Here's why I'll never waver from Hibs hard truths but Harry McKirdy has my best wishes – Tam McManus

The Gospel According to Saint Tam McManus does sometimes contain some hard truths.

No apologies, I’ll get to the Harry McKirdy affair shortly but first let me state my case. As a player I suffered my fair share of criticism and regarded it as part and parcel of the game. In these pages the late, great Jim McLean had a pop at me in his column which packed a punch.

I still have the cutting, “If Tam McManus was as good as he thought he was then he’d be playing for Real Madrid”. Maybe it was a backhanded compliment? Maybe not. On the pitch it was much worse. Martin O’Neill’s Celtic side were notorious when it came to sledging, to borrow a word from cricket. It was always comments and insulting remarks about cash and medals, neither of which I had much of. Alan Stubbs, Paul Lambert, Neil Lennon, Henrik Larsson and the master of the cutting remark was my fellow Record Sport columnist Chris Sutton.

I was part of a Hibs side which beat Celtic 2-1 in a League Cup quarter-final back in 2003 and we milked every minute of our celebrations at full-time. They had a side full of multi-million pound stars and they’d lost for the first time that season.

The only problem was the fact we were playing Celtic at Parkhead in the following game and they were ready for us. You could smell it in the tunnel when we all lined up to go out for the game, it was the scent of an imminent hammering and I was about to be on the receiving end.

Sutton was his usual self, money this and medals that. He dinked home a penalty to make it 4-0 to Celtic and jogged past me laughing and said: “You’re not celebrating now you little w*****.” Celtic went on to win 6-0 and it was a sore one, especially as we’d had the measure of them the previous week. That League