The game started with thunder from the heavens and continued with a blood and thunder derby that had passion and commitment from both sides.

The opening half an hour presented chances to both sides. Raul Correia unable to keep his close range shot down at one end, with Jack Redshaw unable to beat Joe O’Shaughnessy at the other. Celtic came the closest in these early exchanges, Tom Miller’s low drive deflected by a stuck out foot from Aaron Fleming with David Atherton in the Hyde goals stranded. A Chris Dagnall drive from the edge of the box went through a crowd, but Atherton watched the shot the whole way, while at the other, a Hyde counter attack sliced Celtic open, but Liam Tongue’s eventual shot flew wide. Atherton spilled a cross in from Correia under pressure from his own defence, but Harry Ditchfield cleared off the line.

A goal was coming, and it came from chaos in the Hyde box. Miller’s long throw flicked on by Domaine Rouse was only half-cleared, coming to Theo Bailey-Jones, who struck low and hard through the crowd, flying just beyond the reach of Atherton to open the scoring. Atherton reached the next effort, flying across the goal to reach Rouse’s header, keeping Hyde in the match. They capitalised when the Celtic defence dithered over a free kick floated to the corner of the box, allowing Ditchfield to pick his spot and levelling for the visitors just before the interval.

O’Shaughnessy started the second half off with a stunning save denying Tongue from a corner, but from the resulting corner, Matt Fearney got two attempts with his shot, the initial one charged down by Rouse, only for it to fall sweetly back to Fearney, curling it into the bottom corner. Though Hyde went onto the defensive to hold the slender lead, Tongue’s quick thinking free kick almost caught O’Shaughnessy off guard, but he recovered, pushing the shot past the post.

For the last half hour, Celtic threw everything at Hyde to break them down. Both Ciaran Summers and DJ Pedro forced Atherton into saves, the latter with a delicate curled shot from twenty yards. Bailey-Jones smashed his volley into the side netting and Raul Correia came the width of a post away from levelling the scores, swivelling and smashing his shot to the top corner, clipping the corner of crossbar and post on its way out. Pedro guided Summer’s cross into Atherton’s grateful arms, and Summers twice went close, bursting into the box onto through balls. Three times Hyde threw bodies in the way as Celtic camped around Hyde’s box, right into the fourth minute of five stoppages.

Curtis Morrison burst past Tongue, ready to pull the ball back, but Tongue clipped Morrison well inside the box. Hyde immediately employed mind games to put Correia off balance for the resulting penalty, creating a fracas. But Correia had learned from the Marine debacle earlier in the season, taking the ball and standing off to one side, waiting for the Hyde players to be brought under control. A lot of shoving and constantly crowding the box ensued, seeing Roscoe and Iorpenda booked.

Raul kept his head and smashed the spot kick in to equalise. In the aftermath, Danny Burns got a straight red, but even without the tall centre half, Celtic snatched the draw in the dying seconds to keep alive their hope of staving off relegation, and the chance of getting into the play-offs for Hyde dwindled.

Attendance: 1347.