One Scheidt and Six Magnificently Random Celtic Stories from David Potter

SEVEN more Magnificently Random Celtic stories from Historian David Potter this morning on The Celtic Star. If you’ve been following this series since it started at the weekend you’ll be keen to read the next instalment, with more to come tomorrow.

If you haven’t it not too late to look back via our home page and catch up. They’re all well worth a read. Here are today’s Magnificently Random Celtic stories…

1. HE STARTED IT ALL!

In a side which has been famous for goalscorers, Sandy “The Duke” McMahon was the first to excite the support. Yet he was an unlikely character for several reasons. One was that he was from the east of Scotland (Selkirk probably, although there is another Alexander McMahon born in Dundee) and the other was that he did not look like a centre-forward, lacking the broad shoulders of Jimmy Quinn and Jimmy McGrory in subsequent years. He looked awkward and ungainly, but had a tremendous ability to swerve and deceive a defence.

He was prevailed upon to go to Nottingham Forest in 1892 to play professional football. Scottish football was still amateur, but somehow or other, Celtic were able to persuade him to return and it is hard to believe that there was not some kind of “payment” offered.

He played in Celtic’s first three Scottish Cup finals 1892, 1899 and 1900 and scored in all three, although arguably his best single performance was the Glasgow Charity Cup final of May 1895 when he scored a hat-trick against Rangers, the final goal being a header “with a Ranger hanging from each leg” according to a particularly graphic account.

Willie Maley described McMahon as the “best header of a ball I have ever seen”, and that from a man who managed Quinn and McGrory! He could play at centre forward or inside left in which position he struck up a telepathic understanding with Johnny Campbell and created a devastating left-wing duo.

He played his part in the winning of the League in 1893, 1894, 1896 and 1898.

He was chosen to play for Scotland six times but only once against England – at Celtic Park in 1894 when he scored Scotland’s goal in the 1-1 draw – and it was felt he deserved more international honours than he got.

His one real bad day for Celtic came on New Year’s Day 1902 when he was sent off for losing his temper at the referee Mr. Nisbet of Cowdenbeath. The score was 1-1 at the time (McMahon himself having scored) but Rangers went on to win the game and the Championship.

He played for Partick Thistle for a season before he retired to become a publican. A man of literary inclination with a tremendous knowledge of Burns and Shakespeare, Sandy died while still a young man in 1916 and is buried besides loads of other blessed Celts in Dalbeth Cemetery.

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.

3. NAPOLEON

One of the greatest inside forwards that Scottish football has ever seen, Jimmy McMenemy was nicknamed ‘Napoleon’, and played for Celtic between 1902 and 1920, followed by Partick Thistle until 1922, and then, briefly, Stenhousemuir.

He also won twelve caps for Scotland and holds the record for being Scotland’s third oldest player (only Davie Weir and Jim Leighton beat him) when he played for Scotland against Ireland at Celtic Park in March 1920 at the age of 39 years and two hundred and three days.

He signed from Rutherglen Glencairn in May 1902 and scored in his debut against Port Glasgow in November of that year. He was one of the mainstays of the great Celtic side of the Edwardian era, where the “inside triangle” of Young at right half, Bennett on the right wing and Napoleon at inside right was “a sight to behold” on many occasions, and of the other great Celtic side immediately before and during the first world war.

He had made his reputation at inside right, but agreed to move to inside left to allow his prodigiously talented protege Patsy Gallacher to take his place at inside right. Napoleon was equally at home in either position and scored a remarkable number of goals from the inside positions – notably a mazy dribble and shot in the New Year’s Day hammering of Rangers at Parkhead in 1914, but his strength lay in his accurate passing, and his knowledge of the game which led Maley to say that, to Napoleon, the football pitch was like a chess board.

His record of eleven Scottish League medals and seven Scottish Cup medals (one with Partick Thistle in 1921) speaks for itself. His international career is distinguished by the part he played in Scotland’s victories against England in 1910 and 1914.

Illness and war service seemed to have put an end to his career in 1918, but he returned to play a glorious part in the League Championship victory of 1919. The decision to “pay him off” in 1920 at the age of 40 was not without its critics, but Napoleon went to Partick Thistle where he won a Scottish Cup medal with them in 1921 in a 1-0 victory over Rangers in April 1921.

Having twice coached for Partick Thistle, Napoleon was brought back to be the trainer for Celtic in October 1934. Given the advancing years and infirmity of manager Willie Maley, this in fact meant that he ran the team, and he therefore deserves great credit for the fine Celtic side of that era, which distinguished itself by winning the Scottish League in 1936 and 1938, the Scottish Cup in 1937 and the Empire Exhibition Trophy of 1938.

Had he been appointed Maley’s successor in 1940, Celtic’s war record would have been substantially different. His son John McMenemy played for Celtic and Motherwell, his other son Harry played for Newcastle United and the legendary Southampton manager Lawrie McMenemy is his great-nephew.

Oh dear what can the matter be?
Rangers got beat by Celtic on Saturday
Two goals from Quinn and one from McMenemy
Oh what fun it was there!

4. RAFAEL SCHEIDT

There was no easy way of pronouncing this fellow’s name. It did indeed sound like the vulgar word for excrement. He joined the club in the 1999/2000 season but mercifully, his stay was brief. Cruel people said his play reflected his name.

