Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
1. Just Another Ne’erday …
2. Hot Off the Press
3. Game for Another
4. ‘A Condition of Seething Excitement’
5. The March of Time
6. Two in One
7. The Rift in the Lute
8. ‘Aye … But You Should Have Seen Patsy!’
9. A New World
10. The Grim Reaper
11. War and Peace
12. The Great Escape
13. A Mountain to Climb
14. The Changing of the Guard
15. ‘Une Tornade Nommée Celtic’
16. Ole! Ole! Ole!
17. ‘These Yins Ur No Mugs!’
18. A Final Flourish
19. A Breaking of Hearts
20. The Playboy of the Eastern World
21. No Place Like Home
22. Lightning Strikes
23. A Question of Identity
24. ‘All Is Changed, Changed Utterly’
Picture Section
About the Author
Copyright
Celtic, someone once said, seem fated (‘like the race that bore them’) to have moments of great joy – and of great sorrow. ‘Weird and wonderfully Celtic’ was how John Rafferty, a noted sportswriter for The Scotsman, described the atmosphere surrounding their greatest triumph, as both writers (one of them a Lisbon Lion) would also attest to with regard to that annus mirabilis of 1967. Heartbreaking was the sorrow that surrounded the untimely death of the 22-year-old goalkeeper John Thomson, the victim of an accidental collision while in action at Ibrox in September 1931. All part of the rich fabric of a story that has a fascination, we would assert, without parallel in the world of football. No club ever rocketed to fame as quickly as Celtic, whose reputation soon earned them invitations to undertake tours of the Continent, where their spirit of adventure and a desire to entertain made them many friends. Willie Maley, the club’s manager for an incredible four decades, commented cryptically in the summer of 1922 on ‘the trouble we have made in the minds and hearts of many ultra patriots here by our visit to Germany’, a country that Celtic were the first British team to visit after the Great War, a gesture that earned them the title of ‘the first doves of peace’ from a newspaper in that Central European nation where the physical and mental scars were still as raw as back home. This at a time when he was all too aware of the incalculable depths of grief still being felt by his brother Tom, himself a dashing forward in the early days of the club, who had lost his son Joseph in the battle of Festubert in northern France in May 1915, but Willie’s perception that such a barrier-breaking tour was essential ‘if the world is to be rehabilitated’ was typical of that tradition of broad-minded generosity for which Celtic have been noted down the years. Such is the pride in the club generated by the outlook of the ‘Celtic family’ that it should come as no surprise that some seven decades later the famous, socially conscious jazz musician, the late Gil Scott-Heron (the Scott came from his mother’s maiden name), the son of a Jamaican forward – Gil Heron – who had left behind an indelible memory after playing for the club in the early 1950s, should find his concerts around the world populated by proud fans of the club waving scarves and chanting the name of himself and his father. The vast majority of them were too young to have seen the father play, but the memory had been passed down through the generations, an indication of the potency of Celtic folklore.
The authors have set out to distil the essence of the club through a determination to shed fresh light on various periods and aspects of its remarkable history, perspectives brought into focus, for example, by unearthing coverage of Celtic in the foreign press, much of the research on the 1967 European Cup final having been undertaken in Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale, whose incomparable newspaper resources span the Continent.
Jim Craig and Pat Woods
QF — Quarter-final
SF — Semi-final
F — Final
FTQ — Failed to qualify
In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, alcohol played an important role in Scotland’s New Year celebrations, so there were probably quite a number of people with hangovers on the morning of Friday, 1 January 1892. One of these, though, had a most unusual background. Charging Thunder was a 24-year-old ‘Lakota Sioux Indian’ attached to ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show’, at that time touring Scotland. To make matters worse, he awoke in a prison cell and, a few hours later, made an appearance in Glasgow’s Eastern Police Court, Tobago Street, to answer to a charge of assault allegedly perpetrated the previous afternoon. The case was continued until the following Monday, when it was decided that Charging Thunder should remain in custody and the proceedings were referred to the Sheriff Court.
The first half of this season had gone well for Celtic Football Club. Admittedly, they had lost the first league match to Hearts at Tynecastle by three goals to one, but the team had then gone on to win the next nine, with both a healthy goals-for tally and an equally miserly goals-against figure.
NB Two points were awarded for a victory in those days.
Celtic had also won the Glasgow Cup in fine style, the performance in the final at Cathkin Park a particularly impressive one, the players making light of the heavy rain, sleet and snow falling throughout the 90 minutes to pick up the trophy for the second successive year.
Celtic in the 1891 Glasgow Cup
Kelvinside Athletic (H) 11–1
Partick Thistle (A) 3–1
Northern (H) 6–0
Northern lodged a protest about the foggy conditions.
This was upheld and a replay ordered.
Northern (H) 3–2
SF: Linthouse (H) 9–2
F: Clyde (Cathkin Park) 7–1 Att. 6,000 (12 December)
The team had also played two matches in the Scottish Cup, with fairly comfortable victories over St Mirren and Kilmarnock Athletic, the lowly status of the Ayrshire side being reflected in the sparse attendance at Celtic Park on the day, for which conflicting figures were given in the reports of the match. The crowd was certainly well under 1,000.
