‘Fergus McCann versus David Murray – How Celtic Turned the Tables on their Glasgow Rivals’ is published today on Pitch Publishing and tells the story of the shift in the balance of power between Celtic and Rangers from the 90s to today.
After the success of Tangled Up in Blue, author Stephen O’Donnell this time tackles what is a fascinating aspect of the football story in Glasgow over the past three to four decades.
We recently caught up with O’Donnell to discuss his latest book and in particular the two men who shaped the modern era Celtic and city rivals the Rangers. McCann helped save Celtic from the threat of administration and removed the tired and ineffective old board who were out of both money and ideas on how to operate the club and take it forward. McCann had a clear plan for Celtic, sold it to the Celtic support who backed him in share issues and by buying season tickets from the first first season of the new Paradise in 1996 to the present day when the club are currently benefiting from unbelievable backing from the Celtic support as they prepare to start the new season on Sunday, behind closed doors, as they begin the quest for Ten-in-a-Row.
Sir David Murray had an even more profound impact on Rangers FC after his reckless stewardship of the Ibrox club led to its certain death after the sale of the debt ridden club to Craig Whyte for just £1. The Supreme Court had the ultimate say on the obscene EBT scam he employed in order to compete with the much stronger Celtic that emerged after the McCann takeover went through.
Administration on Valentine’s Day 2012 was followed that summer by a failed attempt at a CVA – after HMRC voted it down – and that meant the inevitability of liquidation. Murray’s attempts to blame it all on Whyte were exposed for the sham that it was by, of all people his own former Vice Chairman, Donald Findlay QC who successfully defended Craig Whyte during the latter’s fraud trial at Glasgow High Court.
McCann had set Celtic on the way to a generation of domination like nothing seen previously in Scottish football. Murray sent Rangers on a completely different journey, to its death. The current club playing out of Ibrox – let there be no doubt – is a tribute act. A new venture from Founding Father Charles Green’s club formed in July 2012.
So it is important that Stephen O’Donnell has taken the initiative by writing this hugely impressive account of the two men and with a side issue the role of the MSM in their vastly different treatment of both men is also particularly revealing.
Here’s how e got on speaking to the author of ‘Fergus McCann Squared vs David Murray; How Celtic Turned the Tables on their Glasgow Rivals’…
Fergus McCann versus David Murray – How Celtic Turned the Tables on their Glasgow Rivals is the new book from Stephen O’Donnell and it is published by Pitch Publishing today. After the success of Tangled Up in Blue, O’Donnell this time tackles what is a fascinating aspect of the football story in Glasgow over the past three to four decades.
David Murray and Fergus McCann both took over a Glasgow giant and the author digs deep into both men’s track record at Ibrox and Celtic Park respectively to do something that has been long overdue and will frankly embarrass more than a few journalists who had got used to the charms of succulent cuisine over the glory years for Rangers under Murray. McCann never had the same sort of relationship with the media and they frequently attacked him, even orchestrating a booing of the Celtic CEO on the day that the League flag was unfurled at Celtic Park in 1998 for the first time in a decade.
THE CELTIC STAR’S INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN O’DONNELL
What is the book about and why have you written about Fergus McCann and David Murray together?
The book tells the story of the transformation in the fortunes of Celtic and Rangers from the 1990s to the present day. Back then, the Ibrox side were the dominant force on the Scottish domestic scene, eventually equalling Celtic’s Nine-in-a-Row record, while Celtic were initially staring down the barrel at one of the most troubled periods in the club’s history in the final years of the old board, before Fergus arrived and rescued the club from insolvency. Compare the situation today where Celtic have just won a ninth title and Rangers have succumbed to the reality, not just the threat, of insolvency.
It’s a total reversal of roles and the book celebrates Celtic’s recent Nine-in-a-Row by telling the story of how we got here. I also liked the idea of showing how the smart guy won over the longer term. Fergus had his faults, but they were exaggerated by the media; he knew what he was doing from the start. His plan all along was to leave after five years, turn a profit, and ensure the regeneration of Celtic, a club he had always supported. Murray, by contrast, was a boorish, unselfaware, attention-seeking loudmouth, so it was nice to examine how their legacies have proved to be so different in the end.