5. ECK THE ICICLE

Sometimes it is difficult to express in mere words the contribution of a man to the Celtic cause. From Stenhousemuir, Alec McNair joined the club in 1903 and was a mainstay of the great Celtic side that won six league Championships in a row between 1905 and 1910, then another four between 1914 and 1917, and yet another two in 1919 and 1922 before his eventual retirement in 1925. His 584 League appearances for the Parkhead side actually tops those of Billy McNeill, but Billy McNeill played more games if all competitions are counted.

He was mainly a right back, but was such a versatile defender that in 1907 when Celtic became the first team to win the Scottish League and Cup double he played mainly at centre half as Willie Loney was out with a broken arm for most of the season.

He won the Scottish Cup six times between 1907 and 1923, as well as fifteen caps for Scotland, a number that would have been greatly increased if it had not been for the First World War. His best game for Scotland was in April 1914, when the team beat England 3–1 and ‘McNair never gave Smith or Mosscrop a kick of the ball’.

‘Eck’ was the right back of the two famous Celtic teams that began ‘Adams, McNair and Orr’ and ‘Shaw, McNair and Dodds’. He tended to be the more defensive minded of the two full backs, allowing left back Joe Dodds or centre half Willie Loney to become the sixth forward on occasion.

Intelligent, thoughtful and gentlemanly, he was so cool under pressure that he was called ‘the Icicle’, and it is a matter of some surprise that he was never made captain of Celtic until after the First World War, when he was captain of Scotland for a short while as well. In that he was a tremendous success as a diplomat and a fine example of what Scotland should be.

His personal life was tragic, for his wife died in 1915 and he had to bring up a family on his own, but he wasn’t called “the Icicle” for nothing and addressed his own problems in the same way that he defended for Celtic – methodically, calmly and conscientiously.

As late as 1923 when he was near his 40th birthday “Eck” won his last Scottish Cup medal in the 1-0 win against Hibs, calming everyone down in Hibs late onslaught. When his lengthy career came to a halt in 1925, he became manager of Dundee for a while, but met with little success. In his later years he was also a referee supervisor, but his career outside football was in stockbroking.

Celtic and Maley owed a great deal to “Eck” McNair.

6. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. MALEY!

Willie Maley was born on 25 April 1868 at Newry. On three occasions, he celebrated his birthday with a League Championship.

25 April 1908 saw Celtic beat Rangers 1-0 at Ibrox, a week after they had won the Scottish Cup. It was a rough game at Ibrox with both Jimmy Quinn and Jimmy McMenemy injured by brutal tackles, but Alec Bennett scored the only goal of the game, and Maley thus reached his 40th birthday at the peak of his career, having managed his team to back-to-back Scottish League and Cup doubles.

25 April 1910 saw Celtic clinch their sixth League Championship in a 0-0 draw against Hibs at Celtic Park before a paltry crowd of 2,000. It was a Monday afternoon after Celtic had lost 0-2 to Falkirk at Brockville on the Saturday. This game had thus an air of anti-climax about it, but no doubt Maley celebrated his 42nd birthday in style.

25 April 1936 saw Celtic, even without the injured McGrory, beat Partick Thistle 3-1 at Firhill to put an end to a wretched ten years of under-achievement and win the League Championship for the first time since 1926. Maley was now 68, and he showed few signs of wishing to retire.

7. RECORD ATTENDANCES

Celtic and record attendances go together, for they hold the record attendance for the Scottish League, Scottish Cup, Scottish League Cup and European Cup…

Scottish League – Rangers v Celtic  at Ibrox  – 2 January 1939 – 118,567
Scottish Cup  – Celtic v Aberdeen at Hampden – 24 April 1937 – 147,365
Scottish League Cup – Celtic v Rangers at Hampden – 23 October 1965 – 107,609
European Cup – Celtic v Leeds Utd at Hampden – 15 April 1970 – 135,826.

Attendances for the Glasgow Cup and Glasgow Charity Cup are harder to pin down, but it it a fair bet that Celtic would feature in the record attendances for both competitions.

A week before the Scottish Cup final of 1937 (mentioned above), Hampden saw an even bigger crowd of 149,547 for the Scotland v England game. One player played in both games. Who other than Jimmy Delaney? And he was on the winning side both times!

David Potter

CELTIC v RANGERS – THE BHOYS GREATEST VICTORIES

*David Potter’s latest book which I was delighted to receive a copy of earlier this week, is titled Celtic v Rangers – The Bhoys’ Greatest Victories. Having had a quick flick through it does exactly what it says on the cover. The Celtic historian has selected 50 notable and most enjoyable victories over the various clubs playing out of Ibrox and calling themselves Rangers.

There’s Jimmy Quinn’s hat-trick in 1904, the astonishing Scottish Cup semi-final skelping in 1925, the 7-1 League Cup final from 1957, the 4-0 Scottish Cup Final doing from 1969, the 6-2 ‘Demolition Derby’Game in 2000 and there are even victories over the new club established by ‘founding father’ Charles Green in 2012.

David I suppose accurately uses the O** F*** term, referring to the wins against the Ibrox club that died in 2012, so please don’t let that put you off. Book review to follow in a few days…

David’s new ‘feel good’ Celtic book is out now on Pitch Publishing and you can order via Amazon.