On Saturday, Celtic open their 2026/2027 campaign with an away trip to Runcorn Linnets. Runcorn finished fourth last season, two points and a place below Celtic, only to lose in the play-off semi-final to us. Kick-off is 3pm.

Last season, Runcorn lost three games at home, to Bury, Shifnal and Witton, and drew six, winning the rest. Celtic were one of those draws. The defeat to Witton at 5-0 ended up being the worst home defeat of any team, but even with that defeat Runcorn finished up with the fifth best defence, only Bury, Avro, Chasetown and Mossley conceded fewer. Bury, Avro, Nantwich, and us scored more, giving them also the fourth best attack in the league. They finished the season with five games unbeaten, made up of three wins and two draws since their last defeat at home to Bury at the end of March.

Their top scorer last season was Scott Bakkor, with fifteen, almost double his nearest rival, Harry McGee, who nabbed eight. In total, twenty different players found the net at least once. They scored an average of 1.8 goals per game (2 goals per game at home) and failed to score three times at home and eight overall. Defensively, they conceded at a rate of 1.1 goals per game (1.2 overall) and kept seven of their thirteen clean sheets at home, with their last clean sheet being in mid-March against Wythenshawe. Over their last five league matches, they scored ten and conceded six.

Our last visit to Runcorn was only two league games ago, as we played them in our penultimate league fixture last season, a game which finished 2-2, with an own goal and a beaut from Max Leonard cancelling out McGee and Bakkor. The last time the two teams met was also two competitive games ago in the play-off semi-final at Bower Fold, which Celtic won 1-0 thanks to Andy Scarisbrick’s early opener. Linnets are a recent team, forming from the disintegration of Runcorn FC Halton, and since their formation, we’ve played them twelve times. Apart from a Cheshire Senior Cup win back in 2015 when the teams first met, Runcorn went onto win eight consecutive meets between 2019 and 2025, including three wins at Bower Fold. Beating us in the final of the Cheshire Senior Cup last year and knocking us out of that cup twice and the FA Cup once. That changed last season when we won at Bower Fold in the league and play off semi, drawing in Runcorn.

Both teams have changed personnel over the summer, though Runcorn’s has been far more dramatic than Celtic’s.