Celtic in the 1891–92 Scottish Cup
28/11/1891 St Mirren (A) 4–2, Att: 4,000
19/12/1891 Kilmarnock Athletic (H) 3–0
The final league match before the end of 1891 had been on 26 December, when Celtic defeated St Mirren 2–1 at the first Celtic Park. That was followed by a hiatus in competition for the major trophies of the time, as the next match was not due until 16 January 1892, a home Scottish Cup quarter-final tie against Cowlairs (in the event, this tie had to be postponed due to frost and was played a week later). It was a good break for the players but it also meant the prospect of no income coming into the club for nearly a month and the committee was not happy about that. Ostensibly, all players in Scotland at this period were amateur, although not every club followed this dictate to the letter. The Scottish Football Association was supposedly monitoring the situation and, keen to protect its image, set up a sub-committee in season 1890–91 to check the books of the various clubs. Eventually, the committee reported that professionalism did not exist in Scotland, a finding that one cynic, writing under the pseudonym of ‘Free Critic’ in Scottish Sport in May 1891, obviously did not agree with:
What a tribute to the skill and shrewdness of the various treasurers and secretaries! What sapient wisdom on the part of the Scottish Football Association! The club books proved that professionalism did not exist! Did the Scottish Association think for one moment that the managers of such clubs as the Rangers, the Celtic and the Third Lanark would allow their books to prove anything to the contrary?
Football clubs had various outgoings to pay for, and so, at holiday periods like this, their officials organised lucrative ‘friendlies’ against other Scottish clubs or English visitors to bring in extra money. Celtic, in particular, needed the income, as the committee in charge had decided to build a new ground from scratch, quite confident that ‘the largest following of any team in Scotland’ would continue to give the club its support.
The first Celtic Park was compact, with one stand on the east side and rough earthen mounds serving as viewing areas round the other three. Many fans would climb up the eastern boundary wall of Janefield Cemetery to get a better view of proceedings. The ground may have been basic but it suited Celtic’s early needs. Unfortunately, in 1891, the landlord asked for a massive eight-fold increase in rent, a rise the committee regarded as totally unjustified, hence the decision to build a new ground. By the beginning of January 1892, work was already under way, on a site just across the street from the first stadium. A large piece of waste ground, a brickfield in fact, which had a huge 40-ft crater in the middle that was filled with water, was being transformed into a top-class stadium with a playing pitch of ‘bowling-green’ quality.
This was the reason that income levels needed to be kept up, and so as the New Year period of 1892 approached the committee went to work to arrange matches against suitable opposition, teams that would tempt the supporters out of their homes. On the first day of 1892, the Celtic committee would no doubt have been delighted to see their choice of opponent vindicated by a 15,000 turnout, a huge attendance in those days. The ‘Sons of the Rock’ – Dumbarton FC – were one of the top sides of the era, joint winners of the first-ever League Championship the previous season and close behind Celtic in the title race of 1891–92. It was a prestigious encounter and the match was fully advertised in the sporting press of the era:
The Occasion
From the pages of Scottish Sport, a well-regarded publication of the era:
GRAND FOOTBALL MATCH.
Today Friday 1st January
CELTIC v. DUMBARTON
Celtic Park, Dalmarnock Street, Parkhead.
Kick-off 2 p.m.
Admission sixpence. Ladies free.
Grand stands sixpence extra per person
What made it a Memorable Match?
First, the teams involved were the two best sides in Scotland at that time. Second, it was the first time that goal nets had ever been used in a match at Celtic Park. Third, the kick-off was performed by Major John M. Burke, the manager of ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show’. And, finally, there was the little problem of …
… The Final Result
When the final whistle blew, the scoreline was Celtic 0 Dumbarton 8. Actually, the Celtic keeper had to pick the ball out of the net eleven times but three goals were disallowed. Even so, it was a bit of a thrashing. The North British Daily Mail report described this as an ‘ordinary’ (i.e. friendly) match in which the ‘strangers’ (i.e. visitors) were ‘in splendid fettle’ from the outset and, with the wind in their favour, were five [NB – a correction] up at the interval. In the second half, ‘the Celtic were again driven up on their goal’ and conceded another three [NB – a correction] goals. The Dumbarton-based Lennox Herald, revelling in its 6 January 1892 edition in what its reporter clearly regarded as a highly prestigious, ‘crushing’ triumph for a local team, noted that, in comparison to the efforts of the Celtic forwards, who were ‘remarkably weak and not in consonance with their usual smart work’, their opponents ‘swarmed like bees around Duff’ in front of ‘an immense gathering of spectators’. Such was the mastery that their first-half display had brought them, said that same match report, that ‘Dumbarton’s sons jauntily trooped from the pavilion’ after the interval and the ‘nimble, fleet-footed’ visitors – ‘eager to make the defeat an overwhelming one’ – continued to force the pace as they completed an 8–0 rout during which the inside-right, Taylor, scored a hat-trick.
Initial Reaction from the Supporters
Quite naturally, the fans were not happy at seeing their team on the receiving end of such a heavy defeat, Celtic’s biggest since a 2–5 loss to Renton in the Charity Cup in 1889.
The Celtic team on this shocking Ne’erday – laid out in the 2-3-5 formation of the time – was:
Duff
Reynolds Doyle
W. Maley Cherrie Dowds
McCallum Brady Madden McMahon Campbell
Much of the blame for the defeat was heaped on two players, John Cherrie, the Clyde centre-half and captain, who was able to play for Celtic – in the absence of the injured James Kelly – because he was technically an amateur who could play for any club, and goalkeeper Tom Duff.
