Читать книгу Paddy Crerand: Never Turn the Other Cheek - Paddy Crerand - Страница 8

THREE

End of a Dream

My personal life changed in 1961, when I started going out seriously with Noreen Ferry, my only girlfriend. I first saw her waiting outside St John’s church before the 12 o’clock mass one Sunday in 1956. That was always busy because it was where all the best looking girls went. She was fifteen and I was sixteen and I thought straightaway that I was going to marry her. I said to her, ‘I’m going to come back and get you when I’m a famous footballer.’ Daft isn’t it?

I carried on going to church, though, and still do, although not as often as I should. I was always taught that everyone is your brother and sister and you look after one another. It seemed to me that Jesus Christ was the first ever communist.

I didn’t see Noreen again for three years, then I spotted her at the Ancient Order of Hibernian dance hall on Errol Street in 1959. The boys stood on one side of the hall and the girls on the other. You had to be brave to cross the dance floor and ask a girl to dance. You had to be quick off your mark, too, because the best girls would go quickly.

Noreen used to say no to a lot of lads and I rescued her from one called Tommy Moy. He was the best looking boy in the Gorbals and Noreen had been on a date with him. I could see that he was pestering her to dance. But I could also see that she wasn’t getting up to dance with him. To refuse to get up and dance with a boy was a big insult. Everyone noticed it because he was the only boy who had gone over to ask someone to dance. I was sitting near the stage and looking at Noreen. If I’d gone over there would have been a fight, so I beckoned Noreen over. She later said that she would have never got up to any lad like that, but she wanted to escape from Tommy. And she’ll be the first to admit that she thought she was god’s gift, because she was the best-looking girl in the Gorbals. She had won beauty prizes.

Noreen walked over and I started talking to her. Tommy Moy turned round to Noreen and said, ‘Oh, you’re into footballers are you?’ Tommy followed Noreen down the street after the evening had finished and I was walking behind. He was bigger than me and had a very high opinion of himself, which in some ways was justified because every girl in the Gorbals fancied him. I told him where to go and to leave Noreen alone. At first he looked me in the eye and I don’t think he could believe what I was telling him. I looked straight back at him. I was deadly serious and he backed down and walked off.

We went out a few times and I considered Noreen to be my girlfriend, but I’m not sure that she thought the same about me – as I soon realized. A new dance hall opened in town and Noreen won a competition for being the most beautiful girl in there. She won £50 – a fortune in those days – and her picture was printed in the newspaper the following day. This lad had asked her to dance that night – it turned out to be Bobby Carroll. I saw him in training the next morning and he said, ‘I saw that girl you said you were going out with last night at the new dance hall.’

Noreen had told me that she was washing her hair and I believed her so I told him he must be mistaken. Then he showed me the Daily Record, which had a picture of Noreen in it. I felt pretty stupid. I was supposed to be going to the cinema with her later that day, so, when we met up, I asked her if she had stayed in and washed her hair the night before. She told me that she had. She must have thought that I was daft.

We walked towards the cinema, the Coliseum on Ellington Street, and there was a big queue. The lads at the front saw me and ushered me straight in, which was a bit embarrassing because a lot of my friends were there. I asked her again what she had done the night before and she still stuck to her story. I used to give her one shilling to buy some chocolates before we went in, but on this occasion I didn’t. That set her mind wondering. I then bought one cinema ticket. We were on a platform overlooking the queue and people were looking up at us – it wasn’t just that I played for Celtic, but Noreen’s picture had been in the newspaper. I gave her the ticket and announced, ‘I hope you enjoy the film, because I am going.’ She was flustered so I told her that I knew she hadn’t stayed in and washed her hair the night before. She panicked. She was mortified at all her friends seeing her left alone and she said to me, ‘If you buy another ticket I’ll tell you the truth.’ I had her good and proper.

Noreen told me, ‘I’m not your girlfriend.’ She had been seeing other lads, too, so I gave her an ultimatum, saying, ‘You’re either my girlfriend or you’re not.’ She chose me. She later told me that her brothers had told her never to say no to any boy from the Gorbals.

When Noreen told her brothers that she was dating me, they said, ‘What does he see in you?’ But she said that they were happy because I was Catholic and especially because I played for Celtic. Not that they were against Protestants and Noreen had been out with them before. Noreen’s mother needed more convincing. She remembered me from when I played for Scotland against Ireland in Dublin in my second international game. It was televised and she had watched it with Noreen’s dad. It was a tough game and I was accused of being dirty. When she found out that Noreen was going out with me, she wasn’t impressed and told her that I was a hooligan.

