In the final Scottish Premiership matches of 2021, Celtic FC, Hibernian and St. Mirren were some of the teams which featured Australians playing on Boxing Day.
Four Australians celebrated Boxing Day in Scotland with Scottish Premiership wins. The games, all played in front of limited crowds, were the last before the league's winter break.
Scottish-based Australians' Boxing Day Results
- Postecoglou's Celtic FC finish year with win, six points behind Rangers.
- Hibernian and Hearts also registered wins on Boxing Day.
- The Scottish Premiership now starts their three-week winter break.
More Australian football news can be found on FTBL.
Celtic entered their Boxing Day match against St. Johnstone with sixteen first team players unavailable due to injuries and a COVID-19 outbreak in the squad. Notably, Celtic were without first and second choice goalkeepers Joe Hart and Scott Bain due to the outbreak.
This selection crisis only worsened fifteen minutes in when striker Kyogo Furuhashi was forced off with a hamstring problem. Despite the uphill battle, Celtic registered a win to end their calendar year.
Liel Abada opened the scoring, just before Kyogo's removal. Socceroo Tom Rogić then continued his exceptional Celtic form, making creative plays in midfield and supplying two assists to Abada and Nir Bitton in the first and second half respectively.
His first assist was a smart little through ball to Abada in the box, which the Israeli slotted past St. Johnstone keeper Elliott Parish. Rogić's second came after the Socceroo intercepted a St Johnstone pass in the final third and quickly passed it to the top of the box for Bitton to shot in.
🧙🏻🇦🇺 So much to like about this neat little assist from @Socceroos star @Tom_Rogic! The wizard of Oz had the ball on a string as @CelticFC beat @StJohnstone 3-1. But the win may have come at a huge cost for the Bhoys | #STJCEL Full highlights here 👉 https://t.co/1DFfjhK3xR pic.twitter.com/YP1z2iUZ4S
— beIN SPORTS (@beINSPORTS_AUS) December 26, 2021
St Johnstone's Christopher Kane was able to score one, but the Hoops left McDiarmid Park with a 3-1 win. Celtic FC enter 2022 second in the Scottish Premiership, six points behind leaders Rangers.
Speaking after the match, Postecoglou spoke of the challenging lead up to the match and his praised his side's performance:
“The last couple of days have been pretty chaotic as you would imagine with everything that was happening. But we stayed calm through the whole thing.
"We knew that this was just a different challenge from the other challenges we have had so far and we just had to get on with it.
“To be fair, it’s been challenging from the moment I set foot here, it has just been different challenges.
"That’s what I keep saying to the players, all along we haven’t made excuses or felt sorry for ourselves.
"We have just got on with the job. Every challenge we have had we have, for the most part, overcome. That is testament to the character within the group.
"Yeah, it was a challenging week, but we’ve had a lot of challenging weeks and challenging games and to the players’ credit they have hung in there.
“We were excellent in the first half. We scored two and could have had more. The conditions were challenging but we played good stuff before the game got scrappy.
“Overall I am really happy with the players’ attitude and commitment. It has been a challenging week and we got the job done.”
The win extended Celtic's undefeated run closing out the year to nine straight games. Former Melbourne Victory midfielder Jacob Butterfield started the match for St. Johnstone. It was his fourth for the Scottish side after signing as a free agent earlier this month.
Elsewhere in the Premiership, Martin Boyle's Hibernian saw off Dundee United with a 3-1 win. It was the second game under new head coach Shaun Maloney, who was appointed after the firing of Jack Ross earlier this month.
The Socceroo started the match, playing the full 90 minutes. Like Rogić, Boyle provided two assists during the 3-1 victory. Just before the half, the Socceroo's shot on goal from close range was deflected past Dundee keeper Benjamin Siegrist by Boyle's strike partner Kevin Nisbet to make it 1-0.
In the 78th minute, Boyle received the ball from Jake Doyle-Hayes in the box and passed it in to Chris Cadden who made it 2-0 for Hibs. Dundee's Declan Glass was able to get one for his side in the 90th, but Jamie Murphy got a third for Hibernian three minutes later for a final scoreline of 3-1.
Boyle himself was able to get a few shots off, including an early second half attempt that started with the striker dribbling past five United defenders on the edge of the box, but that one like his others did not lead to goals today.
The second straight win under Maloney see Hibernian finishing the year trailing first placed Rangers by 22 points, sitting in fifth place in the Scottish Premiership.
Cameron Devlin's Heart of Midlothian faced fellow Olyroo Ashley Maynard-Brewer's Ross County. Heats came out on top winning the match by a scoreline of 2-1. Neither man was on the team sheet for this game, with Devlin being suspended. Maynard-Brewer had played the full 90 minutes of County's win mid-week against St. Johnstone.
Hearts are currently third in the Scottish Premiership on 36 points, 15 points behind Rangers, while Ross County are tenth with eighteen points.
Australian Matthew Millar's St. Mirren faced Rangers at Ibrox. They lost by a scoreline of 2-0 with Millar being an unused substitute. They finish 2021 just above Ross County in the ladder with 19 points.
The Scottish Premiership now starts a three week winter break before resuming on January 17, 2022.
The Scottish Premiership is broadcast on BeIN Sports in Australia.
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