‘The View’s Favourite’ is a daily web series that explores the Celtic View team’s fondest Hoops memories on a specific theme. Every Friday, we’ll turn it over to our Twitter followers to vote a winner and be included in an end-of-week round-up.

This week, we’re talking favourite Glasgow derbies. For View reporter Joe Donnelly, there can only be one…

GAME: Celtic 6-2 Rangers
Scottish Premier League, Celtic Park
August 27, 2000

AS I mentioned in last week’s entry, I was born in the mid-80s and therefore grew up in the 90s, at a time when our neighbours across the road enjoyed the lion’s share of success in domestic Scottish football.

The unexpected 5-1 derby victory of November 21, 1998 was the first time I remember being properly excited by the fixture. Not only did we win, we did so with swagger and by playing attractive, aggressive and attacking football. The stuff my dad had told me about having watched Jock Stein’s side in the 60s and 70s. The Celtic Way. Off the back of Stopping the Ten the previous season, this, to me at least, felt like a turning point in my time as a young Celtic fan.

It wasn’t. Rangers went on to win the league, and, the following season, the Hoops finished 21 points adrift of their city rivals, in a trail that saw them lose three of the four derbies, drawing the other 1-1 a few days before the turn of the millennium. Worse still, Henrik Larsson broke his leg in a UEFA Cup defeat to Lyon.

Fast forward several months to August 27, 2000. Martin O’Neill came with the promise of silverware, and stood confidently in the home dugout shoulder to shoulder with Tommy Burns. Henrik was fit again, who, paired up top with new signing Chris Sutton, had it all to do on derby day.

And of course they did.

Everyone remembers the scoreline, and everyone remembers that goosebump-evoking chip from the King of Kings. But one thing that’s stuck with me since, nearly 20 years on, is the incongruous mix of surprise and delight etched onto Paul Lambert’s face in the wake of his goal, Celtic’s third of the afternoon. 3-0 on the scoreboard with barely 12 minutes on the clock. Surely then, it was going to be Celtic's day.

And of course it was. On our way to the game, my dad and I walked by a group of Rangers fans, one of who shouted over: “Good luck today boys. We could do with a challenge this year.” 6-2 followed by the treble. That’s stuck with me ever since, too.

The View’s Favourite… Derby win: the demolition