August 1888 was by far the busiest month in the short story to date of the fledgling football club in Glasgow’s east end, with no fewer than nine games to be played, including six scheduled by their 20-year-old Match Secretary, Willie Maley, who combined those duties with his playing role at Celtic Park.
Wednesday, 1 August 1888 – 1.8.88 – was the appropriate date of Celtic’s first competitive fixture, a first-round Glasgow International Exhibition Cup match against Abercorn, played on the University of Glasgow playing fields at Kelvingrove, near the site of the current Art Gallery & Museum.
As would be the case 50 years later, at Bellahouston Park for the 1938 Empire Exhibition, the football tournament would run alongside the main event being held at the adjacent Kelvingrove Park. Sixteen clubs were invited to participate, although, for whatever reason, none of the great sides of the day – such as early Scottish Cup-winners Queen’s Park, Vale of Leven, Dumbarton, Renton or Hibernian – were involved.
Celtic’s opening round opponents, Abercorn, were based in the Ralston area of eastern Paisley. They had been formed within months of local rivals, St Mirren, 11 years earlier. Both sides would make their opening appearances in the Scottish Cup of 1880/81, clashing in the third round of the heavily-regionalised tournament on 23 October 1880 at Abercorn’s Blackstoun Park.
The hosts had already beaten Renfrewshire rivals Barrhead and Morton by those famous Celtic scorelines of 7-1 and 4-2, however, on the day, St Mirren would prove too strong, eventually prevailing by four goals to one. Abercorn would gain a degree of revenge with a 2-0 victory in the first round at the same venue, five years later.
Abercorn’s finest hour had come in the season leading up to the clash with Celtic, the club going all the way to the semi-final of the national competition, drawing 1-1 with Cambuslang at home before succumbing to a 10-1 hammering in the replay, in January 1888.
Cambuslang themselves would find the going tough in their first Scottish Cup final, the following month at Second Hampden (later renamed as Cathkin Park, the home of Third Lanark from 1903-1967).
They faced the new ‘world champions’ Renton, featuring James Kelly and Neil McCallum, losing 6-1, a record scoreline for a Scottish Cup final which would not be matched until a certain John ‘Dixie’ Deans destroyed Eddie Turnbull’s Hibernian at Hampden in May 1972, some 84 years later, in the favourite Celtic game of my childhood.
Both Kelly and McCallum had since left Renton and would feature against Abercorn in Celtic’s first-ever competitive line-up, which was as follows:
Willie Dunning; James Coleman & Mick McKeown; Paddy Gallagher, James Kelly & Jimmy McLaren; Neil McCallum, Willie Groves, Johnny Madden, Johnny Coleman & Charlie Gorevin.
Details of the game itself are sketchy, although Celtic did score first before Abercorn equalised just before the break. Reports of the day suggest that many within the 4,000 crowd were not so kindly disposed to ‘the Irishmen.’ I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.
In any case, Abercorn declined the offer of a replay on Monday, 13 August, the tie thus awarded to the Bhoys as a walkover. Celts would now face Dumbarton Athletic in the next round, again at Kelvingrove, three weeks later.
Matt Corr
An exclusive extract from Walfrid & The Bould Bhoys, which is published early next month.