Further Reaction from the Supporters
Within the following 24 hours, however, the atmosphere among the support turned more sulphurous. Rumours swept the East End of the city that the Celtic players had been out drinking on the eve of the game and that more than a few were feeling the effects during the match. One individual came in for particular criticism for his performance on the day.
Reaction in the Press
In its own rather subtle fashion, the periodical Scottish Sport made it clear that something odd had been afoot among the Celtic players. ‘Footballers – no more than ordinary mortals – cannot serve two masters,’ it thundered, ‘the members of the Celtic team, or at least a sufficient number of them – and we say it more in sorrow than in anger – made the attempt and failed.’ The reason for this allusion becomes clear in the response to the question as to why Celtic had suffered such a heavy defeat: ‘Because they eight [ate] nothing! – which, we have reason to believe, is a falsehood – at all events, it is not to be denied that, at least, some of them drank.’ The publication was, however, particularly harsh in its condemnation of the performance of the home side’s goalkeeper: ‘Duff for the day spelt his name D-U-F-F-E-R. It will take a lot of his best saving to recover the reputation lost.’ Given the savage – and damning – nature of this verdict, it is no surprise that this would turn out to be Tom Duff’s last match for Celtic. It does, however, say a lot for the character of the Celtic players as a whole that they should go on to redeem themselves by turning it into an unprecedented ‘Season of the Three Cups’ by adding the Scottish Cup (beating Queen’s Park 5–1 in the final) and the Charity Cup (2–0 victory over Rangers in the final) to the Glasgow Cup triumph. Their hopes of a clean sweep of the honours by annexing the League Championship were thwarted by an eventual two-point margin in favour of … Dumbarton!
Why Did the Team Play So Badly?
Several mitigating factors must be taken into account. First, it was a friendly and the committee in charge of team selection took the opportunity to field John Cherrie at centre-half. In the 2-3-5 formation of the period, the centre-half was more of a playmaker than a ‘stopper’ and a crucial member of any team. A new boy coming in surely disrupted in some measure the balance of the side. Second, there can be little doubt that goalkeeper Tom Duff had a nightmare and, when that happens, the goals-against tally soon mounts up. However, there is some evidence that Duff may not have been fully fit. Early in the Celtic v. Dumbarton league match at Celtic Park on 26 September 1891, torrential rain had forced the referee to call a temporary halt to the proceedings and the players to seek shelter. As a result of his soaking, Duff experienced a bout of rheumatics, which meant that he only played in three of Celtic’s matches in the following three months, with Charlie Kelly and Mick Dolan deputising in goal. Certainly, Willie Maley was quite sympathetic to his former teammate in his memoirs in the Weekly Mail and Record of 11 September 1915: ‘Until he fell a victim to rheumatics that season, Duff was unbeatable at times.’ However, other papers were less charitable in their judgement. The Glasgow Observer of 27 April 1895, in a profile of the current incumbent in Celtic’s goalkeeping jersey, Dan McArthur, was particularly forthright: ‘Everyone remembers the fatal New Year’s Day when, in the presence of some 20,000 people, the Celts had to submit to the ignominy of a 8–0 defeat, owing to the extraordinary and erratic behaviour of Duff in goal.’ Whatever, the experience was a personal tragedy for Tom Duff, who was highly regarded by ‘Bedouin’, the pen name of the much-respected football writer Robert M. Connell, whose knowledge of the early days of organised football in Glasgow was encyclopaedic and who referred to the keeper as ‘The Cowlairs Orangeman’ in the Scottish Weekly Record of 18 July 1908. Duff had played for Cowlairs from the north-eastern area of the city for over three years before joining Celtic. A third mitigating factor might have been the staging of the match on New Year’s Day, only a few hours after the biggest celebration of the year for everyone living in Scotland, when an over-indulgence in alcohol was a national sport. But there can be no justification for the obvious fact that the Celtic players just did not seem up for the match on the day.
Were the Rumours of Drinking True?
Almost certainly. At that time, the festival of Christmas was not celebrated to any great extent, with shops always open and many people working on the day. By contrast, the New Year was a real holiday, the drinking bouts beginning during the afternoon of Hogmanay and continuing through the night and into the next day – or even two! The Celtic players would have found it difficult to avoid the company of drinkers during the 24 hours prior to the game and probably, in the knowledge that the match against Dumbarton was a friendly, a few might have succumbed to the occasional glass, with the inevitable consequences. As to why the Dumbarton players were not similarly affected, one can only assume that, during that particular New Year festival, to use a Glasgow colloquialism, there were more ‘bevvy-merchants’ among the Celtic side!
* * *
When Charging Thunder’s case was eventually heard, on 12 January 1892, he pled guilty through an interpreter hired by his boss William F. Cody, better known as ‘Buffalo Bill’, although in mitigation the defendant claimed that the ‘lemonade’ he was drinking had been ‘spiked with whisky’! Unfortunately, the sheriff was unimpressed by his explanation, particularly his inability to identify the pub in which he had been drinking, and sentenced Charging Thunder to 30 days in Barlinnie Prison!
