| Match Pictures | Matches: 1939 – 1940 | 1939-40 Pictures |
Trivia
- Ex-Celt, and manager of Bradford, Peter O'Rourke pens the critical post-mortem of Celtic's performance below.
- The man who won the FA Cup as manager of Bradford City says:- "I liked best O’Neill a back I had never seen before, and Divers. I see football hope for them. For the others —-!"
- The flag at Celtic Park flies at half-mast for ex-player Jimmy Hay "The General" who died on 4 April.
- The referee, Mr. M. C. Dale, controversialy awarded Rangers (trailing by a goal to nil) an ultra-soft penalty in this game.
- Matthew Dale would go on to be involved in even greater controversy with Celtic in the infamous "drunk referee" Old Firm, Victory Cup semi-final replay game, when he was reported by Celtic to George Graham, the Chairman of the S.F.A.
- Rex of the Sunday Mail writes:- "If there is such a thing as a soft penalty, this one was seeping through the fingers."
Review
Teams
CELTIC
Smith; Hogg and O’Neill; McDonald, Lyon and Paterson; Crum, Lynch, Watters, Divers and Murphy.
Scorers:
Divers.
RANGERS
Dawson; Gray and Shaw; McKillop, Woodburn and Ross; Forshaw, Brown, Thornton, Venters and McNee.
Scorers:
Venters, Brown.
Referee: M. C. Dale, Glasgow.
Attendance: 30,000
Articles
- Match Report (see end of page below)
Pictures
Links
Articles
Page 28 –Sunday Mail, April 7, 1940
CELTS WERE DONE ‘BROWN’ IN HOT DUEL
By REX
CELTIC…. 1 RANGERS……2
Celts were done Brown yesterday.
In a game crammed with offensives and offences, it was a fitting snub to the “fighting footballers” that George (velvet-feet) Brown should beat them all to it. It came with the scores one-each. Innocence was written all over McKillop’s face as he intercepted and then prodded the ball forward to the dancing Thornton.
Willie Lyon was completely deceived by the young centre’s back-heeler to Brown, who released a first-time hook-shot which, appropriately enough hung itself high up in the far side curtains.
Luck plays a big part in such scores, of course, and it was in the nature of things that Rangers should get the smile. In the next two or three minutes, they had enough luck to win three football pools, back the first three in the Derby, and be out when the ceiling collapses!
But I’ll come to that later. Let me say now, it was a game that will be remembered, though anything but memorable. It had many of the things no game should be without – and a lot of things all games should be without.
JERRY OH!
It started off with Johnny Divers scoring in Celts’ first run up. You could have felled the Rangers’ fans with a tea-biscuit when Jerry Dawson clutched the ball – and then let it break downwards and through his legs into the net.
There was much expectoration on hands after this. Venters and McDonald went down together – and looked as if they didn’t want to get up. “ Gie them their gum-shields!” shouted a voice. The crowd were roaring now. This was more like a Rangers—Celtic game!
“PRAYER” ANSWERED
Neither goalmouth was lonely for any length of time. Celts were looking really good when the first blow fell – Watters was injured and changed places with Crum.
Next minute they had a break when Venters put everything but his back teeth into a fierce ten-yarder. Smith shut his eyes and shoved up his hands. He may have been praying. If so, it was answered, for the ball cannoned off him to safety.
Two minutes after the interval, Rangers were awarded a penalty kick. As an exposition of Venters’ histrionic art it was superb. As a punishment to fit the crime, it was a wash-out. The Ranger appeared to me to have started his “dive” before he was tackled.
BOLT FROM THE “BLUE”
If there is such a thing as a soft penalty, this one was seeping through the fingers. Venters equalised with the kick. Two minutes later came the bolt from the “blue” by Brown.
And then came a showing of the best Celtic this season. If Dawson lost his stripes on account of the first Celtic goal, he promoted himself a colonel now. When he wriggled like a fellow with a flea between his shoulder-blades to beat down with one hand a magnificent 18—yarder from Lynch, he was the old Jerry Dawson. But when he did likewise with a Crum effort from six yards, he was a dozen Jerry Dawsons rolled into one. And any one of them was a belly-ache to Celts.
AMAZING ESCAPE
At this point, Rangers were pinned back. Then came the most amazing escape.
