If we trawl through the long and celebrated history of Celtic it is filled with stories of great victories, titles and cups galore, European Cup glory, a magnificent stadium, the world wide fan base, the Irish and Scottish diaspora, the refusal to take down the tricolour in the 1950’s, the refusal to play in Hungary in the 1960’s, 9 in a row in the 1970’s, the Hampden riot in the 1980’s, Fergus McCann in the 1990’s, Martin O’Neill in the noughties, and 9 in a row once again in the 21st century, it’s a wonderful history since 1888 until 2021 and will only be added to in the future decades.
But while we may marvel at the achievements of our great club over the last 133 years, it’s not the trophies, medals, titles, cups which are the tangible evidence of greatness over the period that our focus will always be on, although it’s always great to see the rewards of our labour, but what makes us dream the dream or make the trip for the red eye flight or the early morning ferry is the players who pull on the green and white hoops, the ordinary working class guys who lived down the street back in the day to the mega bucks stars of the modern era.
The players who live the dream which we can only imagine, the bhoys who really are bhoys, pulling on that jersey in the changing rooms before a game, walking down through the tunnel and on to the pitch as the 60,000 rise to welcome them, the waves to the crowd, the Huddle, the kick off, the goal celebrations with the crowd, a magical moment, and the victory to the adulation of the terraces, for the players, who generally are working class kids from the housing estates throughout Europe, they achieve a greatness in the beautiful game which we don’t begrudge, they just live the dream that we all would aspire to.
They are the players to whom we have cheered and adulated throughout the decades, they brought our dreams to fruition, the brilliant save, decisive tackle or last minute goal, they have brought us to places we never dreamed off, both literally and metaphorically, the heights of emotion and the depths of despair, but in moments of pathos to exquisite delight they brought us a journey which made our lives ultimately fulfilling and thrilling at times as they exhibited skill supreme with gay abandon, spectacular match winning conviction to deliver our dreams.
The players in those green and white hoops have made life a little bit easier when times were tough and beyond expression in the good times, as Jock Stein observed, ‘the Celtic jersey doesn’t shrink to fit inferior players’, but even more poignant during the depression days of the hungry 1930’s was the defiant attitude of ‘when we had nothing, we had Celtic’!
And Celtic was and is the players, the stadium provided the infrastructure and the fans the backdrop, albeit in Celtic’s case the support was left, right and centre, but it was the players in every generation who provided us with those moments we will never forget, those in the past we have read about and created the history, the players in our lifetimes who delivered on so many occasions, and the present day modern player who continue the tradition, they carry the mantle of what it means to be a Celtic player………..
‘ …….and they gave us James McGrory and Paul McStay,
they gave us Johnstone, Tully, Murdoch, Auld and Hay,
and most of the football greats have passed through Parkhead’s gates,
for to play football the Glasgow Celtic way…….’!
Willie Maley, James Kelly, Jimmy Quinn, Sandy McMahon, Sunny Jim Young, Tommy McInally, Patsy Gallacher, Johnny Thompson, Jimmy McGrory, Malky McDonald, Jimmy Delaney, Willie Fernie, Sean Fallon, Neilly Mochan, Jock Stein, Bobby Evans, Bertie Peacock, Bobby Collins, Paddy Crerand, wee Bertie, Cesar, Jinky, Murdoch, Gemmell, Chalmers, big Yogi, George Connelly, Harry Hood, Dixie Deans, Hay, McGrain, King Kenny, Macari, Johnny Doyle, Champagne Charlie, McStay, big Packie, Aiken, Provan, McAvennie, Jackie Djiekanowski, Di Canio, Cadete, Van Hoojijdonk, Henrik, big bad John, Moravcik, Lenny, Sutton, both Holy goalie’s, McGeady, Van Dijk, Wanyama, the Derry Pele, Tierney, Broony, Dembele and Edouard!
Amazingly in the first 100 years only 12 non Scottish players appeared in a Celtic jersey, in fact in the first 50 years only Patsy Gallacher! Then Cook (Ireland) and Kennaway ( Canada) in the 1930’s, Milne (US), Peacock, Fallon Tully, Gallagher in 1950’s, Latchford and Packie in the 1980’s, all the rest were Scottish, incredible when you think how international a squad we have now. But they all wore the Hoops with pride and none more so than the player I’m going to focus on, the inimitable Charles Patrick Tully, or as he was known throughout Scotland and Ireland and even on the steps of the Vatican, Charlie Tully.
