I WON’T BE SUPPORTING CELTIC OR RANGERS, SAYS MAURICE JOHNSTON–
He caused uproar by joining Rangers. Here, Mo Johnston tells why he is now a neutral
AFRIDAY mid-morning in Scotland’s largest city and a vaguely familiar face is striding casually around Royal Exchange Square. In torn jeans, a white shirt under a brown pullover, there is a nod to his playboy past via the loafers covering two sockless feet.
Pre-occupied shoppers offer a second take here and there. The man’s daughter, Alana, keeps a discreetly safe distance 19 or so yards behind him.
But 27 years since he created the mother and father of all Old Firm stories, Maurice Johnston can once again walk the streets of Glasgow.
At the stroke of a pen in July 1989, Johnston smashed an unspoken taboo by becoming the first highprofile Roman Catholic to sign for Rangers in the modern era.
He had posed, weeks earlier, in a green-and-white shirt after reaching a verbal agreement to rejoin boyhood idols Celtic.
The volte-face was sudden and utterly unexpected. It remains Scottish football’s JFK moment.
Pockets of Rangers supporters burned scarves. Celtic fans, who had known him as ‘Super Mo’, instantly bestowed a new name on his head: ‘Judas.’ ‘I knew it would impact on me,’ said Johnston, ‘but I didn‘t realise how it would impact on me in such a way. How often do I get reminded of it? A lot.
‘It is still spoken about, it is still on everyone’s minds, everybody wants to know who I support and who do I want to win on Sunday?
‘All over the world, you always see people from Scotland, both Celtic and Rangers fans. It’s unbelievable.
‘I get it all over. Disneyland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles. Everywhere. In all of the stadiums, there are Celtic scarves, Rangers scarves. People ask for photographs.
‘I live in Florida now. And even Mickey Mouse came up to me … or maybe it was Minnie.’
There was certainly a Walt-Disney element to the Johnston story. Even now it remains mildly staggering.
He was 26 at the time. A happy-golucky, relatively wealthy man with a reputation for the ladies. He has no real regrets. But he has three kids now. Had he been a family man in 1989, he might have thought twice about plunging head first into a Glasgow goldfish bowl prone to poisonous waste.
‘If I’d had a family, I don’t know if I would had done it,’ he admitted. ‘My daughter was only six months old — but looking at it now, I don’t know.’
A restless character who never stayed at any of his clubs too long, Johnston was prone to flighty tendencies.
His career took him via London, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Miami, New York, Kansas, Toronto and finished in Florida. But it is Glasgow — always Glasgow — they all return to.
Back in his home city to analyse Sunday’s Old Firm semi-final for Sky Sports, he still attracts the odd second take. But it comes and goes.
‘I got the odd comment coming here,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t too bad. I was at a Rangers youth game on Thursday night and everyone was fine. I don’t think the younger fans understand. My daughter is with me and she’s like: “What is happening?”.’
He has 15-year-old twin sons. Amusingly, one supports Celtic. The other supports Rangers.
‘Aye,’ grinned Johnston, ‘it’s because of me. One likes blue, one likes green — the colour.
‘Their sister is over there,’ — he gestures to red-haired Alana at a nearby table with a friend — ‘and the wee twin (TJ) talks about it night and day, all the time. He is Celtic, he likes green.’
One of the twins is a rangy defensive midfielder. The other is a useful striker who fancies playing for Scotland one day.
If either Johnston junior ever had a choice between Celtic and Rangers, his old man would declare a conflict of interest.
Now 53, Johnston insisted earnestly: ‘I don’t support anyone, honestly. I grew up a Celtic fan. But do I want Celtic to win on Sunday, do I want Rangers to win? It doesn’t bother me.’
A League and Scottish Cup winner with Celtic, he is blunt now on why he joined Rangers all those years ago. There is no great mystery to his thinking.
He explained: ‘Look, at the end of the day, Celtic didn’t have the money for it. That is the bottom line. There was a transfer fee, everything else that was involved, I hadn’t signed and then all of a sudden Rangers came in. If I had signed a contract, I would have been with Celtic. That would have been it. The contract is there, it is away to FIFA having been signed. It wasn’t signed. Money came into it. I make no bones about it.’
Nevertheless, it was a hugely risky and bold decision. He was idolised by Celtic supporters and loathed by Rangers rivals in equal measure after receiving a red card in the 1986 Old Firm League Cup Final for headbutting an Ibrox player and then blessing himself as he left the pitch.
There were good reasons for thinking twice before jumping the dyke.
‘It came to a situation where everyone was calling me,’ he continued. ‘I sneaked out of the country and went back to France (where he played for Nantes).
‘Then, all of a sudden, everything started to materialise, things began to come to fruition. Billy McNeill was on the phone, Graeme Souness was on the phone.
‘I ended up at the end answering the phone to Souness. He was the only one I answered.’
Glasgow, which had been European
‘Billy McNeill was on phone, Graeme Souness called... I answered Souness’ ‘Tommy Burns told me I was a wee runt. That’ really got to me’
City of Culture the year before in 1988, became a dark place in the days after Johnston’s big move.
