ELEVEN REASONS WHY JIMMY McGRORY WAS NOT A SUCCESS AS CELTIC MANAGER…
Jimmy McGrory was Manager of Celtic from July 1945 to March 1965. His record was poor – one Scottish League, two Scottish Cups, and two Scottish League Cups and one Coronation Cup. Hard luck stories weren’t really all that frequent either – four Scottish Cup final defeats, one Scottish League Cup defeat and only once we were second on the Scottish League. We won the Glasgow Cup four times, the Glasgow Charity Cup three times and shared it once.
We had a support that was potentially more numerous than that of anyone else in the world (they waned badly by the early 1960s however) and had some wonderful players like Tully, Fernie, Collins, Evans, Peacock, two McPhails, McNeill, Crerand – men who could stand comparison with most players in Celtic’s history. Why did we do so badly under the lovable and still heroic Jimmy McGrory?
There are 11 reasons that one can identify. These reasons, naturally intertwine with each other and naturally they all come back to the Chairman and Directors of the club, as is always the case. In a country one blames the Prime Minister when things go wrong, in a school one blames the Headmaster, in a business firm one blames the Chief Executive, and in a football club, one blames the Chairman. Twas ever thus, of course, but the men at the top are the men who can do something about it!
1. Jimmy McGrory was not, by nature, a Manager. Great players do not always make great Managers. On the other hand, great Managers are often GOOD, but not great players. One thinks of Ferguson, Shankly, Stein and Maley, who were all competent but not outstanding players on the field but were great Managers. In McGrory’s case, there was a lack of “devil”.
Managers sometimes have to be tough, hard, even devious. James McGrory was tough, certainly, on the field but was basically too nice a man for this tough and undeniably cut-throat world of football management. Even Rangers supporters and players had respect, and a few even had a little affection for the man with the phenomenal goal scoring record and who was a household name for his gentlemanly demeanour and lack of boorish behaviour.
2. Chairman Robert Kelly dominated things. He had been Chairman since 1947 and was difficult to dislodge because of who his father (James Kelly) had been. No-one could doubt his commitment to the club, but his judgement was often faulty.
Much was made of the undeniable fact that it was he who chose the team. There was nothing remarkable in that, for even in Maley’s day, the Directors and Chairman, in theory at least, chose the team. The difference between Maley and McGrory in this regard was that Maley was a far stronger and more persuasive character and had in any case a very good relationship with the Directors, until he got old and awkward!
McGrory was far more malleable a character and was too keen to do what he was told. Kelly deserves credit for his fight to retain the Irish flag at Celtic Park, and also for his work with the SFA . It is often claimed that Celtic were some sort of pariah club in Scotland. Not so! Kelly made sure that Celtic were at the centre of things. It was his judgement in specific footballing matters which was suspect. And he did make many mistakes. The four unsuccessful Scottish Cup finals, for example, in 1955, 1956, 1961 and 1963 could all be blamed on a poor team selection.
3. Celtic had many good, even class players, but they did not always coalesce as a team. There was for example, Charlie Tully. He was a personality player and in some ways his arrival in 1948 was just exactly what the deprived Celtic support craved and needed. He had all the trickery, craft, ball control and skill that one would want – but he wasn’t always a team player. It wasn’t that he was necessarily always selfish, but he sometimes was several steps ahead of his team mates.
Willie Fernie was similar. On his day, as good a player as any in the country, but often accused of overdoing the dribbling and failing to release the ball to team mates. Pat Crerand was a brilliant passer of the ball, but notoriously critical of some of his team mates, one in particular. John Hughes could run through a brick wall with the ball, but was notoriously unpredictable, yet capable of some astonishing brilliance. But these individually outstanding players did not make a team.
Continued on the next page…