Crum headed a Murphy corner against the junction of bar and upright. The ball was scrambled clear. Back it came and landed at Divers’s feet, four yards from goal. It looked easier than backing a horse crossing the winning line. Up went the big fellow’s boot, up went the Celtic bunnets—and up popped Rangers’ reserve goalkeeper, Dougie Gray!
If Willie Struth had stopped that ball by throwing his bowler hat on it, the crowd couldn’t have been more stupefied. Yet there it was. The ex-A.R.P. warden hadn’t forgotten his old job – cover that *****.
If I had been a Celtic fan, I would have felt like throwing my money to Dougie and pleading “Hey, take it all and invest it for me so’s Ah’ll no’ need to work any longer.”
The game evened up again, but those feverish minutes had burned up the “ping,” and the subsequent play never overtook the threatening stage.
McKILLOP’S WORTH
Celtic should have got a draw—at the very least. Smith had nothing like the bother that shadowed Dawson. All four backs were sound. Tom McKillop, the ambling innocent, makes football easy for himself – and difficult for the other fellow. He was a torn bootlace to Celtic with his uncanny interventions. Lyon was grand all round.
Young Forshaw needs more experience. Thornton beat Lyon only twice, and by back-heelers. Yet he was a full-time occupation for the Celtic skipper. Venters and McNee had many bright moments.
Watters was very lively until injured. But Divers was the big shot of the line. This is the best Divers I’ve seen this season.
CELTIC—Smith; Hogg and O’Neill; McDonald, Lyon and Paterson; Crum, Lynch, Watters, Divers and Murphy.
RANGERS—Dawson; Gray and Shaw; McKillop, Woodburn and Ross; Forshaw, Brown, Thornton, Venters and McNee.
Referee—M. C. Dale, Glasgow.
………………………………………………………………………..
N.B.
I was given a newspaper-clip of the article below by Bernard O’Neill the son of Ex-Celt Hugh. I have made this transcription of it for clarity. The clip is in Match Pictures. There was nothing to indicate what publication it was from, but it was written by ex-Celtic player Peter O’Rourke.
One can understand why the late Hugh O’Neill had treasured it. O’Rourke, an ex-Celtic player and football legend in England, had singled Hugh out for praise for his performance against Rangers – in the same breath as paying tribute to his old friend, the late Jimmy Hay for whom the flag was flying at half-mast at Celtic Park that day. While O’Rourke is highly critical of the rest of the Celtic team he exonerates Hugh and John Divers as being the only two Celts on show who have a football future.
The comments by O’Rourke confirm that he was looking back on “the other Saturday” as Celtic’s 1-2 defeat by Rangers on Saturday April 6, 1940; as Jimmy Hay, a.k.a. The General, Died: 4 April 1940.
Hugh O’Neill also kept a newspaper report by Sunday Mail of that game (see above), which tells of how Rangers were given a penalty for no reason other than the “histrionics” of the Ranger’s centre Alex Venters. Plus ça change!
WHAT’S WRONG WITH CELTIC
The Team Is Just Not Good Enough
By PETER O’ROURKE
WHAT has been called the major mystery of the football season, the decline and fall of Glasgow Celtic, is no mystery at all if you have eyes to see.
The team is just not good enough.
But to be able to see this you must not have lived too long on one side of Glasgow – better, indeed, if you’ve never lived in Glasgow at all – and you must be able to look on the Celtic of to-day without thinking of the Celtic of the past at the same time.
I tried to do all this the other Saturday when I went to see them play Rangers. And it was difficult. For when I asked why the flag was at half-mast I was told it “was for Jimmy Hay,” and Jimmy Hay was a friend of mine, and a very great footballer and – this is important to the argument – part of the pattern of Celtic supremacy in the past. And so, inevitably, one began to mix past with present, which is wrong.
Celtic today should be judged entirely on their merit or demerit; no special leniency should be shown to them on account of their record. So I put Hay and others of the past out of mind for a little and set myself sternly to watch.
And soon I discerned what I believe to be the truth; the Celtic are now so ordinary an aggregation of footballers that they would be nearer the bottom than top of any Regional League if they happened to play in England instead of Scotland.
I tried to get my neighbour to see it too. “What’s wrong with Celtic these days? They’re not playing badly”—and indeed they weren’t after, after ordinary football fashion.
He made sensible answer. “They’ve lost their spirit,” he said. “Sometimes I think they dinna try. Why should they – wi’ fitba’ as it is to-day.”
