CELTIC historian David Potter continues his Seven Magnificently Random Celtic Stories today on The Celtic Star, sit back and enjoy before heading off to the game or watching on Celtic TV for the troops overseas…
1. FLOODS OF TEARS?
Willo Flood played for Celtic for a brief and unhappy time between 2009 and 2010. What makes him remarkable however are the events on the eve of his arrival at the end of January 2009. It was 29 January, two days before the closing of the transfer window and Celtic were playing Dundee United in the Scottish League Cup semi-final. It was an open secret that Willo Flood was on the verge of being transferred to Celtic, but that night at Hampden he was still playing for Dundee United.
It was a close game. 90 minutes came and went and no goals were scored. Extra time was similar although Celtic hit the woodwork on more than one occasion, and it came down to penalties. Willo took the first one for United and just as all the conspiracy theorists were planning their arguments for tomorrow… Willo scored. So that was that, then, wasn’t it? No. The teams still could not be separated. Both teams missed one each, but everyone else (goalkeepers Artur Boruc and Lukasz Zaluska included) scored and we had to start again! So Willo took another penalty… and this time he hit the bar and the ball went over. Scott McDonald then sunk a penalty and Celtic reached the final.
So was it all deliberate then on the part of Willo? Well no, actually, because he had deprived himself of the chance of a medal because he couldn’t play for Celtic in the final anyway, as he was cup-tied for Dundee United! Willo was just simply an unlucky player who missed a penalty.
2. TEN INTERNATIONALS AND CHARLIE SHAW
Charlie Shaw was a legend in a team which is already rich in goalkeepers – Dan McArthur, Davie Adams, John Thomson, Ronnie Simpson and many others – and yet the paradox is that he was never capped for Scotland at a time when other members of the team were.
Celtic were frequently referred to as “ten Internationals and Charlie Shaw”, but there are reasons for Charlie’s lack of International recognition. In the first place, his best years coincided with the Great War when all Scotland games were suspended, but the other reason is that Scotland had plenty of other good goalkeepers around as well. In any case, by 1918 Charlie was 33 years old.
From then on he was an integral part of the team which won four League Championships in a row, and with McNair and Dodds, formed an almost impenetrable defence registering a clean sheet in 26 out of the 38 League games in the triumphant season 1913/14.
He was lithe with great reflexes, but more than that, he radiated confidence looking like everyone’s favourite uncle, and, given the general excellence of the team, it was small wonder that stories circulated about him getting fed up and wandering round to ask the other goalkeeper if he needed a hand or going home for his tea when he got fed up.
In the calender year of 1916, Charlie conceded 18 goals in 42 games – and Celtic won every game! When Sunny Jim got injured in September 1916, it was Charlie who became the captain where his leadership skills of kindly advice came to the fore.
In the early 1920s the team began to struggle a little more, and Charlie was harder worked, but he never let the team down and there was no more loved character at Celtic Park than Charlie. Even the song that the Rangers supporters made up about him not seeing where “Alan Morton pit the ba” (copied by every other team – Alec Troup of Dundee, Willie Hillhouse of Third Lanark and Tokey Duncan of Raith Rovers all did the same, apparently) was a great compliment to Charlie and accepted as such by him.
He was nearly forty when he eventually lost his place to Peter Shevlin, and in summer 1925 he sailed to America to play there. He met the Celtic party when they came there in 1931 and had a long chat with John Thomson on the art of goalkeeping. Tragically both these men would die within the next decade, but there was never a more popular character than Charlie Shaw.
3. BACKS TO THE WALL
13 April 1918 was the day that it all ended for Celtic, and it almost all ended for the British Empire as well. The German Ludendorff Offensive had been launched a month before and was clearly succeeding with a breakthrough to the Channel looking likely. Sir Douglas Haig had issued his “backs to the wall” order on the Thursday, and by the Saturday wild rumours were sweeping Glasgow about a British surrender.
But Celtic, League Champions for the past four years, had the visit of the quickly improving Motherwell to deal with at Parkhead for their last League game of the season, while Rangers had the less than impressive Clyde at Ibrox. Both teams were level on points, and if both teams had won, there would probably have been a play-off as there had been in 1905.
Without being in any way too impressive, Rangers beat Clyde 2-1 but Celtic were held to a draw. Patsy Gallacher scored half way through the second half, but then Motherwell took advantage of shoddy defending from the makeshift Celtic half-back line to equalise just on half-time.
Patsy Gallacher
The second half was one of constant Celtic attack as Patsy Gallacher (“the most talked about man in the trenches”) and Jimmy “Napoleon” McMenemy inspired Celtic – but they simply could not score as Motherwell’s defence of Rundell, Robertson and McSkimming; McIntosh, Finlayson and Stewart held out “with their backs to the wall” as a Sunday paper put it.