* * *
What a spectacle it must have been for the citizens of Glasgow! During the late autumn and winter of 1891–92, ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show’ enthralled the crowds that flocked to the 7,000-capacity East End Exhibition Building off Duke Street in Dennistoun. ‘Buffalo Bill, with his picturesque following of cowboys, Mexicans and American Indians, and horses, mules and buffaloes, arrived in the city a fortnight ago,’ reported the Glasgow Herald of 6 November 1891, the writer adding that ‘nearly 300 people and 175 head of stock’ would take part in ‘entertainments’, which included, rather gruesomely, ‘the destruction of an emigrant train’. The covered wagons needed for the latter segment of the show had been unloaded along with another ‘prop’, namely the famous Deadwood Stage – found abandoned and neglected on the plains by Buffalo Bill himself, who secured its ownership – and the livestock at the still extant Bellgrove Station (15 minutes or so from Celtic Park) when the company, which featured the renowned sharpshooter Annie Oakley, arrived by train from London. The buffaloes in particular must have been an awesome sight as they were herded through the narrow East End streets to their stables, far from the prairies in which they once roamed in their multitudes before coming close to extinction, not least as a result of the marksmanship of the show’s celebrated impresario.
The Celts on their arrival from Edinburgh had a great reception at the Central Station. Crowds followed the members of the team, cheering lustily as they left the station. A flute band was waiting outside, and their strains were added to the general rejoicing.
Scottish Referee, 25 November 1895, on Celtic’s return to Glasgow after their 4–1 victory over Heart of Midlothian at Tynecastle Park had brought them neck-and-neck with Rangers at the top of the league table.
‘PHENOMENAL DISPLAY OF THE CELTIC AGAINST DUNDEE. RECORD LEAGUE SCORE.’ This was the banner headline in the sports pages of the first-ever edition of the Daily Record, above a match report with the byeline of ‘Bedouin’ (Robert M. Connell), who had been poached from the newspaper Scottish Sport. In that first edition of the daily, dated 28 October 1895, the editor of the new broadsheet complained about ‘a most unjust effort’ having been made by an unnamed rival journal to induce local newsagents to refuse to sell the newspaper (circulation wars are nothing new!), before outlining what he believed was the ethos of the newcomer: ‘a constant striving to make our pages readable and attractive … not to furnish forth a mere dull chronicle of events from day to day, but to give a picture, vivid, accurate and varied, of the web of human life as it is.’ It was, therefore, clearly going out of its way to avoid the pomposity of other newspapers of the day, particularly in its coverage of football at a time when its place of publication, Glasgow (with premises in Renfield Lane), was developing a good conceit of itself as the hub of the football universe, soon coming take for granted the record crowds flocking to the three biggest temples of the sport in Britain (Celtic Park, Ibrox Park and Hampden Park) prior to the onset of the First World War in 1914. The popularity of the Daily Record, a daily that reflected football’s broader appeal as the transition from an amateur to professional sport took hold, can be judged by the fact that its easier-to-read, less cluttered layout (not to mention quicker results and match reports) soon rendered obsolete the specialist newspapers that had earlier reigned supreme in their coverage of the native game, namely the twice-weekly Scottish Sport and Scottish Referee, whose densely packed pages were absolute treasure troves of information and comment but whose style and presentation became increasingly outmoded.
And ‘Bedouin’, surely, could not have believed his luck that his debut report in his new paper could be mined from such sensational material, namely the unparalleled ‘extraordinary events which transpired at Celtic Park in the return fixture between Celtic and Dundee’ two days earlier. With many years of experience in writing about football behind him, he confidently backed his assertion that ‘nothing approaching it’ had ever taken place in connection with the game in Scotland:
We have had occasional crushing defeats inflicted in League competitions, but never did a disaster of such magnitude befall a club whose preceding form showed such merit and evidence of power and skill as that which, unfortunately, is associated with the latest appearance of the Dundee club. Fresh from triumphs over such redoubtable opponents as Heart of Midlothian and Rangers, the visitors were expected to emerge from this contest with some degree of merit, but, strange to say, they tumbled completely to pieces, and ‘went down at the ropes’ [presumably a boxing analogy].
He, like the rest of a population that had looked forward eagerly to a clash between title contenders, felt confident in the capability of the men from the east to administer a jolt to the ambition of ‘The Irishmen’, as the press had been wont to call Celtic from their inception, albeit the latter had been getting their league challenge back on track after two potentially morale-shattering defeats in mid-September 1895, when they had lost 0–5 at home to Heart of Midlothian and 0–3 at Logie Green, Edinburgh, to St Bernard’s. As a result, they had been relegated to fourth place, behind the three clubs from the capital – Hibernian, St Bernard’s and Heart of Midlothian – but, significantly, they had made an immediate recovery, netting twenty-four goals in their five intervening competitive matches before facing Dundee on 26 October:
21 September 1895: Linthouse 1 Celtic 7 (Glasgow Cup tie at Govandale Park, Govan Cross).
28 September 1895: Dumbarton 2 Celtic 3 (league match at Boghead Park, Dumbarton).
5 October 1895: Celtic 3 Hibernian 1 (league match at Celtic Park).
12 October 1895: Clyde 1 Celtic 5 (league match at Barrowfield Park, French Street, off Main Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow).
