Tommy went from being a Gers fan to going to watch Celts and Ireland

BY DAVID O’DORNAN he kind of stepped into the breech a little bit to say he was coming to support me, which was a big thing for any man to do. “At that time it wasn’t the done thing. I remember him sitting up in the stand at Rangers and when we had just started to go out he couldn’t admit to his friends or people round about him that Packie Bonner was going out with his daughter.

“Every time they were giving me stick up in the stand he’d be standing up for me – but he couldn’t admit I was going out with his daughter. “He made that big step to support me and brought my son for years. Not every man would do it.”

Bonner, 60, spent 20 years at Celtic and quickly realised the intense pressure to win the Old Firm games – or else stay in the house if you didn’t.

He said: “You had to win the game against Rangers, that was the first thing that was always in your mind – and as a goalkeeper, win the game without making a mistake, not let the opposition to get the upper hand.

“As far as the crowd and all that sort of stuff that went on, as players we switched off from that a little bit. As long as you won the game then the next four or five weeks was fine, you could walk around Glasgow without any bother.

“But if you lost the game you stayed in your house for a while, just to let things calm down because you got it from both sides then.”

Bonner also revealed he used to cry himself to sleep when he first moved to Glasgow from rural County Donegal.

He said: “It sounds a bit stupid but I was 18 and away from family in a city so I was really homesick.” 2015: Former Brentford boss Mark Warburton was appointed as manager of Rangers, with former Ibrox skipper David Weir his No.2.

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