Tully was born in Belfast in 1924, in McDonnell St in the Lower Falls, he was born into a divided city a few years after partition and the Belfast pogroms when loyalist mobs led an onslaught on nationalist areas, hundreds killed and a country divided, a sectarian statelet created after the war of independence and civil war, for the whole of Charlie’s short life it would be a one party unionist state, nationalism was at a low ebb but as in Glasgow after the General Strike and depression days, so in Belfast, ‘when we had nothing we had Celtic!
In the 1890’s Belfast Celtic was formed, taking the name and hooped jerseys from their more famous Glasgow counterparts, like the original they were more than a football club, as Tommy Burns would say in later times, ‘they represented a community and a cause’. Belfast Celtic would soon become the dominant team in the 6 counties, and as in Glasgow they would have a rivalry which embraced the religious divide with Linfield.
Their story would be the story of Irish football for the next 50 years until the day in 1948 when during a riot the Linfield fans invaded the pitch at Windsor and attacked the Celtic players, manhandled Jimmy Jones, the Celtic centre forward, over the wire onto the terraces where they again attacked him and broke his leg, Celtic never played in Irish football again. This was the world that Charlie Tully grew up in and when he was 20 he signed for Belfast Celtic, their stadium, Celtic Park, was down the Donegall Road, just off the Falls Road but only a mile from Windsor Park as the crow flies, yet a different world.
The Linfield support were 100% loyalist from the Shankill and Sandy Row, the Belfast Celtic support from the Falls Road and nationalist, the clubs differed as in Glasgow, Linfield didn’t sign Catholics as a rule, whereas if you were good enough you played for Celtic. Their rivalry transcended the ages but Belfast Celtic were the dominant club and by the time they left football they had accumulated 20 titles and cups including 11 titles in the last 20 years, in the last decade their star player was a guy who would take Glasgow by storm in the 1950’s, one Charlie Tully.
He moved to Glasgow in 1948 just before that horrendous game against Linfield, Celtic had been going through the horrors for many years, 2 titles in the previous 12 years when Tully arrived and only one title in his 11 years at the club, in fact only 3 titles in 40 years from 1926 until Jock Stein arrived in the mid 1960’s, and some Celtic fans are complaining after 15 titles in 20 years in the modern era.
Charlie Tully was an instant hit at Parkhead where the fans took to him like they did in Belfast, in his first ‘Old Firm game Tully mesmerised a Rangers defence, if anything would endear a new player to the Celtic fans it was a display like that, he danced and jinked his way around a poor Rangers full back just like Jinky would do years later. Tully became a legend at Celtic throughout the 1950’s, famously in a match at Falkirk he scored from a corner, the ref disallowed it so Tully took it again and repeated the feat, an in swinging corner which many try but few achieve and he did it twice, also in a game for the ‘norn irn’ against England he repeated the unique trick, amazing stuff.
Tully missed out on the Coronation Cup victory in 1953, the year I was born, but was part of the team to win the double in 1954 with big Jock as captain. The 1950’s were lean years on the trophy front for Celtic, as were the 1930’s and 1940’s and indeed the 1960’s until Jock came back as Manager.
Still Tully was a star amidst relative mediocrity, his greatest day and possibly Celtic’s after Lisbon was the 1957 League Cup final, in front of 82,000 fans, Celtic annihilated their greatest rivals 7-1 which is still a record score for any major cup final. Tully provided the cross for the first goal by Sammy Wilson, Mochan made it 2-0 at half time, but in the second half Celtic ran riot, Mochan added another, a hat trick from McPhail and the final goal from Willie Fernie, as the words of the song go, ‘Oh Hampden in the Sun, Celtic 7 Rangers 1’, for Tully it was his swan song, he mightn’t have lit up the final much like Georgie Best at Wembley in 1968, but they played their part in great victories and like Georgie it would be his last trophy for his club, two great Belfast footballers, magicians with a ball, Georgie might have been the first superstar in England but Charlie Tully might have pre-empted him in Glasgow.
You know the more you read about Tully you can make comparisons with Georgie, Patsy Gallacher, Aiden McGeady, Paddy McCourt, all Irish, temperamental, geniuses with a ball, prone to a lack lustre approach at times but when on song, nothing like them.
