After his team’s final home league game of the season, Celtic manager Davie Hay headed up the tunnel amid deafening jeers that echoed throughout the stadium.
On May 2, 1987, in the afternoon, a Falkirk team that had narrowly avoided relegation by five points defeated the hosts 2-1. In that campaign, it was only their fourth victory away from home.
In addition, it was Celtic’s first home defeat in a dismal campaign. Four minutes remaining, Jimmy Gilmour, a virtual unknown, scored their opponents’ game-winning goal.
Jimmy Johnstone was a small man who was a member of the Glasgow club and had a decent background. Prior to kickoff, the Lisbon Lion, who would go on to be acclaimed by the fans as Celtic’s greatest-ever player in a millennium ballot, had said to his nephew, “Noo, don’t ye dae anythin’ daft, ye hear?”
Unfortunately, the request was ignored as his relative dropped in front of the diving board with a speculative shot fired from outside the box. With a cunning bounce, Pat Bonner slipped by the goalkeeper’s clenching left hand and made his way to the corner of his net.
When word reached the east end of Glasgow through transistor radios, an already stressful episode was made worse when it was revealed that 10-man Rangers—who had player-manager Graeme Souness sent off in the first half—had drew 1-1 with Aberdeen at Pittodrie.
That one point clinched the winner of that season’s championship with one game remaining. The 14,238 Celtic supporters could not hide their frustration at what they had just seen as the traveling support in the northeast broke out into fits of hysteria and staged an unplanned pitch invasion.
The bewildered and enraged supporters jeered as the defeated Celtic players and their manager walked slowly into the safety of the home dressing room.
An enraged fan threw a Celtic scarf at Hay as he followed the playing staff. Back when he was an uncompromising player, The Quiet Assassin, never let up.
Rather, the manager picked up the thrown-away shirt. The next thing he did was quite amazing. After tying the scarf over his neck, Hay headed into the seclusion found well below the stadium’s foundations.
Years later, when I had the honor of co-writing Hay’s autobiography, which was released in 2009, we talked about that terrible day—a rare aberration in an otherwise illustrious career.
I asked him if he could recall the exact moment the furiously discarded neckwear fell at his feet.
“Yeah, I remember it clearly,” he nodded. “I wrapped the scarf around my throat.”
“Why not just turn it off?” Reasonably, I thought, I asked.
“Because I am a Celtics fan,” Hay grinned.
Surprisingly, one of his final actions as a Celtic manager at a location named Paradise was that straightforward response from a man I am happy to be able to call a true friend.
Hay was let go eighteen days later.
It must have hurt the Celtics fan to throw out the team’s jerseys.
Their displeasure would have been negligible compared to what the manager was going through at that very moment.
Nobody should ever undervalue what Celtic meant to a proud club ambassador who turned 76 last month, or what it means now.
Davie Hay is all that is required of today’s supporters if they ever needed an example of what it means to be a Celtics fan.
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