19 October 1895: Celtic 6 Cambuslang 1 (Glasgow Cup tie at Celtic Park).
Dundee were seeking their first league victory over Celtic since the Jute City club’s formation in June 1893 as the result of a merger between the Old Boys and East End clubs, though they had inflicted a shock Scottish Cup defeat on their famous Glasgow visitors at their dockside Carolina Port ground in January 1895. Celtic had won four of their five league meetings, including a 2–1 away victory on the opening day of season 1895–96. After a sticky start to the season and, particularly, on the strength of an impressive 5–0 demolition of Heart of Midlothian, Dundee were being touted as potential champions, a status underlined by a glance at the top of the league on the morning of that fateful 26 October:
Hibernian: Played 10, Points 15 (2 points for a victory).
Heart of Midlothian: Played 10, Points 14.
Celtic: Played 10, Points 14.
Dundee: Played 10, Points 12.
Rangers: Played 7, Points 10.
The teams lined up as follows on a Celtic Park surface that was somewhat tricky as a result of the sun melting the snow that had fallen overnight, though the weather was sufficiently congenial to attract the largest crowd to that date to watch Dundee in Glasgow, a large attendance for its day of 11,000:
Celtic: McArthur; Meechan and Doyle; W. Maley, Kelly and Battles; Madden, Blessington, Martin, McMahon and W. Ferguson.
Dundee: Barrett; Darroch and Burgess; Dundas, Longair and F. Ferrier; Thomson, Sawyers, Vail, McDonald and Keillor.
There was a rather bizarre prelude to the kick-off, as ‘Bedouin’’s report noted: ‘The Celts, after emerging from the pavilion to commence the fray, had to return again, in order to change their colours, owing to the similarity of Dundee’s stripes.’ The latter normally played in blue and white striped jerseys, while Celtic normally played in green-and-white stripes, and thus the cause for concern. (There is no description in the newspapers checked of Celtic’s substitute strip.) This minor hiccup had no effect on the early proceedings, with Dundee seeming to shrug off the absence of the injured Bill Hendry, their left-half and captain, by making a brisk start and forcing Celtic goalkeeper Dan McArthur to display his renowned ‘cat-like agility’ to deal with a fierce Keillor shot in the very first minute. One account stated that ‘For a time the play was pretty even, and held out the promise of a close game’, but, gradually, Celtic assumed control of the match, passing up a couple of scoring opportunities before, suddenly, on the quarter-hour mark, cutting loose in devastating fashion. A much-anticipated battle suddenly turned into a procession for the home side. Unbelievable as it would seem to us today, though the lack of numbers on the strips was a factor in the confusion (see Postscript to this chapter), there was no unanimity in match reports as regards the identities of the players who hammered 11 nails into the Dundee coffin. Guesswork based on piecing together several accounts has produced the following (likely?) list, together with a description of the goals where available:
1: 15th minute – ‘from a smart run and good passing by the front division, Blessington had the leather passed to him in the right place and he sent it spinning into the net’.
2 and 3: Scored, apparently, within the next ten minutes, first ‘from the foot of Ferguson’ followed by a goal ‘scored out of a scrimmage, Ferguson and Blessington being last on the leather’. (Blessington appears the more likely scorer.)
4: On the half-hour mark, apparently by McMahon, who was ‘in irresistible form’.
5 and 6: Scored in the final stages of the first half, with Madden, described in Scottish Referee as a player who ‘time and again brought the ball within shooting range of Barrett’, being apparently the scorer of the fifth, and Willie Maley appears to have scored the sixth from a free kick (‘dropped one in’). Curiously, Maley does not credit himself with the goal in his 1939 The Story of the Celtic, perhaps out of modesty. He contented himself, after attributing the fourth goal to McMahon, with the statement that ‘by the interval Celts had six goals to their credit’.
[Dundee emerged after the interval with only nine men, the result of injuries to centre-half Longair and left-half Ferrier, Hendry’s deputy.]
7 and 8: Martin, it seems, scored twice in the opening minutes of the second half, first by ‘sending in a high shot, which took effect’ and then ‘three or four minutes later, that same forward put in another’.
9 and 10: Maley’s account of a ‘farcical’ second half states that Martin ‘scored twice in the first few minutes [i.e. numbers 7 and 8], adding other two shortly after [i.e. numbers 9 and 10]’. Certainly, the newspapers checked agree in crediting Martin with the ninth.
11: The result, apparently, of a free-kick ploy – the second of two goals ‘scored off a foul’, as one newspaper put it – which was rounded off by Battles, ‘to whom Doyle just tipped the ball’, to make the final score 11–0 over ‘a dispirited and crushed’ Dundee side.
What was the cause of Dundee’s downfall? While admitting that the ‘element of luck was not entirely absent’ (a reference to the loss of Longair and Ferrier for the second half), ‘Bedouin’ homed in on the crucial factor, namely the impact of Celtic’s ‘earnestness and brilliance, which was astonishingly effective’, with the forward line being singled out for particular attention: ‘From first to last Madden, Blessington, Martin, McMahon, and Ferguson exhibited a perfection in combination which was altogether phenomenal, and against which Dundee were of no use. Individuality was discarded for the attainment of combination, and this was achieved by one of the finest displays of accurate football ever seen from a Celtic team.’ It is worthwhile pausing here to reflect on the individual qualities of the demolition crew that had inflicted such humiliation:
Johnny Madden – ‘Genial Johnny’, so called because of his popularity both at Celtic Park and at his other place of employment, in Glasgow’s Whiteinch, where in 1895 he worked as a shipyard riveter, was a pacy forward noted both for his long-distance shooting and for several tricks that were peculiarly his own. One favourite move described by the Glasgow Observer was ‘the feint of pretending to stop the ball and then letting it roll to the right man’. An all-round sportsman of sorts who dabbled also in ‘championship-class’ speed cycling and cricket, he was also ‘a tenor singer whose sweet voice and varied repertoire are in great demand at club socials’.
