ALL good things must come to an end and over the past two weeks David Potter has been entertaining and educating us every day with his Seven Magnificently Random Celtic Stories. Here’s the final seven in what has been an outstanding series on The Celtic Star…
1. SPATS AND FISTICUFFS
It is of course by no means uncommon in football teams for passions to get a little heated at training sessions and even for blows to be struck. Supporters heard various stories about Jimmy Quinn in the old days, and there was the famous one in 1957 when Bobby Evans and Charlie Tully had a difference of opinion about a newspaper article written by Tully which seemed to criticise Evans. This dispute was settled so spectacularly by captain Bertie Peacock that Celtic then went out and whipped Rangers 7-1 in the Scottish League Cup final a few days later!
The Hampden in the Sun team
Stories leaked in the late 1990s about Tosh McKinlay and Henrik Larsson not seeing eye-to-eye, but rather head-to-head. So much so, that Tosh was lauded by the fans at Ibrox…
“Oh Tosh McKinlay
Tosh, Tosh, Tosh, Tosh McKinlay
He put the heid
Upon the Swede
Oh, Tosh McInlay!”
In December 2006 at the full-time whistle at Dunfermline Neil Lennon and Aiden McGeady were seen having a “handbags moment” pushing each other around, after Celtic had beaten the Pars 2-1. What would have happened if they had lost? The same Aiden McGeady also fell out with Artur Boruc at Lennoxtown in 2009. No great harm came of these silly incidents, hard though the media tried, but on the other hand considerable damage was done to the club by what happened in the dressing room at half-time at Ibrox on New Year’s Day 1963, at McDiarmid Park on 6 October 1993 and at Parkhead on the awful night of the Inverness catastrophe on 8 February 2000. All these occasions, (we are told) involved members of the management team as well as players.
2. CHARLIE NICHOLAS
Few players have caused such distress as Charlie Nicholas. Never afraid to call himself “Celtic-minded” and on one famous occasion caught off camera by SKY TV cheering a Celtic goal, Charlie nevertheless caused a tremendous amount of distress in 1983 when he allowed himself to be persuaded by the press, a grasping agent and a venal Celtic Board to leave Celtic Park for Arsenal, ignoring the plaintive appeals of the fans, including one which said simply “Don’t Go, Charlie”.
His three-year career for Celtic (even though one of them was badly disrupted by a broken leg) had old timers comparing him with Patsy Gallacher, and who knows what he could have done if he had stayed? As it is, he went to Arsenal and Aberdeen before eventually coming back in 1990. But this was no Tommy McInally type of return.
He had the misfortune to be there in the dark early 1990s, and did little to relieve the gloom. Now much ridiculed for his ungrammatical and occasionally patronising style of punditry on SKY TV, nevertheless the main emotion engendered by Charlie is one of sadness for a lost career with even a feeling that another European Cup might have been won if Charlie Nicholas had stayed in harness with Paul McStay and under the guidance of Billy McNeill.
3. HAMPDEN OUR HOME
Hampden Park is of course sometimes known as the National Stadium, but it ought to have a special place in the hearts of Celtic fans as well. Celtic played in the first game there on 31 October 1903, played in the first Scottish Cup final there on 16 April 1904 (the day of Jimmy Quinn’s hat-trick) and have had loads of subsequent triumphs there in Cup finals and other occasions. Hampden has been Celtic’s home on the odd time that Parkhead has been re-developed, notably season 1994/95 – by no means one of Celtic’s best, although it did end with a Scottish Cup triumph over Airdrie – and several times in Celtic’s glory years, Hampden was pressed into service for the World Club Championship against Racing Club of Argentina on 18 October 1967, for the European Cup semi-final against Leeds United on 15 April 1970 (which produced a European Cup record attendance of 135,826) and for the European Cup quarter-final game against Ajax Amsterdam on 24 March 1971. One could argue that the 1971 occasion was because of ground redevelopments at Parkhead, but the other two were for the ill-disguised purpose of a bigger attendance and more money.
