Charlie Shaw
The man who played in a great Celtic team was Charlie Shaw who played from 1913 until 1925. Charlie came from the Celtic heartlands of Twechar, but he played first for Port Glasgow (on one occasion achieving a shut out against Bennett, McMenemy, Quinn, Somers and Hamilton and even saved a penalty “with the spring of an acrobat” from Jimmy Quinn) and then Queen’s Park Rangers before becoming a little homesick in London and returning to Scotland, to play for the team that he loved.
This was great stuff, but 1914 changed things
His first season was a mighty one. It was 1913/14, during which Celtic with Shaw, McNair and Dodds at the back went from October 7 until February 28 and conceded only one goal! This was great stuff, but 1914 changed things.
It did not put an end to football, for the game continued and Charlie played all through the war because he was the “sole proprietor of a shop” – two newsagent’s and tobacconist’s shops in Bridgeton. Following the injury to Sunny Jim in 1916, Charlie became captain of the side – very unusual for a goalkeeper to do this – and he kept going until he emigrated to the USA in 1925. He died in 1938 at the age of 52.
Charlie Shaw was a Glasgow personality
In the years of the Great War and those immediately after, Charlie was a Glasgow personality. Celtic were often described as “ten Internationals and Charlie Shaw” – a comment on how good the Celtic team was. The song “How can you buy Killarney?” was changed to “How can you buy Our Charlie?” (as it would be 30 years later for Charlie Tully) and of course Rangers supporters paid him the greatest compliment of them all when they sung “Oh Charlie Shaw, he never saw whaur Alan Morton pit the ba'” after a game in 1921.
Charlie Shaw, Celtic FC
You see, very few players of Rangers or anyone else managed to put many past Charlie! Stories used to be told about how he went home one day in the second half and no-body noticed. He was dating an actress at the Pavilion, it was said as a joke, or sometimes he got so bored with so little to do that he wandered round the park to give the opposition goalkeeper some advice on how to keep out Patsy Gallacher and “Sniper” McColl. Not true, of course!
But Charlie was a man about whom such stories gathered. He was a cult hero, and my goodness, those desperate times of the Great War years and the 1920s needed a hero.
But all this must not be allowed to mask the fact that he was a great goalkeeper. “Lithe” “agile” “acrobatic” “cat-like” are phrases that are often applied to him, as indeed was the word “Shavian”, previously applied almost exclusively to the plays and the writings of the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. It is a compliment to both men that they can be linked. He was also a great captain. It cannot have been easy in 1918/19 for example in the midst of the flu pandemic (Charlie himself was a brief sufferer) to lead a team to the League title, not always knowing who was going to be available. Mind you, he had Eck McNair, Patsy Gallacher and Jimmy McMenemy to help!
He played 430 games, and had 240 shut-outs, won 6 Scottish League medals, 2 Scottish Cup medals, 4 Glasgow Cup medals and 9 Glasgow Charity Cup medals. He never gained a Scotland cap, but played three times for the Scottish League – such figures of course distorted by the Great War.
There was always something very avuncular about Charlie. Sometimes with a moustache, sometimes not, he looked older than what he was sometimes, and always gave the impression that everything was going to be all right. “Leave it a’ tae Chairlie!”