Jimmy Blessington – ‘Blessy’ to his teammates and the fans, a whole-hearted forward whose ‘manly, robust, conscientious style fairly fetches the Parkhead habitués, who simply idolise the fair-haired laddie’, according to the same newspaper, whose profile of the player added that Blessington was ‘not one of your madcap, rushing, bull-in-a-china-shop, bully wee Michael sort of player’ but one who allied ‘cultured, reposeful’ method to ‘masterly manoeuvres and cool, crafty cuteness’.
Allan Martin – recently signed from Hibernian, he became a prolific centre-forward (the proverbial ‘goal a game’ striker) in his only season with Celtic before returning to Hibs. His short stay at Parkhead was marked by an extraordinary experience that underlines the fact that the game in Scotland was not a full-time calling for all: ‘Allan Martin fainted clean away after the cup tie on Saturday. The popular Celtic centre is an ironworker, and prior to playing he had been employed continuously for 24 hours at the furnaces. It was enough to have paralysed the average mortal’ (snippet in Scottish Sport of 24 September 1895, after Celtic’s 7–1 away Glasgow Cup tie victory over Linthouse). He had worked a double shift in order to get time off to play the match.
Sandy McMahon – ‘The Duke’, so called after either the Duke of Wellington, to whom he bore a physical resemblance, or Duc Patrice de Mac-Mahon, the late President of France (take your pick), could be regarded as the first Celtic ‘superstar’. He was considered a genius of a player by the Glasgow Observer, which once profiled him as a player with outstanding heading ability – ‘endowed with extraordinary cervical elasticity’ – and one who ‘danced dances with the sphere at his toe, and generally indulged in such mazy gyrations that the opposing half-back was often prepared to swear that “McMahon was in three places at once”’.
Willie Ferguson – ‘The Bag o’ Tricks’, probably the least celebrated of this front five, an outside-left who formed a deadly partnership with McMahon in this match and who had come to the attention of the press on the same day that Allan Martin fainted after the Linthouse cup tie. Playing for a Celtic eleven in a friendly away to Preston North End, his unorthodox style caught the eye of an English critic as he ‘paddled down the wing like an athletic over-grown duck [yet] showed that, despite his ludicrous appearance and gait, he could play “fuitba” [sic]’.
Praise for Celtic’s feat elsewhere was rather grudging. Scottish Referee damned it with faint praise, complimenting the victors on ‘a performance which speaks for itself’ while lambasting Dundee for playing into the hands of their opponents by ‘close passing and dallying on the ball’, which suited Celtic’s ‘smart tacklers’. Only right-back Darroch could be absolved from blame, ‘playing throughout a plucky, manful game, but what was he amongst so many dolts and against such masters?’ In similar vein, the rival Scottish Sport stated that ‘Dundee’s defence was no match for the Celtic sharp-shooters, who outmanoeuvred them almost every time … but the merit of the record performance is discounted by the fact that they were scored against a reduced and disorganised team.’ The ‘Dundee View’ in this newspaper was allocated to ‘A Dundee Traveller’, who saw the match and rejected claims from the east that ‘the game was rough and our men were abused’ by stating that ‘we certainly were not beaten by roughness, and I freely attribute the accidents [i.e. injuries] from which our men suffered to sheer ill-luck, combined with a little too much eagerness at the start of the game … never in the wildest dreams of either opponents or supporters was such a terrible beating looked for’. Predictably, it was left to the Glasgow Observer, admittedly the Celtic View of the time, to redress the balance in its assessment of a match whose outcome was received with incredulity and consternation throughout Scotland. While not neglecting to mention that Celtic had actually ‘notched thirteen, and one of the brace disallowed was the prettiest and fairest goal of the match’, it exulted in its favourites’ goalfest: ‘It would seem that our forwards have shaken off the tig-toying mania with which of old they were cursed, and set themselves seriously to the task of goal-scoring … grand, sustained and effective combination was there, with just enough dazzling individualism to emphasise the brilliancy of Celtic’s play.’ There are shades of ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ about the writer’s comment that ‘so thoroughly did the Celts’ rear rank o’ermaster the aggressive Dundonians that, towards the close, they were all playing forward’, and he dismissed the excuses of the losing side, stating that Longair ‘retired with injury – or pique’ and that Burgess was ‘never too disheartened as to take flying kicks at Johnny Madden’. Nevertheless, he was not so bowled over by Celtic’s display as to forsake the opportunity to administer a rebuke for a perceived degree of carelessness with an assertion that implied that, had Celtic applied themselves fully, they would have approached (or even surpassed) the British record margin (36–0) by which Arbroath had overwhelmed the hapless Aberdeen Bon Accord in their September 1885 Scottish Cup tie: ‘I do not exaggerate when I say that for every goal scored against Dundee, two certain chances were thrown away.’ Some people are never happy …
* * *
a.) Celtic’s victory remains a record for the top Scottish division. According to Scottish Sport of 29 October 1895, it broke the record set by Leith Athletic in their 10–0 rout of Vale of Leven on 19 September 1891. Incidentally, Willie Maley seems to suggest, while not endorsing the censure, that the observation of the Glasgow Observer writer regarding Celtic passing up goal-scoring chances in the annihilation of Dundee was not an exaggeration: ‘To their credit be it said, Celtic teams throughout the years were never guilty of “rubbing it in”, and even on this occasion there were times when they actually refused to score’ (The Story of the Celtic, 1939).