“They seem to be trying hard enough now,” I said, catching him by the arm and pointing to some particularly vigorous play.
“Oh, aye, they’re trying hard enough the day – just because they’re playing Rangers. They have to try to beat Rangers. They’re abune themselves.”
That I believe now to be true. They were abune themselves. They played better football than their normally limited capacity would allow.
We come back to the tradition of the club which I had hoped to dismiss from my calculations.
A Poor Side
Celtic normally are a poor side, no better than a score we have in England; Celtic against Rangers are a better one, because they are Celtic plus a feeling of fight or rivalry, or whatever you care to call it.
Rangers are much the stronger side of the two, but I don’t think such a lot of them either. They’re no more Rangers of my early days than Celtic are.
Of that Celtic side I liked best O’Neill a back I had never seen before, and Divers. I see football hope for them. For the others —-!
The time is not normal and managers everywhere have to do the best they can with the men they have got, else I’d advise Celtic to find a new goalkeeper, outside left, outside right, centre half.
If the mood of change were insistent in me I might even say: “Go to Stoke or the Wolves for another centre; each of these sides has a better man in the reserves than you have in the field.
Or if you, the Celtic, felt that you could never do that put Divers in the centre forward position.
I don’t care whether Divers knows it or not, but that is his true position. And if and when I put that young man there, I’d give him personally a bit of advice. I’d say, “Take care to keep your temper in the field.
If he were disposed to listen, I’d tell him a tale of a great footballer who was undoubtedly the best centre-forward the Celtic ever had – Jimmy Quinn, no less.
I’d tell him that Quinn had the reputation, and most unfair it was, of being rough, and of a day when I tackled him and his club-mates about it in London, when they had just returned from a tour of the Continent.
Quinn’s “Medals”
“Is he really rough, Jimmy?” said I to Jimmy McMenemy, who was near by.
“Rough? Quinn show the gentleman your medals!”
Without a word Quinn pulled up his trouser-legs and showed me the bruises which covered his legs through which showed white scars of old battles.
“I took them all,” he said “and I gave nothing in return. It’s a’ in the game.”
Divers, I have said, was the best member of the forward line this Saturday – but he was no Quinn.
Nor was he a Sandy McMahon either, which is to say he that he can be bettered at inside left as well.
I hope I don’t sound hard on Divers. The truth is that the comparison is a compliment!
There was never a better inside left than Sandy. He was never guilty of the fault of the moderns of ballooning the ball when he passed it.
Sandy’s skill tied the ball to the floor. And now, since Divers seems to have become a kind of link between the present and the past, I permit myself a wee joke, and write there were divers other kings in Celtic’s happier days.
There is no Dan McArthur or Davie Adams in goal nowadays, no back like Welford or Dan Doyle – certainly no Dan Doyle.
What a player. What a philosopher he was! He lost two pubs and went to work for a Rangers engineer called Tom Robertson.
Celtic, alas, have no Barney Battles today – what a name for a fechter! – they have no Jimmy Hay.
Nobody could tell whether Jimmy was better at back or half-back. He was simply the born player.
Then there was Campbell, who played outside left to McMahon. Was there ever a better wing anywhere? I doubt it.
My complaint now is that Celtic are so—- so ordinary, that Rangers can afford to take them cheaply. It hurt me to see that on this last sobering Saturday. How else would they daur to put Brown, Scotland’s left half for years, at inside right?
In doing this Rangers showed a new contempt for the Celtic defence. Brown isn’t supposed to be a forward; he is a half-back.
But Rangers, and here’s the hurt of it, were justified of the transition.
Celtic’s ineptitude made the seeming risk no risk at all.
The Scotsman – Monday, 8th April 1940, page 9
Rangers had only a very narrow win over Celtic, and were not particularly convincing, since it was a doubtful penalty that gave them equality after Celtic had opened the scoring.
Dawson was in error in conceding the opening score, but the goalkeeper atoned for the error in the later stages of the game.
Celtic played better than they had done since last meeting Rangers, and were a trifle unlucky.
The winning goal fell to international half-back Brown playing in his original position at inside right.
Rangers almost made a vital slip at Parkhead, for Queen of the South, with Kinnear (Rangers) in their forward line, were good winners over Ayr United, and are still but two points behind the Ibrox club.
