Fergus for flag day* and Tommy Gemmell

You can imagine the scene, deep inside Celtic Park.  “Let’s invite Fergus over to raise the flag on the opening day of the season.  Would be great to get him back 20 years after his critical role in saving the club, especially after that nonsense in ’98.

“Wait a minute, probably best not to mention the flag just yet, let’s call it the opening home game of the season”.

16 years ago Fergus McCann accompanied Jean Stein onto Celtic Park to raise the league title flag, an event which seemed beyond us when he flew into Glasgow to complete the takeover from the old board in 1994.

He was booed by a sizeable minority of the support, ostensibly for not spending enough money on players.  It was a source of regret for tens of thousands of us.  Fergus arrived with a plan to turnaround a club which played in an antiquated stadium and were being thoroughly routed on the park.  He left five years later with the league flag flying high, a modern 60,000 seater stadium and net bank debt at £2.5m.  It was something of an economic miracle, and although he got the money he wanted when he sold up, he never got the credit he deserved.

Celtic fans had been conditioned to distrust him by a small handful of people with considerable reach.  The club was being rag-dolled, despite the miracles it was performing.  The man himself was never one for showboating, his last two contributions to Celtic were to speak at the annual Celtic Charity (the charity he formed) dinner, and to mark the unveiling of the Brother Walfrid statue.  Only charity has brought him back, so this will be a rare day indeed.

I’m absolutely delighted to announce we are publishing Tommy Gemmell’s autobiography, “Tommy Gemmell – All the Best’.  The book is written and will be out in the summer.  It will be a paperback but we are going to do a small hardback run, all of which will be signed by Tommy, and will include a special chapter with questions from CQN’ers, which Tommy will answer in the book. Details on how to submit a question soon.

This one is going to be a lot of fun……….

If you would like to read the new CQN Magazine, GO HERE to read properly, and for FREE, the graphic below is just a taster.
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