b.) The lack of unanimity as regards the Celtic goal-scorers can be seen in the undernoted alternatives (no. 9 excepted) culled from a perusal of six sources. In the early days of football reporting, it was not unknown for the term ‘the ball was sent through [the posts]’ to be used when the goal-scorer could not be identified:
Intriguingly, in a profile of Johnny Madden in Der Kicker (Stuttgart), 7 June 1922, it was stated that he had scored seven goals in the match. Given that the profile was part of the sports newspaper’s extensive coverage of Celtic’s tour of Central Europe (featuring matches in Prague, Berlin and Cologne), it is reasonable to assume that Johnny – by then Slavia Prague’s coach (nicknamed ‘the iron grandfather’ for his emphasis on discipline) – had made this claim in an interview. Amusingly, the writer (‘Beda’) described the match as a ‘Celtic–Dandy [sic]’ one!!
The confusion certainly owes a lot to the absence of numbers on strips, a situation that was only rectified in British football some four decades later with the application of numbers on the backs of shirts. Celtic shunned this development out of a sense of righteousness, with mutterings about the ‘defilement’ of a sacred jersey, their initial concession to progress coming as late as 1960 with the introduction of numbers on the shorts.
c.) Celtic’s record victory laid down a marker in the title race, acting like a booster rocket to propel the club to a championship that they eventually won by a four-point margin over Rangers, thus bringing the league flag to Parkhead for the third time in the first six years of the competition. In winning their remaining seven matches in a ten-club league, they scored twenty-seven goals.
‘The people here take sport too seriously, and, first of all, took little notice. One man, who had fallen fifty feet, even got up and watched the match through to the end. But this man, although he picked himself up straight away, seemed afterwards to be very ill. This is the last time I will go to a football match.’
An extract from a postcard sent by a Herr Dieckmann, a German studying in Glasgow, to his mother in Altona, near Hamburg, on 7 April 1902, two days after witnessing the Ibrox Disaster.
Since the second-last decade of the nineteenth century, the city of Glasgow has hosted six International Exhibitions – in 1888, 1901, 1911, 1938, 1951 and 1988. They all proved very popular, with the first two, in particular, catching the attention of the public. In those far-off days, Glasgow was the second city of the Empire and the (self-styled) ‘workshop of the world’.
1888 | 1901 | |
Opened | 8 May | 2 May |
Closed | 10 November | 9 November |
Opened by | Prince and Princess of Wales | Duke and Duchess of Fife |
Attendance | 5,748,379 | 11,497,220 |
Admission | One shilling for adults, sixpence for children | One shilling for adults, sixpence for children |
Profit | £41,700 | £39,000 |
Both these events were held in Kelvingrove Park and both featured a football tournament. In fact, Celtic’s opening tie in the 1888 competition was the club’s first official match in their inaugural season of 1888–89.
1 August 1888: Celtic v. Abercorn, 1–1.
Unfortunately, there is no mention in the newspapers of the period of any replay, although it is noticeable that 20 days would elapse before Celtic’s next tie. Perhaps a replay did take place during this time or it could be that Abercorn – a side from Paisley – just scratched from the tourney.
21 August 1888: Celtic v. Dumbarton Athletic, 3–1.
29 August 1888: Celtic v. Partick Thistle, 1–0.
6 September 1888: Celtic v. Cowlairs (final), 0–2.
The result against Cowlairs might have disappointed some fans but the team from the north of the city was a strong force at the time and, two years later, alongside Celtic, became one of the founder clubs of the new Scottish Football League.
By the time of the 1901 tournament, with the invited clubs competing for a ‘magnificent silver trophy’, the growing Celtic support was full of expectation but again their hopes were dashed. The top eight sides in Scotland had been invited to take part and Celtic reached the final of the Exhibition Trophy/Cup by disposing of the two major Edinburgh teams:
21 August 1901: Hibs, 1–0
5 September 1901: Hearts, 2–1
That put Celtic through to the final of the tournament, against Rangers on 9 September 1901. In his report in the Glasgow Observer, ‘Man in the Know’ regarded it as – in modern parlance – a match too far for a squad that was playing its sixth match in the space of ten days, as follows:
Saturday, 31 August 1901: league match v. Third Lanark (H).
Monday, 2 September 1901: challenge match v. Aston Villa in Birmingham.
Wednesday, 4 September 1901: benefit match for ex-Hibs forward Pat Murray at Easter Road.
Thursday, 5 September 1901: Exhibition Trophy semi-final v. Hearts, mentioned above.
Saturday, 7 September 1901: league match v. St Mirren at Paisley.
