News
EX-CELTS IN THE MEDIA PART THREE – DAVIE PROVAN
By David Potter
When Billy McNeill signed Davie Provan from Kilmarnock in September 1978, it would be fair to say that the Celtic fans would have been a little puzzled. Not only was this chap not really a household name in Scottish football but his very name itself caused a little bewilderment.
You see, Rangers had had a full back of the same name some fifteen years previously - not a bad full back, but very much in the Bobby Shearer, Sammy Cox tradition of Rangers full backs - hard, tough, uncultured. You know the type!
This David Provan, however, could hardly have been more different. He was a class player, and immediately revealed it. By Christmas he was accepted, and by May 1979 after the 4-2 game against Rangers in which ‘ten men won the League', Davie Provan was a hero.
Davie Provan was a traditional right winger, a position in which Celtic had been traditionally well served by men like Alec Bennett, Jimmy Delaney and of course Jimmy Johnstone. Davie was more of a Delaney than a Johnstone - fast, direct, able to interchange positions and suddenly appear on the left - and a more than occasional goal-scorer as well, with the sometimes match-winning ability to run in from the wing and score when the opposition were expecting a pass.
And he could take free kicks! His most famous of these was certainly the 1985 Scottish Cup Final against Dundee United. Time running out, 1-0 down against the notoriously competent Dundee United defence of the grim Jim McLean era, and Celtic were awarded a free kick just outside the box. “Only once before in Scottish Cup Finals has a goal been scored direct from a free kick. Is this a piece of history?” asked Archie McPherson in the BBC TV commentary. “It is!” he panted, and the supporters then carried Celtic to victory, Frank McGarvey's flying header resulting in a famous Celtic Scottish Cup Final win.
With his long frizzy hair, Davie Provan should have shared the nickname “the Bear” with team-mate Roy Aitken. From a distance there was a similarity, and there was also a similarity in their total commitment for the Cause. Several occasions in the early 1980s saw disappointment for Celtic supporters, but there was never any criticism for lack of effort from Davie Provan.
In 1980 he was the Scottish Professional Footballers “Player of the Year” and he won 10 caps for Scotland (playing brilliantly in the 1981 win at Wembley) and with Celtic lifted 4 League Championships, 2 Scottish Cups and 1 Scottish League Cup.
Yet he was a very unlucky player. He missed a large part of the 1983-84 season (something that perhaps explains why Celtic didn't win anything that year) and in November 1985 seemed totally lethargic and uninterested in a 3-0 defeat at Ibrox. This had followed one or two other games where he was not at his best.
Davie was eventually diagnosed as suffering from M.E., an enervating, exhausting illness in which the patient has no energy. In fact, he had burned himself out for the Cause, and he never really came back. It was a sad end to one of the greatest players Celtic have had. I have already linked him with Delaney and Johnstone. That speaks for itself!
Davie Provan's media career then took off. He has worked for Radio Clyde and written for the News of the World, but it is as a commentator for SKY Sports that he excels. He is sensible and unobtrusive, adding the incisive comment or the cutting phrase, but he is not offensive or “in your face”, as so many can be. And, although he may try to hide it in public, I suspect that he still loves the Celtic!
A fine Celt was Davie Provan!
David Potter
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