Divers, John (1957-66)

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Note: There has been more than one player to have played for Celtic with the same name, so please check the other namesakes if need be.

Personal

Fullname: John Patrick Divers
aka: John Divers Jnr, John Divers
Born: 8 March 1940
Died: 23 Sep 2014
Birthplace: Clydebank
Signed: 7 July 1956
Left: 30 April 1966 (free) / 30 Sep 1966 (Partick Thistle)
Position: Inside-Left
Debut: Celtic 2-2 St Mirren, League, 16 Nov 1957
Internationals: Scottish League XI
International Caps: 3 caps for League XI

Biog

The son of the 1930’s Celt of the same name John Divers signed for Celtic from Glentyan Thistle in July 1956. It wasn’t just his father who played for Celtic, as he was also the grand-nephew of the great Patsy Gallacher. So quite a bit to live up to, but his career should be assessed on its own.

He made his debut on November 16th the following year and scored in a 2-2 league draw with St Mirren at Celtic Park. A skilful, clever and hard working player Divers also – like his father – possessed a lethal shot which could test goalkeepers from some distance.

For many years the gifted Divers was among the brightest stars in an otherwise poor and under-performing Celtic side, regarded as one of the three wonder boys of “Jackson, Corain and Divers“. His cunning and wily play was often a constant threat to the opposition and had he the good fortune to be part of a more successful Celtic side he would have undoubtedly also have been a Scotland regular.

However Celtic were generally underachieving despite the wealth of talent at their disposal, whilst the team management was pathetic throughout much of his time with the board constantly meddling to the detriment of the first team. It was not a good environment for any aspiring footballers. It was a sad situation for someone of John Diver’s talent.

He ended up giving one great his first chance through an unfortunate twist of fate. John Divers turned up for the match against Hearts on 11th Aug 1962 only to find that he had forgotten his boots. He was dropped on the spot and the great Bobby Murdoch was given his first chance, and the rest as they say is history.

Following the arrival of Jock Stein in 1965, Divers saw his first team opportunities diminish. However, he contributed to the golden years by helping to kick-start the nine consecutive league championships in a row by scoring the first goal of that period, an away goal against Dundee United in 1965.

He ended his days at Celtic playing in what was then a mostly pre-season League Cup run, and made a good name for himself scoring three goals (including a 1-0 winner over Motherwell) that helped push Celtic all the way to final to lift the cup.

It was time to look beyond Celtic, so after nine years as a faithful Celtic servant he was eventually released in 1966 and went on to join Partick Thistle later that season. Jock Stein’s arrival was likely too late for John Diver’s career, and he was to leave the club with less silverware than he deserved for the talent he had.

As a Celt, Divers played 232 games and scored 102 goals a very fine record in a mostly unflattering period of Celtic’s history.

He later retired early from the Senior game in 1969 to attend Strathclyde University, where he went on to study physiotherapy to prepare for a career for after football.

John Divers was to spend later life in teaching, spending most of his career in Our Lady and St. Patrick’s High School in Dumbarton. Some former pupils recall that he only ever wore the same shirt, tie and jumper combination, accompanied by a pair of red leather shoes. For some reason, he wore the tie outside the jumper. A teacher full of humour and a nice man, the sort of teacher you will never forget. Said to also have been a big Leonard Cohen fan too and stuck some of his tapes on in the class sometimes. At St Patrick’s High School in Dumbarton (‘St Pat’s’) he was a teacher alongside another ex-Celt, Peter Goldie.

He passed away in September 2014, with the epitaph on his grave reading: “Much loved, Husband, Dad, Teacher and Celtic Footballer“.

Playing Career

‘I’ve got a vivid memory from 1965, when it was announced he was coming back from Hibs, of Billy McNeill saying, ”Oh that’s fantastic! Wait and see how things change now!”.’
John Divers, 1995 on the return of Jock Stein to the club as manager.

Obituary

Celticfc.net

23 Sep 2014 FORMER Celt, John Divers, who played for the club between 1957 and 1966 sadly passed way today (Tuesday) at the age of 74.

It would seem that John was destined to join Celtic as his father, also John, wore the Hoops between 1932 and 1945, and his great uncle was none other than the legendary Patsy Gallacher.

John was born in Clydebank on March 8, 1940 and joined Celtic on July 7, 1956 before scoring on his debut on November 16, 1957 in a 2-2 home draw with St Mirren

That was to be the first of the goals that would make him a Century Bhoy as he was to go on and reach the magical 100-goal figure in his 232 Celtic games before moving to Partick Thistle in 1966.

It was, however, the 99th of those goals, and his last league goal, that was to unpredictably go down in Celtic history.

