On the previous Tuesday evening, there was a game which ordinarily would hardly merit a mention, as a Hoops side comprised of out-of-favour first-teamers and promising reserves took on Queens Park at Hampden, in the semi-final of the Glasgow Cup. Johnny Doyle opened the scoring early on, with young Jim Dobbin sealing a Final place with a late second.
A great Celtic friend of mine from the Cairn CSC, Joe Lyden, was one of the diehards in the 2,000-strong ‘crowd’ that night, waiting behind to catch autographs of Doyle and the other first-teamers on duty, such as Latchford, Aitken, Conroy, McAdam and MacLeod. Joe and his friends would be unaware that they had just watched Johnny’s last goal and his final match for his beloved Celtic. Tragically, the following Monday, he was killed whilst working at home. He was only thirty years old.
John Doyle signed for Celtic on 15 March 1976 at Glasgow Airport, as the team, under the temporary stewardship of Sean Fallon, prepared to fly to East Germany for an ill-fated European Cup-Winners Cup Quarter-final tie with Sachsenring Zwickau. The lifelong Celtic fan was a £90k club record signing from Ayr United, having starred several times for the Honest Men against his new team. I recall well one midweek game on television, Ayr in a Barcelona-style kit being destroyed 7-2 by Celtic at Somerset Park, in those days one of the toughest grounds in the country in which to get a result.
Johnny with his idols, Status Quo
Despite that heavy defeat and a sending-off against Celtic at Parkhead the following month, Jock Stein and Fallon had obviously seen enough to persuade the Board to part with such a huge cheque to sign the fiery winger. He made his debut at Dens Park the following Saturday in a 1-0 victory, although, sadly, he only lasted half an hour before a bad tackle put him out for a month, during which time Celtic, top since January, lost at Tannadice to hand the initiative and the first Premier League title to Rangers.
On that debut day at Dens Park, as a teenager I was standing in the covered terracing opposite the main stand, with my dad and some of the older Cairn men. A friend of my father’s, Irishman Frank Dolan, turned to us as the teams warmed up to announce that ‘we have signed the new Jimmy Johnstone’ and was immediately roundly scorned. Whilst like Jinky, Doyle was a winger from the Celtic hotbed of Viewpark, Uddingston, I am sure he himself would have laughed at Frank’s comparison. However, Johnny was certainly not short of talent, having gained one international cap for Scotland whilst playing with Ayr United, a provincial club, in the days when such caps really had to be earned.
Nor did he lack heart for the battle. Indeed, ‘battle’ should probably have been his middle name, many of his memorable Celtic moments having an element of adversity attached. In my review of the 1977/78 campaign, I highlighted the most bizarre ordering off I ever witnessed. That involved Johnny on a return to Somerset with Celtic, lashing at the ball after the award of a free-kick, only to watch as he took out referee Bob Cuthill with a laser-accuracy the genius Nakamura would have been proud of. A complete fluke of course and hilarious to watch, however, we stopped laughing when the comedy ref got back to his feet and waved a red card in Johnny’s direction. The winger stormed past Jock Stein and down the tunnel, the subsequent waiving of this ridiculous ‘offence’ no consolation at that time.
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