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Title: The Mighty Atom: The Life and Times of Patsy Gallacher
Author: David Potter
Published: 1 Oct 2000
Player Homepage: Patsy Gallacher
Synopsis
Book Description
The book, however, is more than a mere appreciation of Patsy Gallacher. The author, having researched extensively into Gallacher's Irish origins, does not dodge Irish or sectarian issues, which were so alive at the time that Gallacher played for Celtic. His career is seen against the backdrop of the First World War and the industrial and social troubles which affected Glasgow in its immediate aftermath.
Certain aspects are dealt with in detail, notably the famous goal in the 1925 Scottish Cup Final. Gallacher's appearances for Ireland are also highlighted, as indeed are his years in the dark blue of Falkirk.
Off the field, Patsy's private life is chronicled, in particular the domestic trauma that hit Gallacher and his family when his wife died tragically in 1929. his subsequent life as a publican and his own death are dealt with, as well as an attempt to analyse how good he really was.
This highly readable book is candid and has the lightness of touch which has endeared the author to Celtic supporters in his previous writings about the club.
About the Author
Excerpt from The Mighty Atom by David W. Potter.
Patsy Gallacher was in some ways the archetypical Celt. According to the family tradition, he was born on 16th March 1891 in the Milford Poor House, County Donegal, Ireland, although his home town was Rathmelton (more commonly spelt Ramelton to-day) a few miles away. Indeed his birth certificate gives Ramelton as his place of birth. He was the son of William and Margaret Gallagher, both illiterate. William's occupation is given as a "Post Car Driver" the Victorian equivalent of a taxi driver, transporting rich people to various parts of rural Donegal. Margaret's maiden name had also been Gallagher. Gallagher was a very common name in County Donegal – and still is.
More precise indications of the family's whereabouts and circumstances will be hard to come by, for the 1891Census returns were destroyed in the Civil War in 1922 as Dublin Castle fell victim to the fratricidal struggle of whether the Dail should accept the Treaty offered by the British in 1921 and become the Irish Free State or hold out for a Republic. It is believed in the family, however, that William hailed from a farm called Slamanahan, and Margaret from a farm called Goland.
Donegal is of course the part of Ireland most associated with the immigrations to Scotland in the 19th Century, and if there were one part of Ireland that the most pedantic of Celtic historians were asked to give as the exact roots of Celtic Football Club, he would no doubt say "County Donegal". A visit to the Ramelton district of County Donegal will reveal lovely, warm-hearted people and an area of Ireland alive with the history of that troubled land.
The famous Red Hugh O'Donnell, who gave the Saxons all sorts of trouble in the late 1590's, was based around Lough Swilly, and it was from Rathmullan a few kilometres up the side of the Lough that Hugh's brother Rory and another Hugh – O'Neill – departed the Irish scene in 1607. This "Flight of the Earls" left the way open for the British Government to "plant" Protestant settlers in Ireland and sow the seeds of the trouble that befouls Ireland today. Rathmullan remained strategically very important for the British, providing anchorage for the Atlantic Fleet of the Royal Navy in World War One.
Ramelton indeed is a "plantation" town and was for a time very prosperous at the head of Lough Swilly. The railway, however, came to nearby Letterkenny rather than Ramelton in the latter part of the 19th century, and Ramelton declined in status. Yet it survived and to-day's Ramelton will show a small town sharing in the general prosperity that has come the way of Ireland since their entry into the European Union in 1973. The quay was used as the set for the film "The Hanging Gale", which deals with the Famine of 1845-7.
Inhabitants are friendly and hospitable with a long tradition of religious tolerance. The descendants of the "plantation" Scots, who hailed mainly from Ayrshire bringing with them their Presbyterian way of life get on well with the indigenous Catholics. They are indeed all Irish. In footballing terms, there is a tendency to support Manchester United or Celtic with words being said in favour of Finn Harps in the League of Ireland and the local junior team Swilly Rovers. Patsy Gallagher is by now a nebulous figure. Other than an acknowledgement that he was a famous footballer who played for Celtic and once scored a goal with the ball wedged between his feet, the people of Ramelton know little about their most famous son.
The 19th century began badly for Donegal and finished worse. Wolfe Tone of the United Irishmen had tried to organize a French invasion in the last few years of the 18th century, but was betrayed and arrested in Buncrana on the other side of Lough Swilly from Ramelton. The Famine of the 1840's hit the area hard, as a visit to the Heritage Centre at nearby Dunfanaghy will indicate. Exploitation of the Irish by the absentee British landlords and their brutal bailiffs was as prevalent in Donegal as it was in other parts of the country. By 1891, things had perhaps stabilised and the situation was quiet. It would be hard to claim however that Donegal was happy or content.