Football fans tend to see things in black and white, especially in Glasgow, but can you give us an example of something decent Murray did and conversely something Fergus got wrong?
Fergus got quite a few things wrong and he was happy to admit, once his five years were over, that he had made mistakes along the way. The structure he put in place after sacking Tommy Burns, with a general manager overseeing a head coach, didn’t work and when Jock Brown was eventually forced out, he was not replaced and his post was done away with.
Another example was the ‘Bhoys against bigotry’ campaign, which was a flawed attempt to deal with a complex issue that was never going to be satisfactorily dealt with using a three word slogan. In trying to make Celtic more commercially appealing he alienated a significant section of the fanbase by trying to ban Irish historical and political songs from the Celtic Park matchday experience.
I would pay tribute to Murray for finally doing away with the notorious employment policy at Ibrox. Despite the fact that Souness had been trying to sign a Catholic for Rangers for some time, it was Murray who received a great deal of the credit in the media when Johnston signed. Although the way it was done was objectionable, and set Celtic back several years, it was a change that had to be made and the move was a positive start to Murray’s time at the club, as he had only been there about 8 months when the deal was concluded.
How did your previous book on Rangers influence this one?
There was so much more detail about this period that I wanted to include in Tangled up in Blue, but the book was getting quite long and in the end I had to leave most of the stuff about Fergus McCann and Celtic out. The good thing was though that it helped to inspire the idea for this book. Initially, I just wanted to tell the story of Celtic’s recent resurgence and compare it to Rangers’ decline from the 1990s, but after we won the eight title, I realised that a second nine-in-a-row for Celtic would frame the book quite neatly. If Celtic hadn’t won the league this year the idea for the book might have felt a bit flat, but instead it’s a celebration of the ninth title and shows how Celtic won both on and off the field in the end.
Why does Celtic, a club that honours its legends brilliantly not have something dedicated to Fergus and do you think that it will come in due course?
I’m not really sure why there isn’t some sort of official recognition from the club about the role that Fergus played. Maybe these things tend to come when a person is no longer with us, but it would certainly be nice if the club could make an exception in Fergus’s case and honour him in some significant way during his lifetime. I also tend to think these honours are more usually reserved for former players and managers, which is probably no bad thing in the end, because Celtic is a football club after all and these are the guys who achieve success on the field week after week and season after season.
Is David Murray the biggest disgrace in the history of the old Rangers?
He’s got quite a few rivals for that dishonourable title! Rangers under Murray ran an unlawful tax avoidance scheme over many years which redirected money that should have been collected as tax into the bank accounts of already highly paid footballers.
The aim was to keep a stronger team on the field and gain an unfair sporting advantage over all other clubs, who were meeting their responsibilities to society in accordance with the law. This is as clear a case of cheating as you could make out, but despite these crimes, I tend to think that the old-style bigots at Rangers are the real villains of the piece.
The Willie Allisons and so on, who maintained the club’s stance of refusing to employ Catholics in any capacity at the club. Allison, incidentally, the club’s PR guru in the 1960s, was described by Alex Ferguson as ‘a religious bigot of the deepest dye’ and the former Ibrox forward loathed the man so much that he later admitted he didn’t have an iota of sympathy for Allison when he was informed that he had cancer.
Men such as these poisoned the story of Scottish football with a form of sectarianism and religious bigotry which it has never been fully able to shake off. Murray, by contrast was from Ayr and grew up in Edinburgh, so he was a relative outsider when it came to the unique culture at Ibrox. It still didn’t stop him, on occasion, from referring to Catholic or Celtic supporting journalists as ‘f***king P***s’, and the like.
When is the book out and where can we get hold of it?
The book is out today, 27 July. I am doing some signed copies and posting them out to anyone who wants one. Quite a lot of people have already signed up for one so get in touch with a DM or a tweet on twitter if you’d like a signed book, I’m on @stephenodauthor
Cheers and hail hail.
