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The Independent: Obituary: Ronnie Simpson
Independent, The (London, England)
April 22, 2004
Author: Phil Gordon
WHILE FOOTBALL embraced the Swinging Sixties, the Celtic goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson was the decade's antithesis.
In contrast to the Beatles hairstyle of George Best, Simpson sported a ruthless short hairstyle slicked back with Brylcreem. At the peak of his achievement, in 1967, Simpson seemed even older than he actually was. When, that year, he became the first British goalkeeper to lay hands on the coveted European Cup, he was almost 37, and his seniority to a relatively youthful Celtic side saw him nicknamed "Faither".
Scotland's most venerable football hero had once been its most precocious: although he did not earn his first cap until he was 36, he made his senior debut for Queen's Park before his 15th birthday. In between, he played for Newcastle United in their halcyon era in the 1950s, winning the FA Cup twice.
Yet, it was that moment on 25 May 1967, underneath a baking Lisbon sky, that defined a playing career that lasted 25 years. Celtic's 2-1 defeat of Inter Milan made them the first side outside Spain, Italy or Portugal to win the European Cup and earned them the nickname the "Lisbon Lions".
Simpson barely had time to absorb the fact before he found the pitch at the Estadio Nacional swarming with Celtic supporters who were looking for a souvenir of the occasion – Simpson's false teeth, kept in his goalkeeper's cap, were a perfect prize. "I kept them there in case I had to meet someone important after the game," recalled Simpson in his autobiography Sure It's a Grand Old Team to Play For (1967). His team-mate Bobby Lennox had asked if he could keep his dentures in the cap too and, in the mayhem that followed the final in Lisbon, Simpson saw Lennox running towards him and put out his arms, expecting an embrace – only for Lennox to rush past him into the goalnet to retrieve the teeth and escape up the tunnel before fans engulfed the pair.
"Ronnie had his teeth knocked down his throat one time at Newcastle," recalled his Celtic team-mate Jim Craig. "His air passages were blocked and he swore he would never wear them again."
It was almost pre-ordained that Simpson would be a footballer. He was born in Glasgow in 1930, just as his father, James, was establishing himself as the captain of Rangers and Scotland, for whom he won 14 caps. The family home overlooked Hampden Park, the national stadium also used by Queen's Park, who gave Ronnie Simpson an earlier than expected baptism.
He was at school one Friday in June 1945 when he was summoned to the headmaster's office. Instead of the expected row, Simpson met the chairman of Queen's Park who had come to ask permission to play the youngster the following day in a Summer Cup match with Clyde, because the regular keeper, Bobby Brown, could not be released from the Navy in time. Simpson made his debut aged 14 years and 243 days in a 5-2 victory watched by 25,000 people.
Simpson's early promise at the only senior club in Britain to remain strictly amateur saw him chosen to join a Great Britain side for the 1948 Olympics in London that was under the care of Manchester United's Sir Matt Busby. Busby was impressed enough to tell Simpson to ring him if he wanted to turn professional.
However, the next colours that Simpson would wear would be khaki. The Army called him up for his National Service and he joined Third Lanark in 1950 before Newcastle United took him to St James' Park in 1951.
It was the golden era on Tyneside. Newcastle won the FA Cup three times in five years after Simpson's arrival. He was a reserve for the first triumph, but played in the victories over Arsenal in 1952 and Manchester City in 1955. In 1960, Simpson returned to Scotland when Hibernian signed him and the following season he helped the Easter Road side reach the semi-finals of the Fairs Cup (now Uefa Cup), beating Barcelona en route, before losing to AS Roma.
When Jock Stein took over as manager of Hibernian in 1964 he promptly sold Simpson to Celtic. Just five months later, when Stein arrived in the east end of Glasgow too, Simpson feared his playing days were over. Instead, he entered their most glorious chapter.
Just five weeks before the triumph in Lisbon, Simpson made his debut for Scotland at the age of 36 in the 3-2 victory over England at Wembley, the first defeat suffered by Sir Alf Ramsay's world champions. "If Stein had not worked so hard to keep me going, I would have been out of the game much sooner," recalled Simpson. Under Stein, Celtic won nine successive Scottish League titles between 1966 and 1974. Simpson collected four championship medals and five caps for Scotland, as well as being voted Scotland's Footballer of the Year in 1967 at the ripe age of 36. A shoulder injury brought about his retirement in 1970 and he missed Celtic's other European Cup final against Feyenoord.
Simpson would have been ideal for the modern era which demands that goalkeepers should be adept with their feet too. "Ronnie was as much a footballer as he was a goalkeeper," explained Billy McNeill, the Celtic captain in 1967. "Anything that went behind the defenders, Ronnie would come out and deal with it. In training, he always wanted to play as a striker."
When Simpson stopped playing, he briefly managed Hamilton Academical and then left football to run businesses in Edinburgh that included a sports shop and a pub, as well as being a perennial representative on the Pools Panel, deliberating on postponed matches. He helped out several clubs as a goalkeeping coach and, latterly, was a matchday host at Celtic.
