SEVEN more Magnificently Random Celtic stories this morning from David Potter. This series has been running over the past two weeks on The Celtic Star and there have been some brilliant stories from the eminent Celtic historian and wonderful photography mostly courtesy of that treasure chest of a Celtic website, The Celtic Wiki.
Tomorrow will be the last instalment of the Seven Magnificently Random Stories series and you’ll be able to enjoy that ahead of the match at Pittodrie kicking off. That has the feel of a crucial game in our season, defining even. Three points up there and it really will be advantage Celtic when you look at the remaining league fixtures this side of the winter break.
Anyway, over to David Potter…
1. McNEILL’S DEPUTIES
One of the sad side-effects of the long lasting and consistently brilliant career of Billy McNeill was the exclusion of two other capable Celtic centre halves apart from the times that McNeill was injured.
One was John McNamee who understudied McNeill in the early 1960s and occasionally played at right half alongside him before going on to carve out a career for himself with Hibs and Newcastle United. John Cushley was marginally more fortunate. When Billy was out with injuries in season 1964/65 and again in 1965/66, John was given a lengthy run in the team and played well without letting anyone down and in season 1965/66 played in enough games to earn for himself a Scottish League medal.
He went on to play for West Ham United and Dunfermline Athletic, and his other claim to fame, of course, is the trip to Spain as Jimmy McGrory’s interpreter in the ill-thought out attempt in August 1964 to sign Alfredo di Stefano.
2. QUEEN’S PARK
Often patronisingly looked upon as a quaint relic from a bygone age, the proud amateurs are still with us, albeit now permanently marooned in the lower reaches of the Scottish League. Yet on four occasions in the past fifty odd years they have given Celtic more than a little embarrassment in the Scottish Cup by playing better than Celtic and really deserving to win.
On 20 February 1965, they played out of their skins at Hampden and for a long time looked like winning the tie until Bobby Lennox scored the only goal of the game; on 11 March 1967 at Parkhead with Celtic still on a high after their defeat of Vojvodina on the Wednesday night previously, Queen’s persuaded Tommy Gemmell to score an own goal before 30 seconds had elapsed, then fought tooth and nail and kept the score at 4-3 for Celtic for most of the second half before Bobby Lennox settled the issue; on 15 February 1986 at Parkhead Queen’s scored first again, this time with a penalty kick before the dysfunctional Celtic team settled the nerves of their followers in the meagre 11,656 crowd with goals from Brian McClair and Roy Aitken; and then on 7 February 2009 Celtic were two goals up to Queen’s Park thanks to Gary Caldwell and Scott McDonald just before half-time, but then 22,223 watched in horror as they proceeded to play rubbish, allowed Queen’s Park back into the game with a well taken goal and then struggled through to the final whistle with Queen’s pressing constantly and frankly worthy of a draw.
3. THE GENERAL STRIKE
This event took place in early May 1926, during which time the Glasgow Charity Cup was played. As newspapers were badly affected by the strike, this presents a few problems for the Celtic historian, particularly for the game played against Third Lanark on the middle Saturday of the strike. This was the semi-final between Celtic and Third Lanark at Parkhead. We know that Celtic won 2-0, and an unconfirmed report states that there was a small crowd of 4,000 (who would all, of course, have had to walk to the ground, as indeed would the players), Tommy McInally scored and Willie McStay converted a penalty. A fellow called Gilfillan played, it is said, on the right wing, but we know little else about him.
By the time that the final was played on 15 May at Ibrox, the General Strike was over, and a crowd of 30,000 went to Ibrox to see Celtic beat Queen’s Park 2-1 with goals from Tommy McInally and Jimmy McGrory. Queen’s Park, were of course seen as the team of the bosses, the mine owners and the strikebreakers and were booed throughout the game by Celtic fans who sang “The Red Flag” as well as their various Irish anthems.
4. THE GHOSTLY PASSENGER
It was 15 May 1963, the night of Celtic’s infamous collapse to Rangers in the Scottish Cup Final. The “Midnight Mail” as it was called was chugging out of Buchanan Street Station to Aberdeen. A group of young fans were sitting disconsolately in their compartment. Staring at the lights of Glasgow gradually being replaced by country, they hadn’t noticed a man come in.
He started to talk about this being only a temporary set back, and how very soon, the name of Celtic would resound round the world and how nothing would stop them. The boys smiled and laughed trying to get to sleep to allow them to forget the unimaginable horrors they were going though and the ridicule that awaited them at school the following morning.
You often got, after all, such drunken men on late night trains. Except this one wasn’t drunk. He was exceptionally lucid as he told the boys about how good Celtic were going to be. He kept mentioning Inter Milan, Lisbon and Stein, the current manager of Dunfermline. And then, at some station or other, Larbert perhaps or Stirling, he suddenly disappeared.
5. WELL, WELL, WELL, IT WAS NEARLY WELL, WELL, WELL
Celtic have had many famous Cup Final wins, but one of their most famous was a draw 2-2 against Motherwell in 1931. The ‘Well were winning 2-0 and we were inside the last ten minutes. Motherwell’s fans and their fellow travellers in blue were triumphant while Celtic fans were beginning to head towards the exit. But then a Charlie Napier free-kick found Jimmy McGrory who made it 2-1 and gave Celtic a chance.
