Last night many of us watched the game on Red TV. We have talked about the greetin-faced Mark Reynolds at the end who reminded us how lucky we are to play our football in a country where all the referees give Celtic every break that is going, but did you notice who one of the match commentators was? One Willie Garner! Was this our Willie Garner?
Willie, a Celtic supporter by birth and inclination, I am reliably informed, played centre half for both Aberdeen and Celtic. His Aberdeen career was good. He played in that awful League Cup final of 1976/77 and indeed was one of the reasons why we peppered the Aberdeen goal all that second half and in extra time but couldn’t score. He also won the Scottish League in 1980 when Celtic managed to lose twice to Aberdeen at Parkhead in that dreadful month of April. Happy days for Willie!
With Celtic it was a different story. He has to go down as one of the most unlucky Celtic players of them all, for he played three games and lost every single one of them. He wasn’t exactly in the Willie Loney or Billy McNeill category, you understand, and it probably wasn’t Billy McNeill’s best decision to sign him in summer 1981 when he was recovering from a serious injury. He nevertheless had a good pre-season in summer 1981 and he was in the team for the start of the season His first game was against St Mirren at Parkhead where he had the misfortune to score two own goals (well, one was more of a deflection, to be fair) in a 3-1 win for the Buddies.
That was on opening day, and worse was to come on the Wednesday night at Muirton Park, Perth where he had no answer to the speed of their young centre forward called McCoist (or something like that, as I recall). McCoist scored the first goal, then poor Willie looked all at sea when a penalty was conceded in the second half. So 2-0 for the Saints, Celtic virtually out of the League Cup before it started and Willie out of the team for a while. In fact, he played only once more for the club in a national competition – against Hibs at Easter Road and guess what, we lost! His moments of triumph were few and far between. He was in the team which beat Queen’s Park in a Glasgow Cup game, and he also played (and starred!) in an indoor five a side tournament at Wembley which Celtic won! So one of the very few Celts to have played at Wembley and won (Johnny Crum and Bobby Lennox and a few others come to mind).
Willie then returned to Aberdeen to become Assistant Manager to Alex Ferguson. He did well there, (and that is putting in mildly) in the early 1980s but suddenly got the boot in favour of Archie Knox. He then managed a variety of other clubs. A good player was Willie Garner, but sadly, not for us!
David Potter