It was in the 15th minute of the opening-day league game against Dundee United at Tannadice on August 15, 1965 when he opened the scoring in a 4-0 win and so scored the very first goal of Celtic’s nine-in-a-row.

John remained a true Celtic supporter through the years and the thoughts and prayers of everyone at Celtic Park are with the Divers family at this sad time.

Obituary: John Divers, footballer and teacher

by MARTIN HANNAN

http://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary-john-divers-footballer-and-teacher-1-3550544

Born: 8 March, 1940, in Clydebank. Died: 23 September, 2014, aged 74

Perhaps the most extraordinary fact about the career of John Divers, who played for Celtic for ten seasons from 1956 to 1966, was that he never won a major domestic honour or a full international cap. Apart from two Glasgow Cup medals, Divers did not feature in a trophy-winning team at a time when Celtic suffered a near-decade of under-achievement. Yet he was a hugely popular player who scored more than 100 goals for the Parkhead club in 232 competitive appearances – a strike rate that would see him valued in the millions nowadays.

He was also immortalised in the curious way that football has by having his name featured in a 1960s fans’ song, Celtic, Celtic, That’s The Team For Me.

John Divers – pronounced to rhyme with rivers – was the third man of that name to play for Celtic, the first being no relation who was at the club in 1890s, but the second being Divers’ own father, who was a member of the Celtic team which famously captured the Empire Exhibition Trophy in 1938, winning 1-0 in the final against Everton, who would become champions of England the nest season.

Educated at St Patrick’s High School in Dumbarton, now Our Lady and St Patrick’s, Divers seemed sure to become a professional footballer as his talent was outstanding from an early age. With his father having played for the club and his great-uncle being Celtic legend Patsy Gallacher, it was no wonder that the Parkhead club were watching his development in his teens.

After a spell with amateur side Glentyan Thistle in Renfrewshire, he signed professional forms with Celtic at the age of 16 in July 1956, before immediately going back to Renfrewshire to play for the local Renfrew Juniors.

In those days it was common for young footballers to be “farmed out” to junior sides where they learned from semi-professionals what the game was all about – football’s “rough and tumble” would be a euphemistic way of putting it.

Divers was a tough and skilful inside forward, and though his left foot was his stronger, he was quite adaptable and could play anywhere in midfield or up front – a talent he would maintain throughout his career.

He was quickly called up to first-team action, making his debut at the age of 17 against St Mirren on 16 November, 1957, scoring his first goal for Celtic in a 2-2 draw. Just one month earlier, Celtic had won the Scottish League Cup final by beating Rangers 7-1, still the highest ever winning score in a British major cup final. Sadly for Divers, it was to be Celtic’s last trophy until 1965.

He then returned for a spell to the reserve side who were coached by Jock Stein, but the following season he began to feature regularly in the first XI and the goals flowed regularly. He became an important member of the team which, under manager Jimmy McGrory, was developing slowly but surely into the squad that would become the Lisbon Lions.

Another quite extraordinary thing about Divers was that he was flourishing as a footballer despite suffering from a crippling disease that affected the veins in his legs.

A vascular surgeon told him at the age of 20 that he had the legs of a 70-year-old, but somehow Divers managed to play on after extensive massage treatment and he featured regularly in the Celtic team, and on the score sheet, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

His powerful shooting from distance allied to his skill and hard work made him a real asset to the club at that time.

He almost achieved international recognition, being named in the Scotland squad to play Uruguay in 1962 but not being selected, though he did play three times for the Scottish League, scoring four goals in matches against the Italian and the two Leagues in Ireland.

At the beginning of the 1962-63 season, Celtic played Hearts at Parkhead and Divers was due to be in the team. He forgot his boots, however, and despite a frantic dash home, he was unable to return in time and Charlie Gallagher took his place while a certain Bobby Murdoch made his debut.

Not surprisingly with the talent that was emerging, Divers’ appearances for Celtic began to decrease, though he secured his second Glasgow Cup medal when he scored the second goal in a 2-0 win over Clyde on March 25, 1964.

The team that day was John Fallon, Ian Young, Tommy Gemmell, John Clark, Billy McNeill, Jim Kennedy, Jimmy Johnstone, Bobby Murdoch, Steve Chalmers, John Divers and John Hughes, six of whom would play in the European Cup triumph in Lisbon a little over three years later.

Divers had already felt that his future lay elsewhere and even outside of football, and the return of Jock Stein as manager in 1965 accelerated that process as Stein was insistent that his players be fully fit – something that Divers could not attain due to his continuing vein problems.

By the time the victory over Inter Milan was achieved that made Celtic the first British club to win Europe’s supreme trophy, Divers had already left for pastures new, but not before scoring one very significant goal. It came against Dundee United at the start of season 1965-66 and it turned out to be the first goal of Celtic’s nine-in-a-row championships. He did not play enough games that season, however, to qualify for a league winners’ medal, and missed out on Celtic’s 1965 Scottish Cup and League Cup wins as well.