I may have been fiery on the football pitch but I was a saint compared to many of the people I’d grown up with. Early in my Celtic career I visited Barlinie jail in Glasgow with Jim Baxter. We were asked to go there by one of the prison officials and we were held up as role models, examples of how you could be a success even if you came from a poor area. I couldn’t believe how many of the people I knew in there. We had a football quiz and as I looked at those who stood up to ask questions and the others sitting around them, I realized that I knew most of them by their first names.

They had either been at school with me or lived in the streets nearby in the Gorbals. The only difference between them and me, I decided, was that they hadn’t been so lucky to have a mother like mine. I didn’t have a father but my mother was a very strong person. She’d give us a belt if we were naughty and told us to face life’s problems straight on. You had to look after yourself because nobody else would. It made you a strong character, but too many strong characters went the wrong way. Until I was nine years old I was in bed every night at 6.30 pm. And until I was seventeen I was never allowed out after 9.30 pm. This kind of discipline was the only way to keep a boy from getting into the kind of mischief that, for so many, eventually turned to crime.

Richer people could buy their way out of problems, but poorer people couldn’t. Most of the lads were in Bar-L for robbing. They robbed because they didn’t have anything. During our visit the idea was for the prisoners to ask Jimmy and me questions, which some of them did. But so many of them hid away because they were embarrassed and didn’t want me to see them in there.

Back on the pitch, the biggest fixtures of the season were of course the Old Firm games. There was segregation at these games long before it became the norm in England. At Celtic Park, the fans approached and left the stadium down different roads to keep them apart. There were always incidents, with people fighting at the ground and all over the city. It wasn’t nice – decent working class people beating each other up. Being a socialist, it always saddened me.

We were told to play to the whistle before every game and never to get involved in any incident with any other player. This was underlined before Rangers games. I had a great hatred of Rangers as a club – that came with growing up in the Gorbals – but I never agreed with the fighting. Later, I always had the needle with Rangers as a football club because I was never allowed to play for their team. I would never have gone there, but it would have been nice to say no. And yet I got to know a lot of the Rangers players when I played for Scotland and they were smashing lads. Bobby Shearer looked after me and made me feel welcome when I first got in the Scotland team, yet he was the Rangers player that most Celtic fans hated because he used to kick other players. I was a young lad when I first played for Scotland, but Bobby was like a father figure and was someone I could go to if I had a problem. When I was an older player, I treated the younger lads like Bobby had treated me.

We used to get a bonus of £25 for beating Rangers, almost three times our weekly wage. Invariably, we didn’t beat them because they were a far better side with players like Jimmy Baxter, Jimmy Millar, Ralph Brand, Bobby Shearer, Eric Caldow, Harold Davis, and Alec Scott. The best players in Scotland were not confined to Ibrox though. Pat Quinn of Motherwell was probably the toughest opponent I played against because I couldn’t get near him. He was an inside-forward, a great passer of the ball with the imagination to beat players in different ways. Several English teams were looking at him.

One of my lowest moments for Celtic was when I missed a penalty in an Old Firm game at Parkhead, which we lost 1–0. Jim Baxter started messing about with the ball on the penalty spot to try and distract me. He succeeded. I had to get back to the Gorbals after the game and it was difficult not to be noticed. I took a tram car and then a bus. I just kept my head down and tried to be inconspicuous, but I was wearing a shirt and tie which made me stand out. I saw my pals on the corner that night and they were not happy. As I approached them, someone shouted: ‘Professional footballer and you can’t score from 12 yards out.’ For once, I didn’t reply.

Missing that penalty hit me hard, so much so that I asked to be relieved of the job of penalty taker at Celtic. The decision drew an interested reaction from Matt Busby. Matt had missed a penalty playing for Scotland against England so he knew how I felt. He wrote a consolatory piece in the Scottish Daily Express about my predicament. He mentioned United’s great penalty takers like Charlie Mitten and Bobby Charlton, saying that they had also missed penalties and asked to have been relieved of their position. ‘While footballers remain human,’ Busby wrote, ‘even the greatest marksmen will miss a penalty. And the penalty for that should certainly be something less than shooting the shooter.’

