KTF Reviews

THE MIGHTY QUINN: JIMMY QUINN, CELTIC'S FIRST GOALSCORING HERO

By David W Potter

Published by Tempus Publishing

Review by Roy Hay

The star striker of the great Celtic team of 1904-1910 has at last found his biographer in David Potter. It has not been an easy task to recapture the stature of this legendary figure in the game, when the Scots exerted their maximum influence on the then much smaller world of football.

Quinn, the most modest of men, described himself as a miner for all but a couple of years of his stellar career with the Hoops. For the most part he shunned publicity and said very little in public and wrote even less. There were exceptions when he defended himself against charges made against him for actions on the pitch which gave rise to furious controversy in their day, but that apart, piecing together a coherent biography of the private man has been extraordinarily difficult.

His life on the pitch is well chronicled, thanks in part to the unrivalled collection of Eugene MacBride, and we now have a thorough account of Quinn's impressive career from Smithston Albion in Croy to glory with Celtic and, on too few occasions, for Scotland .

Yet the chemistry of that magnificent Celtic side which won six league championships in a row, plus cups galore, remains elusive. We know that Quinn was the sharp end of a dynamic forward line prompted by the peerless Jimmy McMenemy and Peter Somers, with Alec Bennett and Davie Hamilton patrolling the flanks. Behind them, driving them on and repelling counter-attacks were Young, Loney and Hay, often used by tipplers as a request for three nips of whisky, being “three halves of the best”.

We know that Quinn had a special rapport with ‘Sunny Jim' Young, the big, laconic Ayrshireman, but what would we give for a insider's appreciation of this exceptional group of men who produced the collective effort which made them arguably the best team in the world in their day?

So for the most part we see Quinn (and his confreres) from the outside and very largely through the prism of football which was his life, apart from that with his family in Croy. It is very different from today, when the personal and collective lives of footballers are much more accessible.

But Quinn's football life was rich and productive: 216 goals in just over 300 games for Celtic, a hat-trick in a winning Scottish Cup Final against Rangers, 11 Scottish Caps and recognition in his day as the best centre forward in the country.

It came at a personal price for the battering which strikers took in those days was fearsome. Quinn could dish it out too, and when his patience was strained beyond breaking point he did some damage. Some of the retribution heaped on him by the authorities rankled for many years. Sir Robert Kelly's Celtic devotes a chapter to the Quinn case of 1905 even though he relied on his father's account of events and newspaper reports, having no first hand knowledge of the incident and its aftermath, when Quinn was accused of “kicking and stamping on” Alec Craig of Rangers.

It was Bob Dylan who penned “The Mighty Quinn”, but for Celtic supporters around the world there was and always will be only one Jimmy Quinn.

Thanks to David Potter, a new generation will have a better appreciation of the man behind the Legend, and we are all in his debt.

Roy Hay