The game seemed to have run its course when Bertie Thomson sent over a ball looking for the head of McGrory. McGrory went for it, but it was the head of Motherwell defender Alan Craig which diverted the ball into his own net. As Celtic celebrated, Craig lay on the ground thumping the turf, inconsolable and desolate, before the ever-gentlemanly Jimmy McGrory helped him to his feet and said that he would see him in the replay on Wednesday. Celtic won the replay 4-2, but from the way that the Celtic fans celebrated on the night of the 2-2 draw, one would have thought that they had won the Cup already.
6. INDUSTRIAL ACTION
Threats of strikes and industrial action do not go well with professional football. It is of course not uncommon for an individual player to take the huff, fall out with his manager, act like a spoiled brat and walk out, but for a whole team to threaten industrial action is a very rare happening indeed.
It has however happened at least three times in Celtic’s history with dire consequences. One was on 2 May 1942 before the Southern League Cup semi-final against Rangers at Hampden when the players were told on the the team bus at St Enoch’s Square that there were to be no complimentary tickets for friends and relatives who would have to therefore to pay at the turnstiles. The players were all for refusing to strip, but the Directors held firm and the players caved in both in the dressing room and on the field where they lost 0-2 to Rangers in an astonishingly weak performance.
Another came in August 1998 when a dispute about bonus money was allowed to become public and heels were dug in. Fergus McCann who did not become a millionaire by being dictated to, told his players to have a “reality check”, gave a large donation to Yorkhill Hospital thus emotionally blackmailing the players into doing the same and during this dispute Celtic went out of the European Champions’ League and the Scottish League Cup in weak displays to Croatia Zagreb and Airdrie, so that no bonus money would have been paid anyway!
The circumstances were totally different in 1896, for the cause in dispute was the “freedom of the Press”, a concept dear to Victorian hearts. On 21 November Celtic had lost the Glasgow Cup to Rangers, and had been criticised for foul play in the press, the Scottish Referee and the Evening Times in particular who had said things “fouls were numerous” and “Celtic were always the aggressors”.
The players resented this and when they turned up for the next game against Hibs at Parkhead on 28 November refused to play unless the offending journalists were removed from the Press Box. Celtic’s committee refused to do this, and a total strike seemed likely.
Eventually eight of the players agreed to play but Peter Meehan, John Divers and Barney Battles refused to do so, Battles in particular hurting from the sarcastic “gentle Barney” applied to him. Celtic managed to field eleven men – one reserve was on hand, another was summoned from Hampden in a horse and carriage in time for the second half, and committee man Willie Maley (who thought he had retired) was prevailed upon to play.
In the circumstances, the team did well to hold Hibs to a 1-1 draw, but the three miscreants seldom played again (with the exception of Battles who eventually made his peace with the club after brief spells at Dundee and Liverpool) and player discontent continued. The dreadful defeat at Arthurlie in January 1897 was not unconnected with this affair, one feels, but the net result was a good one of the appointment in April 1897 of Willie Maley as secretary/manager on a salary.
In this context, we must also mention the ludicrous events of 27 November 2010 when the Scottish referees went on strike for all sorts of reasons of “lack of respect” and “unwarranted criticism” etc. Everyone knew that Celtic were being got at here, the events not unconnected with a game at Tannadice a month earlier when a referee changed his mind about awarding a penalty, but the SPL laudably refused to be blackmailed and brought in foreign referees.
Celtic thus played Inverness Caledonian Thistle under the tutelage of a Luxemburg referee called Alain Hamer who came on to the field to a warm round of applause (extremely rare at Parkhead for a referee!) and who had a good game. Celtic didn’t though, for defensive errors cost them two points.
7. FRANK CONNOR
This man kept coming and going to Celtic Park like a yoyo, and would appear to have a strong claim to being the greatest manager Celtic ever had in that he never lost a match, beating Dundee and Sporting Lisbon (managed by Bobby Robson) and drawing with Hibs in the interregnum between Liam Brady and Lou Macari from 8-26 October 1993.
This was all the more commendable when one considers that the club was then under the crass stewardship of the old regime of Directors only months away from their spectacular Waterloo. Macari’s first game saw Celtic win at Ibrox, and that team was picked by Frank Connor, a man by whom all the players swore.
Swore? Ah yes, it was rumoured that the odd “bad word” sometimes escaped the lips of the bluff, brusque but totally likeable Frank, so much so that when he was manager at Raith Rovers, supporters standing in the queue for their pies and Bovril at the back of the main stand could hear the half-time tirade being delivered at full volume and not without the odd earthy choice of expression if the Rovers were not doing so well!
A goalkeeper by trade, he joined the club in 1960, was freed in May 1961 but brought back in July 1961 before being given his annual free transfer again in May 1962. He was brought in by Jock Stein as a coach in autumn 1977, lasted three years before moving to Berwick Rangers, but then was brought back to be assistant manager to Davie Hay in summer 1983.
Hay surprisingly sacked him in February 1986, but then Liam Brady brought him back in summer 1993. In between all of this, he played, coached and managed a myriad of teams.
Many supporters (and most of the players) thought that he would have been a better manager than Lou Macari in that awful winter of 1993/94.
David Potter