Monday, 9 September 1901: Exhibition Trophy final v. Rangers.
All the ties in the Glasgow Exhibition tournament (as in 1888) were played at Glasgow University’s Recreation Ground at Gilmorehill and it was on that pitch that Celtic ran out to face Rangers. Celtic opened the scoring through outside-left Johnny Campbell in 15 minutes; Rangers equalised a few minutes later. Unfortunately, the play then became tousy and bad-tempered, which did not improve the atmosphere among the watching crowd. The Light Blues seemed to cope better with the prevailing ambience, in contrast to the two young stars making up Celtic’s left wing. Inside-left Jimmy Drummond (20) and outside-left Jimmy Quinn (23) were well held by their immediate opponents, giving a lop-sided look to Celtic’s attacking opportunities.
By contrast, Rangers appeared very comfortable, showed a lot of confidence and scored two further goals in the second half to give them a 3–1 win plus a very handsome trophy to take back to Ibrox. The Rangers directors were so pleased with their acquisition that they insured it for £100, a large sum of money for that period.
‘Man in the Know’ acknowledged the quality of the Rangers forwards. However, the admittedly partisan columnist’s verdict was: ‘is it any wonder the cup was won after half an hour’s play? … The Celts were never a match for the fresher opponents; they never looked like winners even when leading, and it was only by the most marvellous good luck that McFarlane [Celtic’s goalkeeper] was not beaten at least half-a-dozen times.’
A letter written in the same edition was sympathetic to this viewpoint and, for good measure, also complained about the state of the pitch and the prevalent atmosphere: ‘The soft, crumbling ground, the early darkness, and the shamefully hostile crowd also told against the Celtic, and especially against the youngsters [a reference to the likes of Quinn and Drummond] … the Rangers triumph at Gilmorehill on Monday will vastly please the section of the public which dearly loves to witness a Celtic humiliation.’
In the very early days, relationships between the Celtic and Rangers officials were very cordial. Indeed, the future Celtic chairman J.H. McLaughlin, a keen organist, accompanied the Rangers Glee Club for several years! By the beginning of the twentieth century, though, that relationship had cooled somewhat as the rivalry between the clubs deepened. There is little doubt that Celtic’s experience at Gilmorehill reinforced a growing suspicion that had already been highlighted in a reference in the Glasgow Observer of 16 March 1901 to a ‘pro-Rangers and anti-Celtic feeling existing among legislators as among all other sections of the football community’.
This sentiment was only aggravated by two fractious episodes in the autumn and winter of season 1901–02. First, there was some controversy over a decision to hold the replayed final of the Glasgow Cup at Ibrox. Rangers’ ground had been awarded – by ballot – the final, when a crowd of 30,000 watched the Old Firm draw 2–2. Celtic’s contention that the replay should be at Celtic Park was over-ruled by the Glasgow Association, so they scratched from the competition in protest. It has to be said, though, that Rangers did offer to play the replayed match on neutral territory.
The Ne’erday league encounter of 1902, watched by a 40,000 crowd, also caused controversy. At that time, the First Division sides played an 18-match league and, as the teams ran out at Parkhead, the table situation read:
Played | Points | |
Celtic | 17 | 26 |
Rangers | 14 | 20 |
Victory in their final league match of the season would have given Celtic an unassailable lead (at that time, two points were awarded for a win) but they lost 2–4 in highly controversial circumstances. The Celtic players, apparently with some justification, hotly disputed three of the Rangers goals and were handicapped by the loss of their talisman after Rangers’ second, when, in the midst of the home side’s protests about the award of the goal, the referee – Mr Nisbet of Cowdenbeath – sent off the gifted and prolific forward Sandy McMahon in the belief that the latter had deliberately tripped him! Rangers went on to take the title by winning their three remaining league matches. Willie Maley, in his secretary-manager’s report in the following edition of the Celtic Football Guide asserted that ‘Celtic would have been champions but for the vile treatment we received at the hands of the referee on New Year’s Day, when the Rangers were practically given the match.’
On 5 April 1902, a large crowd (at least 75,000) packed into Ibrox Park for the annual Scotland–England encounter, in that era the most important fixture on the international calendar. At what is now called the Broomloan Road (west) end of the ground was a renovated stand, not for people to sit in but for ‘standing’, the structure made of wood with a staircase leading up to it. During the first half of a match that finished 1–1, the flooring of the stand gave way without any warning, and hundreds of spectators plummeted through the resultant (estimated) 70 foot by 10 foot gap onto the concrete below, many either falling to their death or being crushed in the resulting panic. Almost unbelievably, after a 20-minute delay, the play was allowed to continue, the authorities assuming that an abandonment of the match would lead to more panic and further problems. Equally surprisingly, upon resumption of the contest, there were still people standing on the terracing surrounding the area of the accident. The casualty figures were later put at 25 dead and 517 injured (categorised as ‘24 dangerously injured’, ‘168 seriously injured’, ‘153 injured’ and ‘172 slightly injured’). One English observer, a Mr Radford, recorded a poignant scene: ‘A wee Scotch laddie, his face like wax, lying upon the floor with his leg crushed. He was crying and a young companion, also terribly injured, was heard to say, “Don’t take on [i.e. grieve], Jamie. Cheer up, our team is winning.”’