The stories about Tully off the field were as numerous as his brilliant displays on it, he once said to Bertie Peacock, ‘you’re the Irish coffee but I’m the cream’, bit like Cloughie said to Martin O’Neill, ‘you were a hod carrier, John Robertson was an artisan’, or when Tully would be criticised for lack of effort at training, ‘you don’t learn to play snooker by walking around the table’, obviously Tully would have been a Hurricane Higgins fan, another great Belfast sportsman.
Again when once asked would he have got into Stein’s Lisbon team, ‘oh yes, I could have taken the corners’! But the best story of all which has gone into folklore was when Celtic visited the Vatican during a tour of Italy. Tully would even tell the story himself, when the players were meeting the Pope some pilgrim in the square looked up and said, ‘who’s that standing beside Charlie Tully’?
Not unlike the story told about that other great Belfast football genius, Georgie Best, after winning £50,000 at the casino, staying in the Grosvenor in London, Miss World lying naked on his bed as the wee porter arrives with the dearest Dom Perignon, ‘where did it all go wrong Mr Best’! Three Belfast geniuses, Best, Higgins and Tully, they lit up any arena they appeared in, they had a flair for the spectacular, and that little bit of recklessness that’s in the make up of every genius, and sadly they all passed relatively young.
On a personal level I grew up in the 1960’s in one of the new estates in West Belfast built to overcome the chronic overcrowding and lack of housing in the Lower Falls, we were too young to remember Tully but we used to walk down the Donegall Road to Windsor for international games when Georgie Best was in his prime although we wouldn’t dare go near it when Linfield were at home.
We passed by the old Celtic Park, the red brick stone front, the red corrugated iron fences, it was an iconic stadium, the home of Belfast Celtic. We played football in the Down and Connor league, one of my childhood friends and fellow player was Brendan Tully, nephew of the great Charlie. We played together until the start of the conflict when football became irrelevant for many of us, my future would include years in Long Kesh where as Brendan’s was a career in Irish football, his uncle Charlie by this time was Manager at Bangor and he brought Brendan down for trials and that gave him his break into semi professional football.
Of course with the Tully name and connections there was suggestions that Celtic were interested but it never materialised although Brendan would have a stellar career in Irish league football with Bangor, Portadown and Donegal Celtic and a successful spell in the League of Ireland with Drogheda where they reached the cup final in 1976.
Ex Belfast Celtic great Jimmy McAlinden was the Manager and brought a group of Irish league players down ‘south’ when it was dangerous for nationalists to play at Windsor, the Oval, Seaview etc. Back in Belfast Brendan finished his career with Donegal Celtic who had taken on the mantle of a club wearing the hoops and the name ‘Celtic’, but old habits die hard, playing Linfield in the cup at Windsor, the Linfield crowd attacked the Celtic fans and the RUC fired rubber bullets, only at the Celtic fans on the kop, also a Linfield fan climbed on to the pitch and attacked Brendan, shades of 1948 all over again.
In 2021 a junior club had taken on the name of ‘Belfast Celtic’ again and are working their way through the divisions and hoping to create the great name again in Irish football in the Premier League, sadly the famous old stadium is no more and now a shopping centre, whether a club wearing the Hoops and called Celtic are any more acceptable in the 21st century remains to be seen?
As 15 year olds we used to slag Brendan about playing for Bangor, they were always a small club, we would play on a Saturday morning and then he would head for Bangor in the afternoon, it opened up a career in football for him, the only one of us to do so. I met ‘Uncle’ Charlie once when Bangor played Distillery and I went to the game with Brendan and he brought me into the dressing room afterwards and we chatted to the great man.
Sadly, only a few years later in 1971 Charlie died from a massive heart attack in his sleep, he was only 47, the darling of Paradise in the 1950’s, ‘cheeky’ Charlie was on his way to his own paradise. His funeral from his home in St James’s, just off the Falls and close to the old Celtic Park, was attended by thousands and the whole Celtic team who won the European Cup in Lisbon attended and walked behind the cortege as it moved along the Falls to Milltown, Jock Stein and Billy McNeill helped carry the coffin, British soldiers who were by then patrolling the street saluted as the cortege passed, maybe Royal Scots, possibly some were Celtic supporters from Glasgow?
A great player, a character, a genius with a ball, Charlie Tully was a true Celtic legend!
Paddy McMenamin was born in Belfast with Donegal and Tyrone parents. He spent the 70’s in Long Kesh. He has been going to Paradise since the Benfica game in Nov. 1969. He lived in Donegal for 30 years but now lives in Galway. He returned to University at 50 and became a secondary school teacher of history and English.
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