BREN WILL REFLECT ON LIFE'S MEANING

I'D imagine Brendan Rodgers has found it difficult to focus on football this weekend.

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How could Celtic's manager not be distracted by real life and the tragic goings on around him?

On Thursday evening, the coffin carrying Lisbon Lion John Clark, a friend and former colleague, was taken to the church closest to Celtic Park for the service that would precede “Luggy’s” burial the following day.

But, before then, the awful story of Liverpool's Diogo Jota, and his brother, being killed in a car crash in Spain, leaving behind a wife and three young children, dominated the news agenda.

Rodgers - a husband, father, grandfather and former Liverpool manager - must have been consumed by a sense of devastating loss.

Football is always described as being the most important of the things that are least important.

Brendan will have been given, in a period of 48 hours, an even more intimate understanding of what that actually means.

Friday night's preseason friendly for Celtic against Queen's Park at Lesser Hampden will doubtless have been a difficult occasion for him to negotiate.

The days ahead, with more games to come in his native Ireland and abroad, will need to be dealt with almost as part of a healing process.

That's why it seems almost like an intrusion into someone's privacy to ask questions of Brendan's professional life as the start to the new season approaches.