In some ways he was lucky. The last four games of the season saw Celtic in the Scottish Cup final, then they went to Dundee United, then Motherwell at home before the Scottish Cup final replay. They took the field with four
separate teams, and Gallagher was not in any of them! The first Scottish Cup final game against Rangers was respectable at least with wingers Jimmy Johnstone and Frank Brogan playing well, and with a bit of luck, they might just have pulled it off. The Dundee United game was extraordinary in its fecklessness, the Motherwell game was a spectacular 6-0 win, but then the Scottish Cup replay was one of the darkest hours of Celtic’s 75 years. It
might easily have ended up a revenge 7-1; as it happened, Rangers decided to fool around, for Celtic presented no threat whatsoever, and kept it at 3-0. Little wonder 50,000 Celtic fans turned their backs on their team and
walked out midway through the second half. Had this not been the final game of the season, there would have been serious supporter unrest at the next game. As it was, the support cursed Bob Kelly and Pat Crerand, and then tried to forget all about football.
It simply was not good enough. For Gallagher there were two ways of looking at this. One was that he was glad to be out of it. He could not be blamed for it all. Indeed, many supporters recalled his fine play earlier in the season and wondered why he was not there. The other way was to reckon if he could not even make that Celtic team, there was little hope for him!
But he was only 22. He still had youth on his side, and Celtic kept him on. For his part, he was committed to the club. He had played well in the Reserve team and there was clearly still something that they saw in him. He himself evinced no desire to move on. Celtic were his club, and he felt that he ought to stick with them. His day might come, but for Celtic supporters everywhere (and that, of course, included Charlie Gallagher) summer 1963 was one of total misery.
It was not just that there had been a poor season and the miserable transfer of the star player without any real attempt to replace him. (Pat Crerand had, incidentally, won an English Cup medal for Manchester United some ten days after the Hampden fiasco!) It was the feeling of complacency that permeated the whole organisation and the increasing contempt felt by the disillusioned and betrayed support for Chairman Bob Kelly who seemed to be treating them with disdain and assuming that they would always turn up regardless of the quality of the Celtic side. Rangers may well have been a good side in 1963 in Scotland, but they were not all that good for they consistently failed to function against good teams in Europe. And in any case nothing could excuse what seemed to be the shrugging of shoulders and “Yes, but what can we do about it?” attitude of the Celtic Board.
The older supporters had seen better days, and knew that the club could come again. Even on the day after the horrendous Scottish Cup final replay, when we were on our knees, there was some comfort in the memories of Jimmy McGrory and Jimmy Quinn. “They’ll come again” was the cry. Indeed, even those in their 20s and 30s had happy memories of better teams than this. Granted such success as there had been in the 1950s had not lasted long, and only once since World War II had Celtic been the champions of Scotland. It was frankly intolerable. It must have been a thoroughly depressing time to be a young Celtic player, – it was certainly a bad time to be a young Celtic supporter – but Gallagher decided to plod on.
When you are at the bottom, the only way you can look is up. Once again, there was Hope.
David Potter
From David Potter’s 2016 biography, Charlie Gallagher? What a Player! To be continued exclusively on The Celtic Star.
