Paddy Crerand: Never Turn the Other Cheek

While some of the media talked up the Kelly Kids, by the turn of the year in the 1959/60 season Celtic were 11th in the league. After one 3–2 defeat by Dundee at Parkhead, watched by a crowd of just 10,000, the Glasgow Evening Times wrote: ‘Tonight the unpalatable fact is this – Celtic are being deserted by hosts of their fans. They believe the SS Celtic is in trouble and they have no great desire to stand on the deck of a sinking ship.’

The fans booed us off the pitch after that game and had a go at Kelly and the other directors. Legend has it that one fan, upon hearing ‘Off to Tipperary in the Morning’, over the public address system, shouted: ‘If they give me the fare I’ll not wait until the morning. I’ll be off on the Irish boat tonight.’

Supporters realized that Kelly ran the club from top to bottom, that McGrory was merely his puppet and they rightly criticized the chairman. Kelly’s response to his critics was to tell them to stay away and come back in two years when we’d have a good team. Yet such was the belief, a few good results and we’d get 50,000 back at Parkhead.

Even though I was playing more and more for the first team, I was dismayed when Jock Stein was allowed to leave the club to manage Dunfermline in 1960. I think he felt that as a non-Catholic, he would be overlooked as a future manager of the club. It was one of the few times he was wrong. Jock wanted me to go with him but I didn’t want to leave. I hoped that he would do well at Dunfermline before returning to Celtic to become first team manager. Jock’s first game at Dunfermline was against Celtic. They scored after 15 seconds and his good start proved to be no fluke as he helped them avoid relegation and created a side that were difficult to beat. Almost every week we had had the bittersweet feeling of reading how well Jock was doing.

I was a Celtic first-teamer, but my life didn’t change much away from football. I used to hang around with the same mates outside one of the pubs. The pubs shut at 9.30 pm and the saying was that you took the pavements indoors at that time because nothing was safe when people spilled out of the pubs.

Players couldn’t be seen in a pub. I was never a beer drinker, but thanks to the Gorbals’ grapevine if I’d have had one pint it would have been reported as ten by the time I got to training the following morning. There were no nightclubs at that time, although there was the Locarno dance hall where me and my pal Eddie Duffy sometimes went on a Saturday night until it finished at 11 pm. There was no booze in the place and you would get searched for alcohol before going in. The music was great – Sinatra and Dean Martin and big dance bands.

There were about twelve or thirteen of us who used to hang around on the street corner and they were all mad Celtic fans. The next day’s Daily Record – or ‘Daily Ranger’ as we called it because we thought it was biased towards Rangers – would come in about 11 pm and we would discuss the stories. Even though I played for Celtic, one lad used to take the mickey out of me for my ability. He kept saying that I couldn’t run and claimed that he was a faster runner than me. I used to laugh it off, but one night I said, ‘F**k it, do you fancy a race then?’ He said yes. I absolutely destroyed him and was back with my mates before he had got halfway. He couldn’t believe how quick I was. What did he expect? I was a professional footballer, as fit as anything. He never did mention my pace again. I was criticized for my lack of speed but I could run 100 yards in 11 seconds. You don’t have to run that far in a game – runs of two or three yards are common – and I was a tackler and a passer, not a winger. And anyway, my brain worked quicker than other players.

I felt confident and despite the team not doing particularly well, the fans took to me. If things were going badly I would still want the ball and fans appreciated that. They saw that if your midfield players have control of the game then you will win. It’s a team game, but the midfield players are so important. It’s easy to destroy, far harder to create.

Financially, I was earning enough money to rent a house in a more middle-class area of Glasgow, but I never thought of leaving the Gorbals because I would have hated people to think that I had changed.

As I became better known I started to receive letters from fans. One guy sent me a series of diagrams showing me how to take successful penalty kicks. Another sent me a genuine mourning card – made out to me and edged in black. I guessed that must have been from a Rangers fan. A Glasgow girl called Moira Gallagher, who was originally from Gweedore, used to post me a good-luck greetings card before every single game. She was a bus conductress and was so dedicated to Celtic that she applied for a permanent night shift so that she never missed a match. I saw a newspaper article that showed she had a shrine dedicated to me in her house which consisted of press cuttings pasted on the walls. The journalist asked her if she had a boyfriend and she replied, ‘The men in my life are the 11 boys in green and white. What better could I find?’