Rangers thus won the League (they had invested a considerable amount of money to hire “guest” players all through the season), and 30,000 frustrated Celtic fans left Parkhead to face what seemed like an uncertain future. It wasn’t all that bad, though, for before the end of the season, they won the War Shield Fund trophy and the Glasgow Charity Cup – and of course, the British Army with considerable help from the French and (decisively) the Americans eventually held the line and turned the tide.
4. THE THOMSON PILGRIMS
Most people know that 5 September 1931 was Celtic’s saddest day when goalkeeper John Thomson was accidentally killed at Ibrox. Fewer are aware of the hundreds of Celtic supporters who walked from Glasgow to attend his funeral at Cardenden on Wednesday 9 September. They had little option because this was 1931 and the depth of the depression. Eighty years later in early September 2011 an intrepid group of about 50 supporters performed the walk to commemorate this occasion.
5. THE POWDER MONKEY
Peter Somers has been grossly undervalued by Celtic historians, although never by his team mates nor his manager Willie Maley who was quite happy to describe him as “the powder monkey”.
The image was a good one, for a “powder monkey” was usually a small man (so that he could even crawl inside a cannon to pack the ammunition in, if necessary) who would load the cannons in the British Navy. Somers was small, but it was he who supplied the ammunition for Jimmy Quinn in that mighty side of the Edwardian era.
So too did Jimmy McMenemy, but as “Napoleon” lasted longer, more has been written about him, and the crucial role of Peter Somers has tended to be neglected or underplayed. Like a great many early Celts, Peter died young aged 36 in November 1914, but he remains immortal nevertheless.
6. ANDY LYNCH AND 1977
Celtic were going well in 1977 and on Wednesday 13 April at Fir Park, Motherwell, they might well have won the Scottish League. Ten minutes remaining however and the team were 0-1 down. But then left-back Andy Lynch scored two goals! In other circumstances this would have won the League but unfortunately for Andy and Celtic, they were own goals, and Celtic lost 0-3.
Poor Andy had to suffer a certain amount of ridicule about forgetting the teams changed ends at half-time and “For goodness sake, keep the ball away from Andy, he’s after his hat-trick!”, but he had the last laugh. Not only was he in the team which won the League at Hibs a few days later, but he also took the penalty kick that won the Scottish Cup that year against Rangers.
7. THE FRAIL LAD THAT WORE THE GREEN
There was no greater servant for Celtic in the inter-war years than Alec Thomson. Alec came from Buckhaven in Fife and joined the club from Wellesley Juniors in 1922. Several years later from the same source came the other Thomson, the goalkeeper John, and indeed the the kindly Alec took John under his wing when he arrived at Celtic Park.
Alec had started life as a right winger, but it was as an inside right that he made his mark, particularly in the great 5-0 demolition of Rangers in the Scottish Cup semi-final of 1925 when he and Patsy Gallacher dominated the second half. Hard on the heels of that came the glory season of 1925/26 when, as part of the immortal Connolly, Thomson, McGrory, McInally and McLean, Alec provided great service to the goalscoring talents of Jimmy McGrory and Tommy McInally, and won for himself a Scottish cap in a 1-0 victory over England at Old Trafford in April 1926.
He was a fine passer, a hard worker and a purveyor of the ball, earning himself nicknames like “Mr Ever Ready” and “McGrory’s fetch and carry man” from a support who soon recognised his worth. His only problem was his slightness of build – he was also called “the frail lad that wore the green” – and he could be brushed off the ball.
Indeed without his false teeth, he looked less that totally intimidating for the opposition, but appearances were deceptive. He was also such an assuming character off the field that one would pass him on the street, and possibly lacked a little of the “devil” necessary to be a top notch football player.
Indeed when he went back to his native Fife in the summer he very soon became “Eckie Tamson” again, and no-one would realise that he was the great Alec Thomson of Celtic to whom Maley and McGrory owed so much.
It was possibly his unassuming, gentle nature that cost him more Scottish caps. He was a great character in the dressing room, very sympathetic and helpful and trying several times in vain to reconcile the prodigiously talented but self-willed Tommy McInally to the rest of the team. His value was also proved in the events of 1931 when Alec, although himself totally devastated by the death of his friend and namesake John, proved a strong character to the rest of the team.
He managed to win his fourth Scottish Cup medal in 1933 before he departed in 1934 to finish his career with Dunfermline Athletic.
David Potter
Also by David Potter on The Celtic Star…
The Mighty Quinn – Bhoy from Croy, seen in Glasgow’s East End…see HERE.
Celtic’s McStay Dynasty…see HERE.
And if you have enjoyed these Seven Magnificently Random Celtic stories then you should check back on our homepage and you’ll find that there have been seven similarly brilliant Celtic stories every day for the past week. All of these are well worth a read!