This morning I spoke to someone who was in the room when Fergus McCann signed the documents that saved Celtic.
It literally was High Noon.
There were EIGHT minutes to spare.
I was living in Glasgow at the time and worked around the corner from the stadium.
My family wouldn’t let nine-year-old me go to Lisbon in 1967, but I was present at the next most historic moment in Celtic’s history.
I was only a few feet away from Brian Dempsey outside Paradise when he gave us the news that rebels had won.
It was done.
Celtic would endure.
The previous year I had bumped into someone working at the Parkhead stadium.
This was very much near the end of days for the old board.
He told me that his gaffer had tasked him to do some painting and was duly dispatched to the local hardware store where the club had an account.
The chap was sent back empty-handed.
They were already owed a substantial some.
In the immediate aftermath of the Bunnet’s triumph, the wee man conducted a search of the premises.
There were filing cabinets full of invoices, all unpaid.
One by one, Fergus McCann put them into date order and paid them in full.
There was no insolvency event, and no creditors were stiffed.
Moreover, there was no need to invent fantasies like holding company vehicle or ( my personal favourite) engine room subsidiary.
After saving the club, McCann wanted to put Celtic on a firm financial footing.
Building a 60,000-seater stadium was part of that.
He also knew that he had to rebuild Celtic’s commercial reputation.
Today looking across the city, it seems like litigation central.
If the Fitba Fourth estate weren’t so pitifully obedient, then the Sevco High Command would be held to account.
It is hard to put a firm figure on the ongoing reputational damage that court cases like the Sydney Super Cup debacle will do the Ibrox brand.
However, consider this dear reader, outside of the succulent bubble of Scottish football, imagine how the business world views the brethren in the Blue Room.
That occurred to me when the Daily Radar reported that Sevco intended to “countersue” Down Under.
At this stage, they look to be incurable.
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Yes some sort of recognition should be made for Fergus saving and putting the club on a sound footing and no doubt that throughout the coming years statues will adorn the Celtic Way of the greats who were and are part of our club
If true, the rumour that Giakoumakis may be on his way is as sad as it is inevitable as 15 mins at the end of each game is not enough for someone as talented as he is. If most clubs put 11 men behind the ball when playing Celtic, I don’t know why they can’t play two up at least and pair him with Kyogo.
Been saying for years that Celtic should never be playing with one up front domestically. Big Jock must be fair birling in his grave
Nothing less than naming the stadium after Mr McCann would be an appropriate tribute to the wee man.
A “lesser known” example of the pre-Fergus Board’s attitude to problems is as follows…
In the early 1990’s I had been invited to a corporate night at Celtic Park….and eventually found myself walking around the stadium with Sir Michael Kelly.
He was angry at an article that had appeared in the Glasgow Herald which criticised the infrastructure and condition of the Stadium.
” Have you read it?” he asked me.
I confirmed I had.
” Do you agree it’s inaccurate and unfair?” he continued.
I briefly hesitated…torn between honesty and diplomacy.
The truth of the matter is…The stadium had been neglected and was run down, and the Herald’s article couldn’t really be disputed. (Not withstanding an element of malicious reporting on its part probably.)
I took a deep breath and then gave him my opinion…which sided with the article.
He ended the conversation by immediately saying…”Then we shall just have to agree…to disagree.”
And that was that.
No attempt to ask me to expand on my concerns…the subject was closed.
And it was that attitude that led to their ultimate downfall.
Have you noticed how Mick, at any given opportunity, is being described, by the usual sycophants, as their 18th Manager?
Well, it’s nuthin’ more than another “subtle attempt ” to re-write the truth.
Utterly pathetic.
Oh, and has the mystery of the missing 5 stars been solved yet?
The stars seemed to have reappeared on the back of the shirt just below the collar if i remember rightly
Thanks Gordon…Strange one ‘though.
I’ve been looking online Gordon and don’t see them on any of the replica shirts pictured there…
Silly question, I know, but…
The The Rangers agreed to participate in a footy tournament,
which was presumably sanctioned by the SFA & Football Australia?
The The Rangers later pulled out of the tournament,
which attarcted lots of negative media attention at the time,
and is now attracting lots of negative media coverage due to pending legal action.
So,
– by reneging on the footy tournament
&
– by potentially damaging relations between the SFA and another country’s FA
&
– by potentially damaging the global image of Scottish football
…could this, possibly, constitute “Bringing the Game into Disrepute” ?
The tw@ts at Hampden must be sleeping in the bunker, again. 😦
A provincial/pariah club.
I wonder if this club will eventually have an unpaid face painter on a creditor’s list sitting on an administrator’s desk.
HH
Hi Phil,
I was browsing the comments section of an article in the Herald dreaming of Murrayesque levels of funding for the current entity playing football at Ibrox. There is a new description of the club being a “Metaphysical intangible club” (copyright one Robert MacMichael full comment below,
“A company went bankrupt the former custodian of the club. Duff & Phelps dealt with most of that selling on Rangers as a basket of assets to Sevco. Metaphysical intangible club and all. In due course the SFA agreed to it becoming Rangers SFA club membership custodian.”
Much in the article is true but it was not fergus at the last minute it was John Keane with his own money with no security. We need to stop this mistruth and give the right humble little man his due. fergus put money in on the basis of An agreed return john Keane didn’t
John Keane did indeed put in his own money to temporarily prevent the bank from foreclosing some weeks earlier.
However, it was Fergus who stepped up with the quantum to make Celtic secure.
Hummel sydney super and compo for QPR !
It’s funny you mention the days of the old board, I was just thinking that these days their fans must feel the way I did back then when I would worriedly look at how big and powerful the Oldco seemed whilst we were run like a shambles teetering on the precipice of disaster, buying tuppence ha’penny diddies whilst they splurged on big names. How times have changed but unfortunately for the Sevvies we have built our club into the powerhouse it is today using a completely legitimate, honourable, and 100% scam-free business plan and thus there’s ZERO chance of us going to the wall like their beloved corpse club did. The futures bright, it’s green and white, and the newco will never legally get near where they used to be without a (genuine) billionaire sugar daddy/mommy having a mental breakdown and deciding they’d like to burn all their cash on a bigot bonfire….
They will never change it’s in their DNA
Other clubs would be under real scrutiny by their football association if they were continually in litigation .
But this is Scotland and such matters are ignored when it comes to this football club .
The North Stand should be named after him, fitting tribute. I heard the wee man himself has vetoed any of it while he is still around?
Peole also forget Fergus could have let Celtic go into administration & saved himself a lot of money!
Ach pish, he made money, he said he would make money and he did, he did everything right for his own interest and for the supporters interests. He was slated because people thought he was only there to make money, and at times it was believable, we always slate our board for that now, but football is a business and we’ve really had the best of both worlds in my lifetime.
A statue where the wee man can unfurl his own statue outside Parkhead is long overdue.
Don’t wait until its too late and as my old mother used to say “I’d rather have the flowers while I’m still here”.
Fergus certainly played his part but is he more deserving of a stand or a statue than Jimmy McGrory , whenever tributes are suggested his name is always missing .
Or Willie Maley? A man treated appallingly by Celtic in the end.