We had a tight relationship with supporters and they often kept us amused. At Broomfield, the home of Airdrieonians, my team-mate Bobby Carroll, who wasn’t the thinnest of players, went to take a corner from the right. Suddenly there was a movement in the crowd – and a giant black pudding came sailing through the air and landed at his feet. At the same time, a voice cried out: ‘There you are. That makes two of you.’ Every player was convulsed with laughter and play was held up for about a minute.

My first Old Firm match was on 9 May 1960 in a Glasgow Merchants’ Charity Cup semi-final at Ibrox. It was actually a low key affair as only 14,500 turned up, but I was still delighted to score in a 1–1 draw. I was less happy that Rangers went through to the final on the toss of a coin.

Now I was a first team regular, there was a growing expectation that I would soon receive a full international call up. But my relationship with the Scottish selectors was always fraught. Sectarian bigotry and, later, the bias against selecting ‘Anglos’ (Scottish players at English clubs) ensured that I made only 19 appearances for Scotland.

I played one game at Under-23 level at Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough, in 1960 when we beat an England side containing Bobby Moore. My full debut came in May 1961 in a World Cup qualifier against the Republic of Ireland at Hampden, a game which we won 4–1. It was one of the proudest moments in my career, but coming from an Irish family it felt strange to play against Ireland. I was pleased that my performances for Celtic had been recognized, but when the band played ‘God Save the Queen’ I didn’t sing. Had the band played ‘Scotland the Brave’ or ‘Flowers of Scotland’ I would have joined in, but I couldn’t sing ‘God Save the Queen’ when I loathed what the British royal family stood for. When the Irish national anthem started I sang along. I confused Billy McNeill and probably a few of the other players standing alongside me.

Four days later Scotland played the Republic at Dalymount Park in Dublin in another World Cup game and again we won comprehensively, 3–0. I always gave my best when I played for Scotland and I was proud to be acknowledged as one of the better players in those games against Ireland, but Irish fans booed me off the pitch after I kicked one of their players. I felt as Irish as them, but they didn’t see it the same way.

If I was playing today, I would choose to play for the Republic of Ireland, but you weren’t allowed to decide your allegiance in those days. When I used to watch Scotland at Hampden Park as a kid, I’d support Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland against Scotland.

A week after the game in Dublin we had another important World Cup qualifier against Czechoslovakia in Bratislava. I usually played in the same half-back line as my Celtic teammate Billy McNeill and Jim Baxter of Rangers. Many Scots thought that we were so good that we would not only qualify for the 1962 World Cup Finals in Chile, but that we would win the competition. Buoyed by the two convincing wins against the Republic of Ireland, we went to Bratislava in good spirits. Our hosts made us feel welcome and the day before that game we visited a chocolate factory. We came out and gave the chocolate away to kids. The police stopped us and that annoyed me. They were my chocolates and I should have been able to give them to who I wanted. Had I argued with them, they would have probably arrested me.

The game was a nightmare, as the Czechs beat us 4–0 and I was sent off along with their inside-forward, Kvasnak. I found out later that it was his job to deliberately needle me. He was about 6ft 3in and he kicked me, so I chinned him. As I walked off the pitch, I could see that the crowd were going potty and I was thinking, ‘I’ve got a big problem here because he’ll kill me off the field.’ I was preparing myself for a fight, but as I neared the tunnel I saw him do a runner, leaving me to stroll gently back to the dressing room. I knew I’d let myself down badly, but I was surprised to get a fine of £200, nearly ten times my weekly wage. No doubt some of the Scottish selectors enjoyed seeing me get that. And if that sounds embittered it’s because I was.