The way Celtic was run remained a shambles. The disorganization ran from top to bottom and top players continued to leave. There was even more lack of direction at the club, with Bob Kelly, ever the autocrat, picking the team, no question. It was a standing joke which Alex Ferguson and I still talk about now, marvelling at how such a situation was allowed to be. We often speak about life in early 60s Glasgow and the characters from that time. The crisis at the club was a heartbreaker for me because I was a Celtic fan, yet my illusions were being shattered when I saw the reality of the way the club was being run. The community I had been brought up in were mad about Celtic. The club was supposed to light people’s lives.

Rangers were winning everything and, seeing the chaos at Parkhead, I knew why. I didn’t have the heart to tell people on the streets what a mess the club was in. I’d tell them that we were optimistic about the future and that results would change, but I knew they wouldn’t. It was that bad. Had you told me Celtic would be European champions in 1967 I would have laughed out loud.

The problem wasn’t the lack of talent, but the bizarre team selections and naïve technical decisions and I blamed Bob Kelly. For example, our team coach edged towards the ground at Airdrie for one game when Kelly spotted Willie Goldie, a former Celtic reserve goalkeeper, walking along to the ground as a fan wearing a green and white scarf. Kelly stopped the coach and invited him to play. The players couldn’t believe it, but anyone who stood up to Kelly didn’t have a future at Celtic.

On one hand I admired Kelly’s idea of bringing youth through, but he made major errors. Bertie Auld was a great footballer, a hard inside-forward and a typical Glaswegian. If he looked in the mirror he’d try and start a fight with his reflection. He wasn’t afraid of answering back and that was to be his downfall at Celtic. In one game against Rangers in 1960, Bertie ruffled the hair of the Rangers’ player Harold Davis after he had scored an own goal at Parkhead in a Glasgow cup tie. Davis was furious and ran the length of the park to catch up with him. Bertie was just having a laugh and maybe he shouldn’t have done it. Bertie would often fly off the handle at the smallest thing – if he couldn’t find one of his boots in the dressing room he would start raging – and Bob Kelly didn’t like his style. He was transferred at the end of the season. Bertie eventually returned to Celtic and was a key player in the side that won the European Cup in 1967, but in 1960 those in power at Parkhead wanted rid of him.

Jimmy McGrory was a soft manager who used to let anything go. Maybe he should have been stronger with Bertie and told him to be quiet once in a while, but Jimmy didn’t do discipline. A balance was needed because players should be allowed to have an opinion otherwise resentments fester, but under Bob Kelly, anybody with an opinion that didn’t tally with his was seen as a dissenting voice.

Another example of Kelly’s amateurism was how he dealt with Mick Jackson, who wasn’t a full-time professional when he should have been. He had a heavy shift as a printer and one day finished work at 3.00 pm so that he could make a 4.30 pm kick-off against Rangers in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup at Hampden Park. Things like that would never have happened at Rangers.

Despite the problems, I loved playing for Celtic. Players like John Colrain and Mick Jackson were real characters. One of my highlights for the club was a friendly game in 1962 against Real Madrid. Over 73,000 filled Celtic Park to see us play a side that included Ferenc Puskas, Paco Gento, and Alfredo Di Stefano. The speed of their passing was incredible, so simple and yet so devastating, and they were 2–0 up after half an hour, three after an hour. We kept battling and pulled a goal back to make it 3–1. We felt that we had been outclassed, but done ourselves justice and even 3–1 was a magnificent result. The crowd agreed. ‘We want Celtic, We want Celtic,’ they roared until we left the dressing room and returned for an unlikely lap of honour. Most of us only had our socks on, but the fans were going wild. Puskas said that he had never seen anything like it.

By 1962 I was the highest paid Celtic player on £22 a week. I was seen as Bob Kelly’s boy and indeed he loved me for a short period of time, probably because I was a good player. I wasn’t the quickest runner and I wasn’t good in the air, but then I had Billy McNeill alongside me who was great in the air. My qualities were that I passed the ball well and I could tackle.

Kelly was the main reason why I came to leave Celtic. I never wanted to go, but my situation at the club became untenable. We played against Rangers at Ibrox on New Year’s Day 1963; the game should never have been played because it was a brick hard pitch. I argued with the coach, Sean Fallon, with whom I normally got on well, about what kind of tactics we should play. Sean was a former Celtic player who had played in the double-winning team in 1954. He had legendary status among fans because after breaking a collarbone in a game against Hearts, he left the pitch for twenty minutes only to return with his arm in a sling. Sean earned the nickname ‘the Iron Man’ for his part in Celtic’s momentous 7–1 League Cup final victory over Rangers in 1957. He retired a year later but remained a major figure at Celtic and eventually became assistant manager when Jock Stein took over in 1965. In truth, Sean and I differed on our football theories that day and I couldn’t hide my feelings any longer. We were trailing 1–0 when we trudged back into the dressing room and the lid came off.