Though he joined Partick Thistle in 1966, Divers was already looking ahead to the future and had no qualms about retiring at the age of just 28.

He graduated from Strathclyde University as a teacher, and his first appointments were at Braidhurst High in Motherwell and St Bride’s High in East Kilbride before he returned to his alma mater, Our Lady and St Patrick’s in Dumbarton, where he mainly taught economics for 30 years.

He also took charge of various football teams at the school, and maintained that his biggest success in the sport was coaching the under-15s to the league and Scottish Cup, going unbeaten in 28 matches in 1988-89.

He is remembered by his former pupils with great affection. “He was a really nice guy, and always had time for you,” said one yesterday.

That indeed is how his many friends and colleagues from his footballing days also remember him.

He may have been the “nearly man” in that he just missed out on minor honours, but John Divers will always be remembered as a Celtic hero and one of football’s finer and more gentlemanly practitioners.

Celtic have announced that a minute’s applause will be held before tonight’s League Cup match against Hearts at Celtic Park in memory of John Divers and also Hearts supporter Gordon Wilson, who died after becoming ill during the Championship game against Cowdenbeath on Saturday.

John Divers 1940-2014: one of a trio of family members who played 1000+ games for Celtic (From HeraldScotland)

HeraldScotland
John Divers 1940-2014: one of a trio of family members who played 1000+ games for Celtic
John Divers followed his father, John Divers Sr, and his great uncle, Patsy Gallacher, by joining Celtic in 1957, and during his time at the club he scored more than 100 goals. Picture: Arthur Kinloch
John Divers followed his father, John Divers Sr, and his great uncle, Patsy Gallacher, by joining Celtic in 1957, and during his time at the club he scored more than 100 goals. Picture: Arthur Kinloch
26 Sep 2014
The room was appointed with mementos and souvenirs from a past life.

A medal, a cap, some rare photographs, newspaper cuttings, scrap albums filled with the fresh face of a colt, a pair of football boots and some jerseys in boxes.

A few years ago, I sat down with John Divers in a flat belonging to his son, Barry, an Advocate in Glasgow. The flat was the mirror in which the football life of his father was reflected. Tangible reminders of his father’s existence, and proof that, while many others may forget about him, the strong, unbreakable and often flawed bond that exists between father and son will always be there.

John Divers played for Celtic. As did his father, John Divers Sr, and Patsy Gallacher, his father’s uncle. Three men from the same bloodline, who between them played more than 1000 games and scored more than 400 goals for Glasgow Celtic. All were inside forwards and all were members of a long football family DNA strand that ended earlier this week with the passing of John Divers, aged 74.

While John and I talked, his silver blue eyes and his blend of the stoic, serious and circumspect immediately struck me: a man who never lets football distort life’s other priorities. The kind of man who didn’t have too many sins in the cupboard – except, perhaps, occasionally singing too loudly in church.

Divers, one of the ‘Kelly Kids’ who came up through the Celtic ranks in the late 1950s, eased himself into a comfortable leather sofa. The spring was gone from his step, in its place a stilted gait. His right leg was 2¾ inches shorter than the left. The head of the femur, the thighbone, was disappearing further and further inside him. His hip cartilage was all worn away. His career in football was, literally, consuming him.

Divers was at Celtic between 1957 and 1966, and scored more than 100 goals, including the first goal that put Celtic on the way to their nine-in-a-row success. His father joined Celtic from Renfrew Juniors in 1932; he helped to win two league titles in the 1930s and was also the creative mastermind behind Celtic’s victory in the Empire Exhibition Cup of 1938, when they beat Everton 1-0 in the final. The victory made Celtic unofficial British champions.

The legendary Patsy Gallacher, his great uncle, went on to play for Celtic for 15 years, featuring in 569 games in all competitions and scoring 192 goals. “But Patsy was never the hero,” said Divers. “No. It was all very low-key in the family. Patsy was just my granny’s young brother, who played football. Just a young man out working.” Gallacher died in 1953 when Divers was 12. “I don’t remember much about him. We never had conversations about Celtic. But he did with my father.”

Ask Divers a question and he doesn’t really want to answer it. You have to haul it to the surface. Then again, you can detect a lot more through silence than words.

There were limits, he always believed, to the value of football. It was a bigger deal to have raised children – Barry and Jonathan – and to have made himself a new career after sport. He went to university and became a teacher. We returned, a little reluctantly, to football.

“I can’t honestly say I had big conversations with my own father about Celtic,” said Divers. “I never even saw him at my games when I was younger. Occasionally, he saw me when I was senior. He would just say, ‘how did you do today?’ That was it.”