We beat the Czechs 3–2 at Hampden Park in October 1961. That result meant that we had to play a one-off game, again against Czechoslovakia, to decide who qualified for the 1962 World Cup finals. The play-off was at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. We had a lot of players out but we were leading 2–1 with just a few minutes to go when they equalized. After 90 minutes the score remained 2–2 and we gathered around before extra-time. The trainer passed me a sponge and Jim Baxter tried to grab it out of my hand. We finished up on the ground trying to punch each other. We were about to play the most important half hour in Scotland’s football history and yet we were fighting with each other over a sponge. We were both pals, but we were so angry because they had equalized so late on that we took it out on each other in the heat of the moment. We lost 4–2 in the end.

I played in an unofficial Scotland game when an Italian league XI came to play the Scottish League XI in November 1961. Denis Law played for the Italian league as he was in Serie A with Torino. Almost 120,000 showed up at Hampden to see us gain a creditable 1–1 draw, before the Italians went to Old Trafford and beat the best of the English league four days later. I remember being in a hotel in Glasgow before the game and seeing Matt Busby for the first time. I admired him, but I didn’t have the courage to introduce myself to Matt.

Playing alongside my friend Jim Baxter was one of the best things about my international career. Although he was one of the greatest footballers Scotland has ever produced, Jim was also a head banger. Nothing fazed him and he had such a carefree attitude. Coming from Fife, religious bigotry didn’t mean a thing to him either. Despite playing for Rangers, he’d join the Celtic players each afternoon in a restaurant called Ferrari’s at the top of Buchanan Street. It made the best minestrone soup I’ve ever had. He came because he was mates with me, Billy McNeill, Mick Jackson, and Jimmy Daly. The Rangers board were not happy and they warned him off coming a few times, but he didn’t change. And of course Bob Kelly loved the idea of Rangers’ best player eating with the Celtic lads every day.

Even when I didn’t see Jim we still kept in frequent contact. My mother got a telephone in her house, which was unusual in the Gorbals, and once Jim got hold of the number he used to ring me all the time, at all hours. He did his National Service stint in the army at Stirling and used to ring me when he should have been on guard duty. The man in charge was a Celtic fan, but he loved Jimmy so much that he let him do what he wanted.

When I got called up to do National Service I didn’t want to go. Somebody told me that a good way of getting out of it was to explain that you wet the bed. I said that I was a bed-wetter on my application form and then I had to go for questioning at an office in Buchanan Street, Glasgow. The official asked me how serious my bed-wetting problem was. I told him that it was driving my mother to despair. So I was deemed unfit for National Service.

Jim once stayed up gambling all night before a Rangers v Celtic game and claimed that he had won £3,000. It didn’t affect him the next day as they beat us 3–0. When he signed for Raith Rovers, his first professional club, Jim struck a deal where he got a £250 signing on fee – plus a washing machine for his mum.

There were rumours that my sister Bridie was dating Jim. Newspapers ran articles; one even suggested that they were secretly married. There was a silly story that Jim was going to change religion and play for Celtic. People started shouting ‘turncoat’ at him in the street.

Jimmy was a big drinker and everyone loved him – even Celtic fans. Celtic and Rangers fans loved great footballers. Jim was one of the best natural footballers I have played with or against. When he got possession he hated to pass until he was satisfied that the man he was giving the ball to was in a position to use the opening to advantage. He didn’t just dominate matches, he took them over. Jim won ten winner’s medals in his five years at Rangers in the first half of the 1960s. I didn’t win one at Celtic. When he died in 2001, Celtic fans paid their respects, just as Rangers fans did when Bobby Murdoch died. Glaswegians love football – how else can you explain how 127,000 turned out for the 1960 European Cup Final between Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt at Hampden?

I used to watch Rangers play in European games when I was a Celtic player and they used to look after us. Rangers played Eintracht in the semi-final and I went with Billy McNeill and Jock Stein. Rangers were a tremendous team, but Eintracht won 6–1 in Germany and 6–3 at Ibrox. Rangers were a different class to us, Eintracht were in a different league to them. Then Real Madrid beat Eintracht in the best European Cup final ever. Loads of Rangers fans went to that game. Most supported Eintracht because Real Madrid was perceived to be a Catholic club, given that Spain is a Catholic country.

