After 11 matches of the league campaign of 1968/69, Celtic were top of the table on 18 points, with 24 goals for and 9 goals against. Jock Stein, though, was still not satisfied and on 22 November 1968, he decided to freshen up his midfield and brought in Tommy Callaghan from Dunfermline.
Tommy, or ‘Tid’ as he always known, had no time to reflect on his good fortune as only 24 hours later, on this day in 1968, Celtic travelled across the city to face Partick Thistle in a league match, the Jags having ex-Celt John Divers at centre-forward.
A crowd of 29,300 was packed into Firhill that afternoon and they saw John Hughes give Celtic an early lead in 14 minutes. Eight minutes later, Tommy Callaghan got his Celtic career off to the perfect start, scoring his first goal for his new club.
In 68 minutes, ‘Yogi’ Hughes made it 3-0 before Bobby Lennox, six minutes from the end, added a fourth, Celtic’s 28th goal in 12 league matches.
Born at Kilsyth on this day in 1947, this bairn called Jimmy Quinn had a lot to live up to in his future football career as he was the grandson of the great Jimmy Quinn, who got 216 goals in 331 matches for Celtic between 1900 and 1915.
Jimmy Junior joined Celtic in July 1969, played 41 times for the first team but was better known as a full-back and suffered a bit from pretty constant injury problems.
Jimmy moved on to Sheffield Wednesday and Hamilton, where he finished his career.
Jimmy died on 29 April 2002 at the relatively young age of 55.
Jim Craig
