O’Neill counting the minutes for an end to gruelling pre-season tour

CELTIC’S management team of Martin O’Neill and John Robertson will be counting down the minutes in Toronto tonight as their team’s gruelling pre-season tour comes to an end against Roma.

The Scottish champions will be playing their fourth game in as many cities in eight days when they meet the Italians at the Skydome and the duo can’t wait to get it over with.

Celtic kicked off their North American tour against Chelsea in Seattle last Saturday with a 4-2 defeat.

They then flew from west coast to east for a game with Liverpool in East Hartford, Connecticut, on Monday and came out on the wrong end of a 5-1 hammering by the Reds before travelling down to Philadelphia on Wednesday to turn their fortunes around with a 2-1 win over Manchester United.

The Hoops will fly home from the Canadian city of Toronto tomorrow in readiness for a final warm-up match in midweek against Newcastle United before they get their Scottish Premier League title defence under way next weekend at home to Motherwell.

Despite admitting the tour has included one game too many, both O’Neill and former Nottingham Forest team-mate Robertson believe the tour has served a purpose.

“You can go and play weak opposition and get your confidence up and win 10-0 or 12-0 playing against amateur teams but the lads prefer playing in games against teams of this quality.

“We’ve had a few bad games but Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Roma are top teams and players like playing against them.”

O’Neill, who had only flown into Philadelphia last Wednesday for the United match having stayed in Scotland to be with his wife Geraldine as she battles illness, added: “The travelling does take it out of you.

“On Saturday evening we will complete four games in eight days and despite my view we have gone because it’s been a lucrative trip for us. But I would have probably have preferred a game less to get a wee bit more time to prepare.”

Tonight’s game is heading for a sell-out with more than 40,000 tickets sold already for the second of back-to-back games in the Canadian city.

But while Liverpool and Porto opened this leg of the Champions World tour and Celtic and Roma completed the big-name line-up, the star of the show in the local media has undoubtedly been the pitch.

For these matches are being marketed to local fans as marking the debut of real grass at the Stadium, 33,528 square metres of it.

The turf was laid down over the stadium’s concrete floor on Thursday following the Toronto Blue Jays’ major league baseball match with the New York Yankees played on artificial grass the previous evening.

Around 50 workers completed the 13-hour installation at 7pm last night before each seam was inspected by hand to ensure it was flush with the sod alongside it and didn’t need to be filled with sand.

Liverpool striker Michael Owen said before yesterday’s Porto game that he had never played on that type of surface in the past; with grass laid on top of concrete and there could be a problem if a player caught his boot in between the floor tiles a seam, “but I haven’t thought about it,” he said, having thought about it.