Jim came from Fife but he was an idol in Glasgow, where Rangers fans worshipped the ground he walked on. Nicknamed ‘Slim Jim’ because of his tall, slight build, he was the best football-playing half-back to kick a ball. He did not have great defensive powers, but with the ball at his feet you could not hope to see a better player. He had a natural ability which made him the complete master of the ball and he possessed unlimited self-confidence. I remember before one game at Hampden there had been a great deal of talk about how we were going to mark the opposition, but as we ran down the tunnel I heard Jim’s voice at my side saying, ‘Ah’ll no be markin’ anybody. Let them mark me!’

Which, of course, was a difficult thing to do. He could beat a man with ease, so the only way was to stop him getting the ball. Once it was at his feet the opposition were bang in trouble because he had a brilliant football brain and a delicate touch which allowed him to slip perfect passes exactly where he wanted to put them. Jim, at his best, could almost guarantee a Scottish victory when he was in a dark blue jersey and his best performance was in our victory over England at Hampden in 1962.

That was a special game because of what had happened the previous year at Wembley when we suffered a humiliating 9–3 defeat. When England came to Hampden a year later there wasn’t a Scot in the ground who did not fear a repeat. There was tension in the days before the game, and on the eve of the match I was glad to get to bed and be alone with my thoughts.

As usual when we played for Scotland, Jim and I were sharing a room. We were staying in a hotel in Kilmacolm, which Scottish teams used a lot in those days. The SFA chose it because it was usually quiet, but that night was different as two coach loads of England fans had booked in there. They were in no hurry to go to their beds.

It was getting late when three of them stopped to have a loud conversation outside our bedroom door. Jim didn’t like the idea of English people disturbing the Scottish team, and he told me to go and give them a telling off. But I said I would just ignore them as I didn’t want to get up again.

Jim waited a few minutes more, then jumped from his bed, threw open the door, and gave the English lady and her two friends a dressing down they wouldn’t forget in a hurry. If Jim’s words shocked them, then his appearance must have given them a bigger shock. Jim never wore pyjamas and didn’t have a stitch on.

Jim had a brilliant game the following afternoon and we beat England 2–0, but I doubt whether the Scottish left-half made as big an impact on those three supporters in the game as he had done the night before. We did a lap of honour after the game as it was the first time Scotland had beaten England in eleven years, but I think it wouldn’t have been unfair if Jim had gone around the track on his own.

I wasn’t to know that my eleven appearances for Scotland between 1961 and 1963 were to be followed by only five more. Nor that my love affair with Celtic was soon to hit the rocks.

THREE (#ulink_ad53f756-d384-549b-ae96-6cb6d72eafc3)

End of a Dream (#ulink_ad53f756-d384-549b-ae96-6cb6d72eafc3)

My personal life changed in 1961, when I started going out seriously with Noreen Ferry, my only girlfriend. I first saw her waiting outside St John’s church before the 12 o’clock mass one Sunday in 1956. That was always busy because it was where all the best looking girls went. She was fifteen and I was sixteen and I thought straightaway that I was going to marry her. I said to her, ‘I’m going to come back and get you when I’m a famous footballer.’ Daft isn’t it?

I carried on going to church, though, and still do, although not as often as I should. I was always taught that everyone is your brother and sister and you look after one another. It seemed to me that Jesus Christ was the first ever communist.

I didn’t see Noreen again for three years, then I spotted her at the Ancient Order of Hibernian dance hall on Errol Street in 1959. The boys stood on one side of the hall and the girls on the other. You had to be brave to cross the dance floor and ask a girl to dance. You had to be quick off your mark, too, because the best girls would go quickly.

Noreen used to say no to a lot of lads and I rescued her from one called Tommy Moy. He was the best looking boy in the Gorbals and Noreen had been on a date with him. I could see that he was pestering her to dance. But I could also see that she wasn’t getting up to dance with him. To refuse to get up and dance with a boy was a big insult. Everyone noticed it because he was the only boy who had gone over to ask someone to dance. I was sitting near the stage and looking at Noreen. If I’d gone over there would have been a fight, so I beckoned Noreen over. She later said that she would have never got up to any lad like that, but she wanted to escape from Tommy. And she’ll be the first to admit that she thought she was god’s gift, because she was the best-looking girl in the Gorbals. She had won beauty prizes.

