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My double life as a Rangers fan playing for Celtic
The right winger crosses the divide in our first extract from a controversial new book
Davie Provan
Although I played most of my career for Celtic, I came from a typical west-of-Scotland Rangers family. We lived in Gourock and my dad, David senior, my brother, Roddy, and I were all Rangers supporters. We were a churchgoing family and my brother and I regularly attended Sunday school. By the time I was 7 or 8, we were being taken to Ibrox by my dad, where we watched players like Jim Baxter and Willie Henderson.
When I first heard Celtic were interested in me I was surprised, not because of my background but because a club like Celtic would consider signing me. Obviously the family would have preferred that I had gone to Rangers but it was never a problem in the house and I had total support from them. Both my parents just wanted me to be what I wanted to be and despite coming from a Rangers family there was enormous respect for Celtic and Jock Stein.
I was a part-timer at my first club, Kilmarnock, and in 1978 we drew 1-1 with Celtic in the Scottish Cup at Parkhead. Jock Stein stopped me before the game and spoke to me for quite a while, which I thought was unusual. I had heard that he had offered Kilmarnock money for me but apparently the two clubs couldn’t agree a fee.
Then one Tuesday night I got a phone call after I had come home from training. On the line was John Clark, assistant to Billy McNeill, who by that time had taken over from Big Jock as manager. John said, “Look, we know about your background but would you come to Celtic?” “Yes, in a minute, not a problem at all,” I replied. He said, “OK, I just wanted to know that you would be in the right frame of mind to play for us.”
The first time I actually met my new teammates was at Parkhead before we got on the bus to go and play Partick Thistle on my debut. Walking into any new dressing-room is intimidating, especially at a club that size.
As strange as it sounds now, my fee of £125,000 was then a record between two Scottish clubs. Basically, I had been signed to replace Johnny Doyle and I was really wary of meeting him but as it turned out he became one of my best pals at the club. Johnny was at the wind-up right away saying, “There’s another currant bun in the dressing-room.” There were other players from a Rangers background at Celtic such as Danny McGrain and Tom McAdam while Murdo MacLeod signed about eight weeks after me. The other “currant bun” was Alfie Conn, who had played for Rangers.
There was always religious banter at Parkhead, most of it started by Johnny, but it was always good natured, never anything more. I travelled to Parkhead with Mike Conroy, who was Celtic through and through and had wanted to play for the club all his life. He would give me stick about being a Rangers man but it was just a laugh, no more than that.
The Celtic fans took to me right away, though in games against Rangers I felt I had to do a bit more. I would be lying if I said otherwise and I think one or two others from the same background would tell you the same. You would never leave yourself open in an Old Firm game. If there is such a thing as another 10 per cent, then that was the match where you had to make sure you found it. You didn’t want anyone to think, “He’s not giving it his best shot.” So you always did the full shift and more.
The will to win was astonishing in those Old Firm games, where you had guys like Johnny Doyle and Alex MacDonald who probably epitomised what each club was about. But although there would be a lot of verbals going on during the game I never heard any sectarian comment at all and I am being perfectly honest about that. We didn’t hear it when we played teams other than Rangers either. That might surprise people but it is true. There is a great respect between Celtic and Rangers players because they know what each other are going through.
In the early 1980s Frank McGarvey and I were invited to the New Lodge Celtic Supporters Club in Belfast. At that time the hunger strike was coming to an end and you could have cut the atmosphere in Belfast with a knife. I had never been in the city before and it was intimidating.
Frank and I stayed in the infamous Europa hotel which had been blown up countless times. All the Republican pubs had closed down as a mark of respect to the hunger strikers but the Celtic Supporters Club had received permission to stay open. As we entered the hall I noticed that there were portraits of the hunger strikers all around the walls. It was a bit surreal to be honest and I was glad to get out of Belfast and back to Scotland.
When I first signed for Celtic I got a bit of stick from some people in Gourock, not friends but acquaintances who would give me the usual “turncoat” stuff. And it became apparent very early on that hassle was part of the deal of being an Old Firm player. In a Glasgow pub one night a guy called me a turncoat then spat in my face. But most of the nasty element was verbal, usually after some punter had too much to drink.
There is a real purge on sectarian songs these days but when I played it was quite normal for Old Firm supporters to sing them and everyone had become accustomed to it. We don’t have the overt sectarian element in the grounds simply because they are not allowed to get away with it but I’m not convinced that there has been progress made outwith the stadiums.
The biggest problem is the intelligent, professional, middle-class bigots and there are those on either side. You can understand the knuckleheads who don’t know any better but if you have an intelligent man who can’t open his mind and see the stupidity in it all, then Scottish society is going to have a problem for a long time.
The Rangers thing is gone for me. There is no part of me now that wishes I had played at Ibrox. It was my up-bringing and it was ingrained into me but I wouldn’t swap my Celtic career for anything. The irony is, between signing for Celtic in 1978 and 1986, when I played my last game for the club, Rangers didn’t win the title. I won four championship medals and Rangers were never at the races. Who knows what would have happened if I had signed for Rangers but I don’t have an ounce of regret, none whatsoever.
— From “It’s Rangers For Me? Perspectives on a Scottish Institution”, published by Fort Publishing,