William Gallagher's job as a Post Car Driver in 1891 was not a bad one, better than quite a few people at the time. But Donegal was still a desperately poor place with the perpetual threat of another Famine. Accordingly, a few years after the birth of Patrick Gallagher, his illiterate parents decided to try their luck in Scotland. Quite a lot of people were doing the same and Clydebank seemed a fair bet, for it was the hub of the shipbuilding industry – and there was no sign of any recession in that industry. Ships would always be required for the mighty British Empire. They were hardly the first or the last to do so, with Clydebank in particular seeming to hold a particular attraction for the people of Donegal. The Gallaghers would not exactly be among total strangers in their new home – nor would there be any lack of people called Gallagher!
By the time that William and Margaret decided to move on to Scotland, they had a family of seven – four boys, Johnnie, Willie, Jimmy and Patrick and three girls called Madge, Mary and Maggie. This was probably some time about the turn of the century, but it is difficult to put an accurate date on it.
Immigrations from Donegal to Scotland (and the U.S.A., Canada and Australia) had of course been going on for some considerable time before the Gallaghers decided to move. The exodus had begun with the repression which followed the unsuccessful rebellion of 1797 and 1798. There had been a steady trickle of immigrants throughout the 1820's and 1830's, but the real catalyst was the Potato Famine of 1845 and 1846.
Other historians will deal at length with the Potato Blight and its effects. It was possibly the single most important event in Irish history, far more significant than the Battle of the Boyne or the Easter Rising, more influential than Parnell or Connolly, and affecting the world in a way that no one could have foreseen on that bright spring morning in 1845 when someone noticed a few white spots on a potato leaf. One statistic is horrific, and that is the decline of the population of Ireland from around 10 million to 3 million in less than a century.
Review
(from Not The View)
My father was not old enough to have seen him play but I remember in the late 60s when I was a 7 or 8, dad passing on stories of Gallacher's brilliance that had been told to him by people who had seen him play.
I knew that Delaney (who my dad did see), McGrory, Napier, Thomson and the post-war greats were superb players, but it was Patsy Gallacher I wish I had seen play. A brilliant essay in The Glory and the Dream I read some 20 years later reminded me that Celtic once had a player in the Maradonna class (in a football sense) in the 1910s and 20s. But when I read The Mighty Atom by David Potter I realised how little I knew about him.
The bare facts I knew, and some of the games – and his goal in the 1925-cup final – were familiar. But like most people the most I knew was that his grandson was a terrific player with Dundee United whose career had never quite lived up to its potential.
The problem after reading this book is that I'm not sure I know him that much better.
In many respects this is a terrific read in the style of other books by this author and Campbell & Woods, mixing as it does the Celtic of Patsy's career, some fascinating social titbits of the time as well as placing it all in a wider social/ historical context.
The author is not shy in giving his opinion – which is fine – and the writing does have some fine quirky touches (although he rather overdoes the exclamation marks to emphasise a point). But the real problem for me is that, particularly in the early chapters, there's not enough about Patsy Gallacher.
I have a feeling that Potter – who I would guess is in his mid to late 50s and perhaps has a father who saw the great man play – assumes that his readers are as familiar with Patsy's style of play as the writer himself obviously is and that Gallacher is as widely known by Celtic fans as Potter thinks he is. But I'm not sure that's true.
I, for one, would have appreciated a few more passages describing his playing style and the reasons for the excitement it clearly generated (as Campbell and Woods managed).
Those Celtic fans that know of Patsy would almost certainly acknowledge that he was the best player Celtic had fielded until the 1960s, but I wonder if he's as instantly recognisable to contemporary fans as McGrory or John Thomson. He should be.
On a personal basis I can't agree unequivocally with Potter's belief that Gallacher was Celtic's best player of all time. It may be the case that the standard of Scottish league football was higher in Patsy's time than it was during the period of 9-in-a-row, but I would think it highly unlikely that any Scottish club side which played between 1911 and 1932 was as good as the best teams Celtic defeated in European competition during Jock Stein's time. Johnstone, Murdoch, Gemmell and company succeeded at a level Patsy never did (or could). But that was not his fault, and given what is told and known of his style of play, as well as his professionalism with regard to fitness (which seems to have been far ahead of his contemporaries) only a fool would say that he wouldn't have made it in the modern era.
To be fair to David Potter there can't be too many people still alive who saw Patsy play in the flesh or who knew him well enough to provide the author with fresh insights. Newspaper reporting of the time seems to have been no better than it is now. The author himself acknowledges that there is very little in the way of a visual record either – the photographs in the book are often posed team pictures rather than action shots – and no newsreel footage exists at all.
Still, this is a worthy effort to fill a gap in Celtic books and the chapter on his time at Falkirk is terrific. Best of all, Potter's enthusiasm for his subject makes you believe that a small, thin, almost unhealthy-looking man from a background of desperate poverty became, for a time, quite simply the best footballer in the world.
And there can't be many people you can say that about.
Product Details
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: Parrs Wood Press (1 Oct 2000)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1903158109
ISBN-13: 978-1903158104
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