The general secretary of the Rangers Supporters Association, David Miller, declared it a ‘sad day for Rangers’.
The Daily record, meanwhile, ran a front page with a headline reporting: ‘Death threats to a dog named Mo.’
‘I put myself in there and I knew that I had to run faster than Coisty (Ally McCoist), (Mark) Hateley or whoever else I was playing with,’ recalled Johnston. ‘I knew I had to win over the Rangers fans.’
He did it the only way he could. In November 1989 when he scored a late strike in a 1-0 win over Celtic.
‘After I scored against Celtic, Souness pulled me aside and said: “Listen, Where are you going tonight?”.
‘I told him I was planning on going to a party in Kirkintilloch, a fancydress party. He just looked at me and said: “No you’re not!”.
‘In the end, they doubled up on security and I ended up going to the party. What did I dress up as? I’m not telling you.
‘But everything changed that day, even walking around the place, because you hear the whispers.’
Amidst inevitable fears for his safety, Glasgow proved a more civilised city than first feared. Social media did not exist and only once was Johnston made to feel uneasy over life as a Rangers player.
He said: ‘Was I ever put in a position where I felt threatened? No. Sorry, there was one time. I went to a Player-of-the-Year supporters’ night in Larkhall. The people at Rangers told me I shouldn’t go.
‘But I told them I had to go because it was my first Player of the Year, so I decided to go — but it was a bit rocky to say the least.
‘By that, I mean I felt uneasy. No one made me feel uneasy but with what everybody was saying to me I had it in the back of my head.
‘The award I was given was Best Newcomer — it was a made-up award. Did I sing any of the songs? I did actually, it ended up on the front page of the Daily record —I had to sing!
‘I felt scoring goals and working hard for them would win over the fans.’ His relationship with Celtic was dead. There are some — former Parkhead player Peter Grant is one of them — who maintain the shock of Johnston’s volte-face set Celtic back years.
Johnston, though, maintains it was nothing personal, just business. There was, however, an inevitable impact on old friendships. On old team-mates.
He added: ‘The one that really got to me was Tommy Burns. I was very close to Tommy.
‘Tommy was like: “Ya wee runt…” I said: “Ah, sorry Tommy”.
‘He told me: “The kids were giving it: “Mo, Mo, Super Mo” the day they thought I’d re-signed for Celtic.
‘I felt really bad when I heard that. Tommy was always great with me. He came to my engagement party, he was great at singing songs. Tommy was everyone’s friend.
‘But eventually, he got his head round it. I looked after his boy Jonathan, who was a coach with Celtic, when he came to Toronto.
‘I showed him around the club because he was trying to get into the coaching side of things.’ Johnston remains persona non
grata at Celtic. In two weeks’ time, the team who snatched the 1986 league title from Hearts in the final seven minutes of the season will gather at Celtic Park for a 30th anniversary commemoration dinner.
Albert Kidd never actually played for Celtic but will serve as guest of honour after his dramatic late intervention for Dundee beat Hearts. Johnston won’t sit by the phone waiting for the invite.
He said: ‘Murdo MacLeod called me up the other day asking: “Are you invited to the anniversary?”
‘For me, that day at Love Street when we (Celtic) beat St Mirren 5-0 was the best ever game because it was my first Championship.
‘Hearts had to lose. Albert Kidd scored two for Dundee and we needed a five-goal swing. I remember it as though it was yesterday.’
Johnston scored the third goal that day. It remains, by common consent, the finest Celtic goal of modern times.
‘My son TJ showed me it and thought it was actually speeded up — that’s how fast it was.
‘It was an unbelievable goal, surreal. It came from Danny McGrain, in to Paul McStay, a Brian McClair nutmeg, the whole lot all the way down and then a tap-in...’
The voice tails off. Three decades later, Celtic fans appreciate the goal, if not the scorer. Johnston sees no value in trying to build bridges.
‘I met Neil Lennon about twoand-a-half years ago, it was in the Hilton Hotel in Glasgow around Christmas time and Celtic were preparing for a European game.
‘He invited me to come through to Lennoxtown but I didn’t want to put him in a position. ‘I didn’t want anyone saying anything to him. I would have felt uncomfortable. Maybe people asking him: “Why are you bringing him here?” ‘I wouldn’t have felt uncomfortable — I would just have watched training and kept my mouth shut.
‘I still have respect for the situation. It’s OK Neil saying to me to come up, but he still thinks of me as a Celtic player. He’s not thinking about everything that went on at Rangers and everything else, how the Celtic fans feel about me.’ Johnston will be there tomorrow. In the midst of a Hampden maelstrom. Commenting on a fixture diminished greatly by the fact players of his ability no longer grace it.
‘Can Rangers beat Celtic? I’m not sure. Now is the testing time for them because finishing fifth or sixth is not good enough for Rangers supporters.’
Not that he claims to be one of them. Walking the Glasgow streets is a rediscovered pleasure. Better, perhaps, to keep it that way.
Sky SportS will show the Scottish Cup semi-final between rangers and Celtic tomorrow and, from next season, every old Firm game in the SpFL, exclusively live.