The mates brought through the gate were treated to a sensational win by Celtic against in-form Gainsborough Trinity.

Celtic started well, with Theo Bailey-Jones having his free kick tipped over the bar and Harry Benns on the corner forcing Matt Yates into early action. Djavan Pedro started his impact on the game with a ball threaded through a crowd of players to Benns, surrounded and outnumbered, he managed to turn and fire into the bottom corner to open the scoring. A second would always be needed against a team containing Clayton Donaldson, though Tom Miller and Dahrius Waldron kept Donaldson out of the picture for much of the match. A cracker of a shot from Bailey-Jones would have doubled Celtic’s lead, but Jamie Bramwell threw himself in front of the shot.

Twenty minutes in and Celtic’s hunt for an equaliser had to wait a moment, with the visitors pressing strongly. Fraser Preston’s free kick curled back down over the wall, but hit the crossbar, coming back to Preston to fire over. Curtis Durose made some space, but Greg Hall got down well to smother his low shot. The wait was over, Raheem Hanley turned around a free kick, to race towards a depleted back line for Trinity. His ball found and freed Pedro. With Andrew Wright blocking the route to goal, Pedro put the ball sideways to Ciaran Summers, the only one who’d kept up with Hanley and Pedro. He struck his shot first time, curling it beyond Yates to double Celtic’s lead.

Everybody knew Gainsborough would be strong in the second half. But this is where the Celtic defence came into its own, limiting wave after wave of Trinity attacks to the occasional set-piece, never getting through to Greg Hall’s goal. Celtic even came close to making the result unassailable with fifteen minutes remaining, but Bailey-Jones’s free kick hit the crossbar and Trinity gratefully cleared. It wasn’t until the final minutes of the match that Trinity finally tested Hall, from a corner Joe West got his head on the ball, but lacked the power to trouble Hall, whilst Liam Waldock fired weakly and Hall caught with the final whistle in sight and lifting Celtic to thirteenth with the chance of twelfth if we win on Tuesday against Radcliffe.