Noreen walked over and I started talking to her. Tommy Moy turned round to Noreen and said, ‘Oh, you’re into footballers are you?’ Tommy followed Noreen down the street after the evening had finished and I was walking behind. He was bigger than me and had a very high opinion of himself, which in some ways was justified because every girl in the Gorbals fancied him. I told him where to go and to leave Noreen alone. At first he looked me in the eye and I don’t think he could believe what I was telling him. I looked straight back at him. I was deadly serious and he backed down and walked off.

We went out a few times and I considered Noreen to be my girlfriend, but I’m not sure that she thought the same about me – as I soon realized. A new dance hall opened in town and Noreen won a competition for being the most beautiful girl in there. She won £50 – a fortune in those days – and her picture was printed in the newspaper the following day. This lad had asked her to dance that night – it turned out to be Bobby Carroll. I saw him in training the next morning and he said, ‘I saw that girl you said you were going out with last night at the new dance hall.’

Noreen had told me that she was washing her hair and I believed her so I told him he must be mistaken. Then he showed me the Daily Record, which had a picture of Noreen in it. I felt pretty stupid. I was supposed to be going to the cinema with her later that day, so, when we met up, I asked her if she had stayed in and washed her hair the night before. She told me that she had. She must have thought that I was daft.

We walked towards the cinema, the Coliseum on Ellington Street, and there was a big queue. The lads at the front saw me and ushered me straight in, which was a bit embarrassing because a lot of my friends were there. I asked her again what she had done the night before and she still stuck to her story. I used to give her one shilling to buy some chocolates before we went in, but on this occasion I didn’t. That set her mind wondering. I then bought one cinema ticket. We were on a platform overlooking the queue and people were looking up at us – it wasn’t just that I played for Celtic, but Noreen’s picture had been in the newspaper. I gave her the ticket and announced, ‘I hope you enjoy the film, because I am going.’ She was flustered so I told her that I knew she hadn’t stayed in and washed her hair the night before. She panicked. She was mortified at all her friends seeing her left alone and she said to me, ‘If you buy another ticket I’ll tell you the truth.’ I had her good and proper.

Noreen told me, ‘I’m not your girlfriend.’ She had been seeing other lads, too, so I gave her an ultimatum, saying, ‘You’re either my girlfriend or you’re not.’ She chose me. She later told me that her brothers had told her never to say no to any boy from the Gorbals.

When Noreen told her brothers that she was dating me, they said, ‘What does he see in you?’ But she said that they were happy because I was Catholic and especially because I played for Celtic. Not that they were against Protestants and Noreen had been out with them before. Noreen’s mother needed more convincing. She remembered me from when I played for Scotland against Ireland in Dublin in my second international game. It was televised and she had watched it with Noreen’s dad. It was a tough game and I was accused of being dirty. When she found out that Noreen was going out with me, she wasn’t impressed and told her that I was a hooligan.

I may have been fiery on the football pitch but I was a saint compared to many of the people I’d grown up with. Early in my Celtic career I visited Barlinie jail in Glasgow with Jim Baxter. We were asked to go there by one of the prison officials and we were held up as role models, examples of how you could be a success even if you came from a poor area. I couldn’t believe how many of the people I knew in there. We had a football quiz and as I looked at those who stood up to ask questions and the others sitting around them, I realized that I knew most of them by their first names.

They had either been at school with me or lived in the streets nearby in the Gorbals. The only difference between them and me, I decided, was that they hadn’t been so lucky to have a mother like mine. I didn’t have a father but my mother was a very strong person. She’d give us a belt if we were naughty and told us to face life’s problems straight on. You had to look after yourself because nobody else would. It made you a strong character, but too many strong characters went the wrong way. Until I was nine years old I was in bed every night at 6.30 pm. And until I was seventeen I was never allowed out after 9.30 pm. This kind of discipline was the only way to keep a boy from getting into the kind of mischief that, for so many, eventually turned to crime.

Richer people could buy their way out of problems, but poorer people couldn’t. Most of the lads were in Bar-L for robbing. They robbed because they didn’t have anything. During our visit the idea was for the prisoners to ask Jimmy and me questions, which some of them did. But so many of them hid away because they were embarrassed and didn’t want me to see them in there.