‘We need to knock long balls forward,’ said Sean in a measured and firm manner.

‘No, we need to pass the ball to feet,’ I replied angrily. ‘The long ball won’t work.’

‘No, we play long balls forward,’ replied Sean, clearly agitated. ‘And you, Crerand, don’t move so far up the park.’

‘I’m not going back on the field if we have to play like that,’ I said. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about.’ The toys had well and truly been thrown from my cot.

‘You’re wrong Crerand, you’re wrong,’ Sean replied. I was, especially as there were no substitutes in those days, and after a few minutes I backed down and walked back angrily onto the pitch. Bob Kelly was in the dressing room and witnessed everything. He didn’t say a word though. Nor did ten of my team-mates. It was me against the rest.

We were hammered 4–0 anyway and one of the goals was a deflection off me. I can’t take anything away from Rangers because they were a better organized team with better players, but I was distraught and very angry when we returned to the dressing room, where I had another stand up row with just about every Celtic player and Sean. I adore Sean; he’s one of the greatest Celts that has ever lived. He was from Sligo in Ireland and when he was given the Freedom of Sligo in 2002 I was honoured to be invited along with him. But that day at Ibrox I was furious with everyone, especially Sean.

The repercussions were serious. Bob Kelly got the needle and dropped me for a game against Aberdeen five days later. Celtic never stayed overnight and we travelled to Aberdeen by train in the third class carriage, with wooden seats and no toilet. When we got to Aberdeen I wasn’t named in the team. There was no explanation as to why. I was particularly annoyed because my mum had got a train from Glasgow to watch me play. I met her outside the ground before the match to give her a ticket and told her that I wasn’t playing. She didn’t say anything, but I could see her disappointment.

It was obvious to me that the club either wanted rid of me or that I was just not good enough to be in the side, despite being a Scottish international. Because of a bad spell of weather – one game between Partick Thistle and Morton was called off ten times – there was no play in the Scottish Leagues for four weeks. Then I was dropped for a game against Falkirk. I decided that enough was enough and asked for a move in a written transfer request. I didn’t consult Noreen or my mum, when I should have done. Mum found out when a newspaper journalist went to her front door. ‘This has come as a great shock to me. In fact I am stunned,’ she told him.

I handed in my transfer request. The news made the front page of the Scottish Daily Express at a time when football stories were rare on the front pages. ‘Crerand Shock: Transfer Plea,’ said the headline.

Noreen, by this time my fiancée, was quoted in this article saying, ‘I was surprised when Pat told me that he had asked for a transfer – but I was even more surprised when he was dropped for the game against Falkirk on Monday night. This will make no difference to our wedding plans. If Pat does move, then I will go wherever he wants me to go. I don’t see much point in him staying at Parkhead if he is not happy.’

After 120 appearances and five goals, I would never play for Celtic again. Unbeknown to me, Bob Kelly and Matt Busby at Manchester United had an agreement that Matt would have first refusal on me if I ever left Celtic.

I came home from mass on Sunday and found Jim Rodger, a journalist from the Daily Record, waiting at the door. He knew everything about Scottish football and was big pals with Matt Busby, and, in later years, Alex Ferguson. He told me that I was going to Manchester United and explained that Matt Busby and a delegation from United had been in Manchester discussing my transfer with Celtic. I didn’t play any part in discussions about my future. My mother started crying.

The journalist told me that I was going to Manchester the following day to meet Matt Busby. My initial thought was that Noreen and I had both had family ties in Glasgow and were reluctant to leave. Noreen had never even been to England before.

I went to Celtic Park for training the following morning and trained as normal. Nobody said anything to me and I assumed that Jim Rodger was wrong. Then, after training Jimmy McGrory asked for a word. He told me that there had been talks between Celtic and Manchester United and that a fee had been agreed for me to move to England.

‘That’s what I’ve been told to tell you Pat,’ he said, as if it was nothing to do with him. Jimmy, despite being manager, wouldn’t have had a choice whether I was sold or not as he would have been acting on Bob Kelly’s orders. There was no room for negotiation, I was going to Manchester and that was that.

