| Matches: 1962 – 1963 | 1962-1963 Pictures | League Table | Statistics |
A dead year with no consistency
- League Position – 4th
- League Cup – Failed to qualify from group sections
- Scottish Cup – Losing Finalist
- European Cities Fairs Cup – First Round exit
- Others: Glasgow Cup – Losing Finalists
This was a dead year for Celtic and it finished with one of the worst performances ever turned out by the team in the replayed Scottish Cup Final against Rangers. Season 1962-63 amounted to the culmination of a failure to invest in the team and year upon year of tinkering with football matters by people that had no professional knowledge of football.
This season saw the departure of Pat Crerand who was looking to be one of the best home-produced Celts ever. It was not just the fact that Crerand was sold – it was the nature of his departure and his failure to please the powers that be at the club, namely Robert Kelly and his increasingly outdated idea of both football and how a football club should be run. As chairman of Celtic, Kelly was THE man with power to make and break careers and what he said, happened. It mattered little what the players thought or even less what manager Jimmy McGrory felt or wanted. The team was the plaything of Robert Kelly to a degree and everybody in it had better follow his line or face the consequences. Nothing could epitomise this more than the falling out of Crerand with the managerial team of Fallon and McGrory at the Ne’erday game of 1963. He never played again for Celtic. The loss of Crerand was not just the loss of a major major player who could hit a pass with pinpoint accuracy – it was a statement on how the club was run and who controlled it. Following the utterly dire performance in the replayed Scottish Cup Final which saw a front line which had again been tinkered with by Kelly, Celtic supporters finally began to question who was in charge of team selection matters and it became perfectly obvious that Jimmy McGrory as a manager had nothing to do – he did not pick the team, he did not train the team in fact he rarely spoke to the team. And Kelly, whilst a superb administrator and stalwart spokesman for Celtic, was not fit to pick the team and instead he let his own prejudices guide him.
The season started with the usual poor showing in the League Cup. In a group with Hearts, Dundee and Dundee Utd there was everything to play for going into the last game. A result better than Hearts result against Dundee was required and in the end, Hearts won 2-0 and Celtic could only muster a goalless draw.
The League started just as badly with the poor home performances and wins coming in away games. It took 8 games before Celtic conjured a win at home – a 1-0 win against Dundee Utd. The season could only get better and then the great freeze of 1963 intervened with no football for the whole of February and game after game lost to weather. After the weather-imposed break there were better performances as indeed there were a few before the break – between October and November Celtic scored 13 goals in two games and then capitulated to Queen of the South in a 1-0 loss. That summed up the performance of the team. Inconsistency through and through.
The usual good run in the Scottish Cup appeared to confirm many people’s view that Celtic were a team good for the one-off occasion. Progress this season went all the way to the final – one step better than the previous season – but it was the direness of the performance in the replay that occasioned the soul-searching by the supporters and the growing clamour for change.
Celtic had also made their first venture into Europe, where they were unfortunately drawn against the eventual winners of the European Cities Fairs Cup. The first game in Valencia saw a 4-2 defeat and though the home leg gave a more creditable 2-2 draw, Celtic showed their naiveté in both games when facing sturdy European opponents. It would require a deal more steel in the ranks.
The season saw only one new arrival. That was Bobby Craig, bought from Blackburn Rovers for £15,000 immediately before the second home leg against Valencia and in which he made his debut. That Celtic needed a professional inside forward was beyond dispute. That Bobby Craig was that player was highly debatable. There were games when he could play well and not only score but bring players into the game and there were those where he disappeared. The season also saw first team debuts for Bobby Murdoch, Jimmy Johnstone, Tommy Gemmell, Ian Young, Bobby Jeffrey, John Cushley, Dick Madden, Frank McCarron – the last two never appeared in a first team line-up again. Departures were Pat Crerand as mentioned above, Bobby Carroll to St Mirren, Mike Jackson to St Johnstone and at the end of the season Alec Byrne and a whole raft of players that had been brought in from the Junior ranks and who failed to match up to expectations.
Celtic had nailed their colours to the mast with their youth policy and bringing in players from Junior ranks to develop through Reserve team football. The problem was that when this was allied to a policy of tinkering with the first team by non-professionals, of a lack of guidance and training (though it must be said that Sean Fallon was the first trainer to really start to get hands on with the team) and pure downright failure to invest in seasoned professionals then the club was set on a never-ending trail to mediocrity. It could not continue.
Photograph from the Pre-Season Trial 1962-63
Middle Row: John Higgins (Youth Coach), Alec Boden (Reserves Coach), John Hughes, Alec Byrne, Steve Chalmers, Ian Young, John Parks, Tommy Gemmell, John Divers, Willie O'Neill, Jim Kennedy, John Cushley, John McNamee, Peter Gowans, Allan Lawson, David Brady, Jimmy Gribben (Assistant Trainer).
Front Row: Jimmy McGrory (Manager), Ramsey Brown, Willie Smith, Bobby Lennox, Bobby Murdoch, Charlie Gallacher, Bobby Carroll, Billy McNeill, John Clark, Pat Crerand, Benny Rooney, Duncan MacKay, Jimmy Johnstone, Sean Fallon (Coach), Bob Rooney (Trainer).