NICK MURPHY The day Rangers stunned Scottish football & kick-started a revolution at Parkhead
But nothing could prepare Glasgow for the storm that would hit the city on July 10, 1989, when former Celtic hero Mo Johnstone signed for Rangers.
Rumours had been sweeping the country that the move was imminent but it just seemed too incredulous to be true – for starters Johnston was a Catholic and Rangers simply didn’t go there.
The former Parkhead striker was also a hated figure on the terraces of Ibrox and once blessed himself after being sent-off in an Old Firm Scottish Cup tie.
He was a Celtic man through-andthrough – or so it seemed.
Moving to Rangers just didn’t seem possible but when Johnston was introduced to a stunned press pack in the bowels of Ibrox, the Scottish game was rocked to its core – and would never be the same again.
Both sets of supporters reacted with anger and shock – Rangers fans burned scarves and season books in protest and on the other side of the city, Celtic supporters were left reeling at ‘Judas’ who had sold them out for money – and lots of it.
Weeks previously Johnston had all but sealed a return to the club he claimed he supported as a boy – Celtic had agreed to pay Nantes £1.4m for the Scotland striker and the former darling of the Parkhead faithful was paraded at Celtic Park in the club’s strip (below). For the Hoops it was a major coup – the club was beginning to play second fiddle to their bitter rivals who were spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.
The cream of the crop from England had been arriving at Ibrox in a steady procession – Terry Butcher, Trevor Francis, Mark Walters, Ray Wilkins, Chris Woods.
Celtic were struggling to keep up and the team which landed the league in the Centenary season had already begun to disintegrate – Frank Mcavennie had returned to West Ham with Mick Mccarthy, Tommy Burns and Roy Aitken on their way out the door. Rangers’ stadium, in part due to the Ibrox disaster in 1971, had been rebuilt and was now a modern, all-seater arena. In contrast – not to put too fine a point on it – Celtic Park was a complete dump. Years of mismanagement and neglect from a cabal of families who controlled the shares at Celtic had led to a steady decline. Signing Johnston – who had claimed Celtic were the only club he wanted to play for – was supposed to give Michael and Kevin Kelly, Jack Mcginn, Chris White and others on the Celtic board breathing room to get their house in order. Instead it was a hammer blow, the beginning of the end and would prove the catalyst for fans to demand change.
In 1990, the ‘Save our Celts’ group was formed to put pressure on the Celtic board but in typical fashion, was dismissed as an “embarrassment” to the club by an arrogant group of entitled custodians who believed the ownership of Celtic was their birthright.
The movement fizzled out partly due to the excitement of a new era ushered in by the hiring of former Irish international Liam Brady and the money spent on Gary Gillespie, Tony Cascarino, Stuart Slater and Tony Mowbray.
As throws of the dice went, the Celtic board were gambling everything they had left – which wasn’t much – on landing a double six.
Instead the move turned out to be snake eyes – or snake oil if you prefer – and the whole thing fell flat on its face.
Brady had promised a trophy every season but the team went from bad to worse. Johnston, meanwhile, had left Rangers for Everton in 1991 having scored 31 goals in 76 games including a winner over Celtic.
But the damage had been done and for then Ibrox manager Graeme Souness it was mission accomplished on two fronts.
He had smashed Rangers’ anticatholic signing policy to pieces but he had also dealt a massive blow to Celtic from which it would take the club years to recover.
But it also sowed the seeds of discord which would fire an insurrection in the east end of Glasgow.
By 1993 Brady had resigned, Lou Macari had taken his place and fan unrest was ready to explode.
Supporters were staying away from games, there was no money to buy players and Macari was left to ‘wheel and deal’ in the transfer market for the likes of Lee Martin, Willie Falconer and Wayne Biggins.
The situation was fertile breeding ground for an uprising and the ‘Celts for Change’ movement was drawing massive support in comparison to its predecessor.
A Scots-canadian businessman, Fergus Mccann, along with former Celtic board member Brian Dempsey were leading a campaign to oust the board who refused to be moved.
But the situation was taken out of their hands when the Bank of Scotland threatened to padlock the gates of Celtic Park for good unless the outstanding debt was repaid.
Mccann, John Keane and other investors took the appropriate steps to stave off administration and on March 4, 1994, they took to the entrance of Celtic Park to exclaim, ‘the game is over, the rebels have won’.
Twenty six years later – despite the fact Celtic sit largely unchallenged on the throne of Scottish football – bitterness against Johnston remains. He will never be forgiven.
But his switch to Rangers was the flap of the butterfly’s wings that inspired a revolution at Celtic and a changing of the guard in Glasgow.