I went for something to eat with Mick Jackson. My head was spinning. He convinced me to go to Old Trafford. He wasn’t to know it, but two months later he would be on his way from Parkhead, too, deemed to be ‘disruptive’ by Bob Kelly. Another good friend, a bookmaker Tony Queen who was also a great pal of Jock Stein, agreed. ‘Go to Manchester, Pat. Celtic are going nowhere.’ Deep down, I knew he was right.

The Celtic fans were up in arms when they found out I was going. I got loads of letters telling me not to go and the newspapers were full of the same thing but what could I do?

Looking back now I realize that my doubts had set in during 1960/61, another unspectacular season as we could only finish fourth in the league. We did better in the Scottish Cup, reaching the final, only to be beaten in the replay. I left the Hampden pitch that night with tears in my eyes. It was bad enough to be beaten. What made it unbearable was the fact that Jock Stein was the Dunfermline manager and it angered me to think that he had been allowed to leave Parkhead in 1960. He had transformed them into a team good enough to win the Scottish Cup. I don’t think that Celtic realized his coaching talents when they let him leave, but the young players who had played under him, players like myself and Billy McNeill, did.

That Dunfermline game brought home to me what a shambles Celtic was. Bertie Peacock was the captain of the team and the most experienced player. After recovering from injury, it was assumed he would go straight back into the team for the final. The inexperienced John Clark was picked instead for both the final and the replay. Bertie was not even considered for the replay and Celtic even gave him permission to turn out for Northern Ireland against Italy the day before. Northern Ireland had asked Jock Stein to release their full-back Willie Cunningham. There was no way Jock would let him go.

The bizarre decisions continued after I left Celtic. The team went on to reach the Scottish Cup final in 1963 against Rangers. After doing well to get a draw, Celtic dropped Jimmy Johnstone, who was the best player in the first game, and replaced him with veteran Bobby Craig, who put in a poor performance. Rangers won 3–0 and I was later told by my former team-mates that they were livid with the constant tinkering by a man who was not even manager.

It was heartbreaking for me to see the state of the club I had supported all my life. The training schedule, for example, was so bad that you were never put in any situations where you were under pressure. Training amounted to a long jog followed by a game of five-a-side. There was never any tactical talk, feedback from previous games or information about our opponents. I maintain to this day that fans should just support their team and their manager rather than trying to find out what is happening behind the scenes, because they won’t like what they see.

Celtic would only change when Jock Stein took charge in 1965 when he won nine league titles in succession and took them to become the first British European Cup winners in 1967. I doubt that I would have ever left Celtic if Jock Stein had been in charge, but then I might not have got in the team that won the European Cup with Bobby Murdoch there.

Even though I was disgruntled with Celtic, I still felt that I was pushed out of Parkhead because the club knew that they could get money for me. I had an opinion and usually answered back which didn’t go down well with Kelly. Maybe sometimes I had too much of an opinion, but I wanted what was best for Celtic and what I saw was a disorganized rabble.

On the morning of 6 February 1963, myself, Noreen and a journalist called John McPhail flew down to Manchester airport, which was little more than a house. John wrote for the Daily Record. He was an ex-Celtic centre forward and a great fella.

Matt Busby was waiting at the airport with Denis Law and his wife Diana. United were cute as anything. I had never met Matt Busby before, but Diana Law took Noreen shopping in Manchester and made sure that she was looked after. Some photographers followed them and there was a picture in the paper the next day of the pair of them looking at shoes.

I went to Old Trafford to negotiate my contract. I was a nervous 23-year-old, completely in awe of Matt Busby. He said that he was building a strong team and that United had been ambitious enough to sign Denis Law who joined from Torino in 1962. He said that he needed somebody to play the ball up to the forwards and that player would be me. He could have told me anything and I would have agreed. I didn’t so much as negotiate as listen to what United were saying. They offered me £45 a week – more than twice what I was on at Celtic – plus crowd bonuses. We would get £1 extra if the crowd was over 35,000, £2 if it was over 40,000 and £3 if it was over 45,000. That was quite a lot of money when you consider that the maximum wage of £20 a week had only been abolished in 1961. United agreed a fee of £43,000 – not the £57,000 often reported – the most ever by an English club for a Scottish player and £3,000 more than Manchester City had paid Kilmarnock for wing-half Bobby Kennedy.

Bad weather meant we couldn’t fly back to Glasgow that night and Noreen got the sack from her job at Singer’s. She had taken a day off work to travel to Manchester with me and not explained why, but the story of me going to United was plastered all over the papers and her bosses were not impressed.

I signed for Manchester United on 6 February 1963, five years to the day since the Munich air disaster, as part of Busby’s plans to build another great side.