He presided over one of the nation’s most thrilling young sides at United STEELIEST OF CELTS IS FACING TOUGHEST FIGHT YET
JACKIE McNAMARA’S boyish good looks and quiet demeanour have always masked the steel within a fierce competitor.
Following the news that the 46-year-old was rushed to hospital after collapsing at the weekend, Scottish football was last night united in praying that the qualities which made the former defender one of the most decorated players of his generation can help him through the biggest battle of his life.
Rejected as a kid by Hibernian for being too small, McNamara — son of the former Hibs and Celtic defender Jackie Snr — showed character and determination to rebuild his career en route to becoming a bona fide modern Celtic great.
After he burst on to the scene as a dynamic young right-back at Dunfermline, Tommy Burns invested £650,000 to take the defender to Celtic Park in the autumn of 1995.
After being voted PFA Scotland’s Young Player of the Year in 1996, he continued to shine under Burns’ successor, Wim Jansen.
Moved into midfield by the Dutchman, the versatile McNamara was an integral member of the 1997-98 team who won the League Cup and stopped Rangers winning ten-in-a-row as Celtic were crowned champions for the first time in a decade.
The esteem in which he was held by his peers was reflected in
McNamara being voted PFA Scotland’s Players’ Player of the Year by his fellow professionals at the culmination of that historic season.
In total, he went on to lift four league titles, three Scottish Cups and three League Cups at the Parkhead club in the company of players like Henrik Larsson and close friend Simon Donnelly.
In May 2001, he scored the opening goal in the 3-0 Scottish Cup final victory over Hibs as Celtic won their first domestic Treble since 1969.
McNamara also played in the 2003 UEFA Cup final in Seville as Martin O’Neill’s side’s thrilling adventure on the continent ended in an agonising 3-2 loss to Jose Mourinho’s Porto after extra-time.
In 2004 he was voted the Football Writers’ Player of the Year ahead of stars like Larsson and Chris Sutton before leaving Celtic after ten years in the summer of 2005.
Between 1996 and 2005, McNamara made 33 appearances for Scotland and he represented his country at the World Cup in France 1998 under Craig Brown.
After two years at Wolves, McNamara spent an ill-fated spell at Aberdeen that was cut short after just ten months before joining Falkirk.
There he helped the Bairns reach the 2009 Scottish Cup final, where they lost 1-0 to Rangers but qualified for European football for the first, and indeed only, time in Falkirk’s history.
After a spell at Partick Thistle, he hung up his boots in 2011.
But not before co-writing a sitcom called The Therapy Room based on his own experiences in professional football.
McNamara’s younger brother, Donny — a tiler to trade — played the lead role of Peter Tully, a working-class Scottish Junior player catapulted into a world of WAGs and money after joining a fictional English Premier League club. Gary Lewis, who starred in Billy
Elliot and Gangs of New York, played the manager, while Still
Game actor Frank Gilhooley — who co-wrote the project — portrayed the chairman.
Nine episodes were drafted in total by McNamara in 2011 in the twilight of his playing days before he went on to manage Partick Thistle.
He took over as interim boss at
Firhill in April 2011 and landed the job permanently a month later.
With Thistle five points behind Championship leaders Morton, but with two games in hand, he quit Firhill in acrimonious circumstances to take over at Dundee United in January 2013.
At Tannadice, he presided over one of Scottish football’s most thrilling young teams of modern times, one which boasted precocious talents like Ryan Gauld, John Souttar, Andy Robertson, Gary Mackay-Steven and Stuart Armstrong.
The first professional manager to sign Robertson, McNamara revealed how he used his own experience of rejection at Hibs to set the left-back down a path that led to Champions League glory last year with Liverpool.
Spotting his talent, McNamara paid Queen’s Park £5,000 to land Robertson on wages of £400-a-week in 2013.
‘Celtic released him because they reckoned he was too small but I’d heard that before,’ McNamara recalled before Liverpool beat Tottenham in the final in Madrid last year.
‘It happened to me at Hibs and I was released and signed for Dunfermline. Andy used that feeling of rejection to spur him on. It gave him a great hunger to succeed.
‘I had a great mentor and manager at Celtic in Tommy Burns who used to tell me to play every game and approach every training session as if it was your last, because one day it would be.
‘Andy epitomises that. He puts everything he has into his career and he’s been rewarded for it.’
McNamara’s United side reached the 2014 Scottish Cup final but fell at the last hurdle, losing 2-0 to St Johnstone at Celtic Park.
After selling star assets MackaySteven and Armstrong to Celtic in January 2015, a slump in form ensued. He was sacked in September 2015 by the Tannadice club following a 2-1 loss at St Johnstone.
McNamara went on to manage York City and was later named the club’s chief executive before stepping down in 2018.
Now working as a football agent, he has a number of high-profile clients like Celtic’s Callum McGregor and Greg Taylor.
He is also a consultant back at first club Dunfermline and his business interests include running the Don McNamara’s pub in Spain with friend and former Celtic team-mate Donnelly.
McNamara retains his house in York and it was near there where he collapsed at the weekend, with John Hartson claiming his former team-mate had suffered a ‘bleed on the brain.’
In response to the many well-wishers desperate to see the popular McNamara get over his health scare, last night his daughter issued a short update from his official Twitter account.
‘Thank you all for your kind words and support. My Dad is getting the best care possible. As you all can understand this is difficult for us as a family and we request privacy at this time.’