Swailes, at half-time. “It could have been more than 4-0, we didn’t do ourselves justice. They are better than that.”

Gordon Strachan, by contrast, was “more than satisfied, delighted” with his side. “It was windy, wet and we had just played a European tie and had been on the plane for a long time. So to start as we did with energy and be respectful of Hamilton was great.” The only sore point for Celtic’s manager, or more precisely for Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, was the adductor muscle strain the big Dutchman suffered almost straight from kick-off as he stretched for the ball.

Georgios Samaras has been in scintillating and scoring form recently, so his omission from Strachan’s starting-line up was something of a surprise, yet he barely had time to take his seat on the bench before he was called into the fray to replace Vennegoor of Hesselink and almost gave Celtic an early lead. His downward header was stopped by the right foot of Cerny before Canning cleared. The delivery came from Robson, deployed in the new position of left-back due to Lee Naylor being injured. He advanced from here whenever possible, as Celtic were not examined defensively at all by Hamilton, whose cautious approach betrayed their Brazil-style away strip.

A goal for the home side was inevitable and came in the 26th minute when McGeady’s chip from the right made it over the despairing jump of David Elebert at the back post and was collected and then lashed home by Shunsuke Nakamura. This relaxed Celtic, which was not a good thing for the visitors.

Samaras was guilty of greed when he could have played Marc Crosas through, but elected to shoot instead. McDonald was keen to get involved, too, scenting goals in this game. He smacked a right-foot shot off a post after catching Mark Wilson’s header across goal on his chest. Celtic were not to be denied their second goal for long, though.

Boruc’s punt forward was flicked on by Samaras before McDonald mastered it and then spread play to the left to Nakamura. The Japanese international’s perceptive cutback invited Samaras to stroll onto it and sidefoot home, almost casually, from the edge of the box. Reid now glanced anxiously at his watch, hoping to make it to half-time safely, but more torture awaited him.