On yesterday's House of Commons order paper, writes Tam Dalyell, there stands in the name of 21 of my parliamentary colleagues the following motion:
That this House is deeply saddened by the untimely death of Ronnie Simpson, widely recognised as one of Scotland's foremost goalkeepers; and notes that he will be long remembered for his services to Scotland and the famous Lisbon Lions, the first team to win the European Cup.
In 42 years, I have only on one occasion seen a comparable motion on the Commons order paper – when Simpson's friend and team-mate Jackie Milburn died. For my generation Simpson did something else. Like Dino Zoff, the 40-plus-year-old goalkeeper of Italy, he provided proof that a man of four decades, who took care of himself, could continue to reach sporting pinnacles.
Ronald Simpson, footballer: born Glasgow 11 October 1930; played for Queen's Park 1945-48, Third Lanark 1950-51, for Newcastle United 1951- 60, Hibernian 1960-64, Celtic 1964-70; married (one son, one daughter); died Edinburgh 20 April 2004.
Ronnie Simpson
Brian Glanville,
- The Guardian, Thursday 22 April 2004 02.39 BST
Goalkeeper who made Celtic a formidable team in the 1960s
Ronnie Simpson, who has died of a heart attack aged 73, was something of a phenomenon among goalkeepers: a schoolboy wonder who made his first-class debut for Scottish amateurs Queens Park at the age of 14; a resilient veteran still good enough to win major club and international honours in his late 30s, including the European Cup with Celtic in 1967.
His father, Jim Simpson, a famous centre-half for Rangers, was offered the job of trainer at the club. But it was contingent on the understanding that the teenage Ronnie, already showing high promise, would come to Ibrox. Jim Simpson sturdily responded that his son must do as he pleased, and he did not get the job.
So the 14-year-old Ronnie made his debut for Queens Park in a summer cup match against Clyde after playing for his school, King's Park secondary, in the morning. "I suppose it was the speed of the thing that prevented me being nervous," he said.
After national service with the Royal Armoured Corps at Catterick, he was a member of the British squad in the 1948 Olympic tournament in London.
His first professional club was the now, alas, defunct Third Lanark, but he was there for only six months when he was signed by Newcastle United in February 1951. The incumbent, Jack Fairbrother, looked unassailable, but in September broke his collar-bone, and Ronnie took his place, helping Newcastle to win the FA Cup Final of 1952, against Arsenal, and 1955, against Manchester City.
The Scottish international centre-half, Frank Brennan, became, he said, a sort of second father to him. "Though experience can teach you a lot," Ronnie once said, "the great thing is to keep one's mental reactions sharp all the time." He did plenty of shouting, he said, and he expected other players to do the same. "This keeps everyone on their toes."
In 1960, he returned to Scotland to play 179 games for Hibernian of Edinburgh, but in the 1963-64 season he was abruptly dropped and never played for the first team again. Disenchanted, he, by his own admission, "lost interest in football", but his career then took a remarkable turn. It is generally supposed that Jock Stein, doyen of all Celtic managers, took him back to Glasgow. In fact it seems that Stein, at the time managing Hibs, encouraged Ronnie to join Celtic when their then chief scout, Sean Fallon, came in for him.
Ronnie himself expected merely to be goalkeeping coach and standby keeper. Instead, he found himself playing with renewed success for the top team, Stein having joined the club as manager and promoting him. As Stein said: "I don't think Ron is too old at 35, especially the way he is playing. After all, Russia's Yashin is rated best in the world, and he's touching 40."
With Simpson in goal, Celtic became an irresistible power, not only in Scotland but in Europe, with a team made up largely of Glaswegians. Willie Woodburn, who succeeded Jim Simpson as Rangers and Scotland centre-half, would say, "Ronnie's superb skill and courage laid the foundation for what must be the most successful year in Celtic's long history."
That year, 1967, was Simpson's annus mirabilis. He won the first of his five caps, aged 36, for Scotland, in his team's unexpected victory over England at Wembley, and in May he helped Celtic beat Internazionale of Milan in the European Cup Final in Lisbon, 2-1. Overall, he said: "I saw less of the ball in that game than probably any other I played in."
But a horrific experience awaited him that autumn in Buenos Aires, where Celtic played the second leg of the Intercontinental Final against Racing Club. Just before the game began, he was struck on the head by a missile fired by a catapult from the crowd, knocked out and forced to leave the field. For fear of the riot that might follow, Celtic played the game and lost 1-0. In a shockingly violent play-off in Montevideo, Stein did not include Simpson, reckoning that even were he fit again, he would be in no psychological condition to play.
In October 1971, Ronnie became the manager of Hamilton Academicals in the Scottish Second Division. Later, he opened a sports shop in Edinburgh, and ran a pub and a post office. In 1970, he was elected as Progressive councillor in Edinburgh, and as late as 1990 he worked as goalkeeping coach with St Johnstone and Partick Thistle.
· Ronnie Simpson, footballer, born October 11 1930; died April 20 2004