4. NINE CHAMPIONSHIPS NEVER WON AT PARKHEAD
Celtic won a record-breaking nine League Championships in a row between 1966 and 1974, but the funny thing was that none of the nine of them was won at Celtic Park. The closest was in 1971 in what was technically a Celtic home game but was played at Hampden because Celtic Park was undergoing renovations to the main stand. On the other occasions, the League was won at other grounds, although in some cases, the League had already been won by opponents slipping up on previous occasions.
In 1968, for instance, Dunfermline would have needed to beat Celtic 16-0 to give the Championship to Rangers. In 1969, Celtic’s draw at Kilmarnock did not mathematically guarantee them the Championship, for Rangers might technically have caught them but they went down at Dens Park, Dundee the following night. The nine occasions were as follows…
7 May 1966 Fir Park Motherwell 0 Celtic 1
6 May 1967 Ibrox Rangers 2 Celtic 2
30 April 1968 East End Park Dunfermline 1 Celtic 2
21 April 1969 Rugby Park Kilmarnock 2 Celtic 2
28 March 1970 Tynecastle Hearts 0 Celtic 0
29 April 1971 Hampden Celtic 2 Ayr United 0
15 April 1972 Bayview East Fife 0 Celtic 3
28 April 1973 Easter Road Hibs 0 Celtic 3
27 April 1974 Brockville Falkirk 1 Celtic 1
5. CHEATS
One is reluctant to use the word “cheat” to describe opponents and referees. After all, a referee can make a decision with which one disagrees without being a cheat. Similarly opponents can be guilty of a few robust tackles or charges without being cheats. But there have been two opponents on the European scene who cannot really avoid the word. I refer to Atletico Madrid in 1974 and Rapid Vienna in 1984 – and the sad thing was that both got off with it.
Atletico Madrid came to Celtic Park on 10 April 1974 for the European Cup semi-final with no intention other than to kick Celtic off the park. Managed by the Argentinian Juan Carlos Lorenzo, Atletico filled their side with clug men and duly got a 0-0 draw even though three were sent off.
The loss of three players was not a major problem because they were not their best players and were replaced by others for the second leg. It was rumoured however that a Celtic player, with the connivance of the Glasgow police who looked the other way, managed to land “a dull one” on a Spanish thug in the tunnel at the end of the game. Then for the second leg in Madrid, death threats were issued to Jimmy Johnstone, and as Spain was still a vicious dictatorship with Franco, the erstwhile ally of Hitler and Mussolini, still in power, these were taken seriously. Celtic lost 0-2, but some sort of justice was done when the Athletico thugs were beaten by Bayern Munich in the final.
But then we had Rapid Vienna in November 1984. In a rough match, Celtic nevertheless won 3-0 and having lost 1-3 in Vienna, qualified for the next round – or so everyone thought. But a brilliant actor called Weinhofer managed to convince the gullible that he had been hit by a bottle, even though TV evidence proved otherwise, and a replay was ordered at least 200 miles from Glasgow, at Old Trafford, Manchester. Hardly surprisingly, an over-emotional Celtic lost, and were cheated out of Europe. Once again, however, the cheats did not totally triumph for they lost to Everton in the final of the UEFA Cup, with the Everton support supplemented by quite a few wearing green and white favours. Although Rapid and Atletico have since been to Glasgow and behaved, their names will forever be tainted by this outrage.
6. JOE MILLER
It would have to be said that Joe Miller’s career at Celtic Park was a disappointment. He arrived from Aberdeen in November 1987 and played his part in the Centenary Season, but from then on as the team wilted, Joe’s form deteriorated badly and he was much criticised and excoriated for the support, not least because he seemed to have only one foot! But he had his moment of glory as well, and this came in the Scotttish Cup final of 1989 when a pass-back from Rangers Gary Stevens held up a little (Rangers would claim improbably afterwards that the grass hadn’t been cut properly!) and Joe nipped in to score what proved to be the only goal of the game.
7. THE HIBERNIAN HOODOO
Do hoodoos exist in football? Well, yes and no. Probably (though I am no expert in such matters) the supernatural is not too interested in who wins football matches, but that is not to say that some players and supporters do not believe in such things. Hibs for example had not won the Scottish Cup since 1902 before beating the Rangers in final in May 2016, and many of their supporters seemed to think that some sort of tinker’s hex plays a part until that glorious 3-2 win.
David Potter