Divers Sr came from Clydebank. His wife came from Ireland. He was a riveter’s hauder-on in John Brown’s shipyards. When the rivets were being hammered in, he stood behind the metal plates, bracing his body while the hammer battered the rivet in. Physically, it was very hard. But his athletic skills meant he would not always be doomed to hard, manual labour.

The shipyards were where he learned his uncompromising toughness that he used to great effect in the 1938 New Year’s Day Old Firm game, which Celtic won 3-0, with Divers scoring twice in front of the largest ever crowd at Celtic Park – 83,500. He left Celtic for Morton in 1945. He died, aged 72, in 1984.

“It would be easy to say ‘yes, I felt I was in the shadow of my father’, but I didn’t. If I had played against him I think he would have beaten me. I used to wonder if anyone shouted to him, ‘you’ll never be as good as your uncle’.”

Years later, while he was playing professionally, he remembers his father saying, “It’s okay just now but wait till they don’t have any need for you. Don’t get carried away, don’t be a big man playing for Celtic.”

The first game Divers Jr played for Celtic was in 1957, against St Mirren, when he was 17. Just weeks after Celtic thrashed Rangers 7-1.

“I was nervous about playing a first-team game, but maybe doubly nervous because I was playing alongside the guys who had just beaten Rangers 7-1,” he said.

He scored in the 21st minute in a game ending 2-2. “I felt quite embarrassed, to be honest. I didn’t know what to do.

“I was playing with all these legendary Celtic figures – Bobby Evans, Bertie Peacock, John McPhail and Neil Mochan – and scoring a goal. I remember the following day standing outside chapel after mass. People looking at me.” Divers would go on to score 102 goals for Celtic in 232 appearances.

Between 1958 and 1965, just before the team’s glory years, he earned a League Cup winners’ medal and a Scottish Cup runners-up medal and also played three matches for the title-winning side of 1965-66. He would happily have swapped goals for medals.

Jock Stein had arrived back at Celtic in 1965 and the first game Celtic won was 4-0 against Dundee United, which started the consecutive campaign. “It would have been terrific to have been part of the team that won nine-in-a-row,” he laments. “But I scored the first goal that kicked off that season against Dundee United. I’m clutching at straws now.”

When Divers was 19 he nearly had to give up the game after he was diagnosed with an occlusion (narrowing) of an artery in both legs, but particularly in the left.

“I remember the surgeon brought me along to his office and put up the X-rays. I can still remember him saying to me: ‘What age are you? 19? You may be 19 but your legs are 70. I have never ever seen anything like this in one as young. I hope you have another career’.

“Dr John Fitzsimmons, the Celtic club doctor, said to me at his surgery, ‘That’s dynamite. No-one at Celtic Park is to see that [the medical report]’. It was like going about with heavy divers boots on my legs. ‘Ach, Divers is too slow’, people would say. That was the reason. But, like my father said before me, ‘far, far greater people have suffered more than I have’.”

In May 1966, he left Celtic under little fanfare for Partick Thistle. “Quite honestly, my career had ended. The last two years at Celtic Park, I played a total of 20 games. I played 12 games in the season before Big Jock [Stein] came. I was struggling for fitness.”

He talked of the end of his career with a sense of relief. Even decades later, it felt like a weight had been lifted. “You look at all the Celtic players who have achieved great things. They did it. I have done none of that. Therefore you feel a wee bit, in the football world, that you didn’t achieve. I suppose I was part of it, I know people that did it and I was around.”

I asked him about highlights. “The day I got engaged,” he said, with barely a pause. He got engaged to Elizabeth Kennedy and married her on June 26, 1963 at St Peter’s Church, in Hamilton.

It was the same day as Billy McNeill married his wife, Liz. In those days, Robert Kelly, the Celtic chairman, did not allow players to get married during the season. John Hughes sang This Is My Special Day at Divers’ wedding.

He remained powerful friends with McNeill, Mike Jackson, Hughes and Paddy Crerand. The wealth in his life from these friendships was originally forged on grass pitches.

He played football for 12 years, nine with Celtic, before a career in education beckoned and he went to Strathclyde University. He’d been a teacher for more than 30 years, much of that time at Our Lady and St Patrick’s High in Dumbarton, formerly St Patrick’s High and Notre Dame High, where he was principal teacher of guidance and economics – “And nobody ever wants to talk about that time.” He was also a member of the Bronte Society, along with Elizabeth, and a regular visitor to Yorkshire. Life was sweet and the crises were small.

When John Divers talked it was with words that hinted of autumn. Nothing boastful, just old, quiet memories of games and the thrill of the grass. That’s all football is, really.

John Divers played for Celtic and not everyone remembers. But, sometimes, the best memories are always whispered.