2. NOT CHOSEN AGAINST CELTIC ONE DAY BUT PLAYING FOR THEM THE NEXT
John Atkinson was a young amateur, a medical student, playing for Hamilton Academical in April 1909. He would have been disappointed not to have been picked to play against Celtic at Parkhead on Wednesday 21 April, for opportunities to play against this mighty team did not come every day.
He sat in the pavilion and watched a 1-1 draw. Celtic’s left winger, Davie Hamilton, known as “the Dancer” was injured in this game and unavailable for tomorrow’s game against Morton. With no recognised left winger available on their books, Maley approached Hamilton Accies before they left Parkhead that day and asked, in a joke, if they had a left winger handy. The answer was that yes, they had John Atkinson.
As he was an amateur, there was no problem about registration and John duly was asked to play. The young student must have thought he was being “had”. Not chosen to play for his own team against the mighty Celts one day, he was now playing for them the next! His daydream continued the next day, for he scored the first and fourth goals in Celtic’s 5-1 win over Morton and had his hand shaken by the great Jimmy Quinn for doing so!
In the last game of the season, Celtic played at Douglas Park, Hamilton. Once again, John Atkinson was not considered good enough to get a game for Hamilton and had to sit in the stand watching Celtic beat the Accies to win the League. One would imagine that he rather enjoyed that!
In later years as a practising GP in the North of England, he could tell his incredulous patients that he played for Celtic and helped them win their fifth Scottish League title in a row in 1909. He died at sea off the coast of Africa on 26 November 1914.
