IF Maurice Johnston was to rock up at Parkhead tomorrow and try to cheer on Celtic in their first meeting of the season with Rangers, it would not end well.
It is 35 years now since Johnston – just weeks after signing, or at least appearing to sign, for his childhood heroes for a second time and declaring “I don’t want to play anywhere else” – dropped an atomic bomb on Scottish football and joined the Ibrox club.
However, he has neither been forgiven or forgotten during that time and he is unlikely to be sighted in the East End of Glasgow any time this millennium due to the ill-feeling that persists.
Alfie Conn, who became the first footballer to cross the Old Firm divide in the post-war era when he moved from Spurs to Celtic in 1977, had no qualms about returning to Govan to watch Rangers, the side he grew up supporting as a boy and spent six years at, after he had become the Mo Jo of his day.
In a derby match no less. Which the visitors won. He lived to tell the tale. But only just.
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“It was the first time I had gone back since signing for Celtic,” he said over a coffee and a chat earlier this week to promote the fabulous and long overdue autobiography he has released to raise funds for MND Scotland, What’s It All About?
“After the game I was standing in the concourse waiting for my mates to come out of the toilet when I spotted a big punter with a beard coming straight towards to me. I thought, ‘Oh, here we go’. He leaned over and said, ‘I wish you were playing today!’ Then he threw his arms around me and gave me a big bear hug.”
It is hard to imagine anyone at Parkhead giving Johnston a cuddle. What’s It All About? is bursting with amusing stories, surprising revelations, poignant recollections and wonderful anecdotes from his time with Rangers, Celtic, Spurs, Motherwell, Hearts and Scotland.
The back pages of newspapers in the past week have been dominated by the comings and goings in the final days of the summer transfer window. But did anyone who moved have an experience as downright bizarre as Conn did when he went from Rangers to Spurs in 1974? It is unlikely.
“But one night I got a strange call from Willie Waddell (the Rangers general manager). He said, ‘Meet me at Glasgow Airport tomorrow’. That was it. No more information. When I got there we boarded a flight down to London.
“I kept saying to myself, ‘Why are we meeting Tommy Doc in London? Why aren’t we going to Manchester?’. When we got there Eddie Bailley, the Spurs assistant, met us. Nobody had told me I was joining Spurs.”
The gifted young midfielder had threatened to leave Rangers in the wake of their League Cup triumph over Celtic in 1970 due to his unhappiness that he was still on youth team wages, just £15 a week, after two years in the first team and had only been offered a paltry £2 pay rise.
Conn was, then, not entirely distraught at what he heard as Waddell negotiated with Bill Nicholson. He was put on £200 a week along with crowd, appearance and win bonuses. “It was just crazy stuff,” he said. “I was effectively quadrupling my wages. I almost asked to borrow his pen.”
Conn proved to be money very well spent. He arrived just after legendary Scottish striker Alan Gilzean had departed north London and soon inherited his countryman’s “King of White Hart Lane” moniker. His long hair, giant sideburns, rolled-down socks and untucked shirt made him a distinctive, iconic even, figure.
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“My look wasn’t intentional, it was just me,” he said. “To be honest, it was more laziness than anything else. I can remember a wee old woman wrote in to the club and said, ‘Alfie is a smashing player . . . but he must be the scruffiest person I have ever seen’.”
Fortunately, he was none-too-shabby on the park. He quickly endeared himself to supporters who demanded their team play swashbuckling, attacking, attractive football.
Spurs struggled during his debut season and went into their final game needing to beat Leeds United, who had reached the European Cup final with an aggregate victory over Barcelona a few days earlier, at home to remain in the old First Division.
Conn set up one goal and scored another in a 4-2 triumph which ensured their top flight survival. He also, much to the annoyance of the visitors’ combustible captain Billy Bremner, sat on the ball at one point.
“I used to love taking on players and the crowd enjoyed it,” he said. “The King of White Hart Lane was a song they used to sing for Gilly. When I got my goal that night that was what reverberated around the ground. It was magical. Honest to God, Spurs was a fantastic club. The welcome I get from the supporters when I go down even now is phenomenal.”
He played in their European Cup Winners’ Cup final triumph over Moscow Dynamo in the Nou Camp in 1972 after Colin Jackson was ruled out by an injury he suffered in a training session the day before and so became one of The Barcelona Bears.
“I felt so sorry for Colin,” he said. “He had played in every game. It was a toss up between Andy Penman and I who was going to be playing. I phoned home the night before and my dad (the Hearts legend of the same name) told me had seen that Andy was going to be playing on the news.
“So you can imagine how I felt when the team was read out at the pre-match meal. They just said, ‘Alfie, you’re playing’. I thought, ‘I take it chips is out of the question!’ It was possibly the best thing because I didn’t have time to think about it.
“I played with great players at Rangers. It is a shame the Barcelona Bears never played together again. Colin Stein got sold to Coventry, Willie Johnston got sold to West Brom and I got sold to Spurs. In a one-off game, that team could have beaten anybody. I mean that, anybody, no problem.”
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Conn had also been in the Rangers side on the fateful afternoon of the Ibrox Disaster in 1971 when 66 supporters lost their lives on a crush on Stairway 13 after Stein had scored a last-minute equaliser against Celtic.
He attended as many of the funerals of those who had perished as he could in the days which followed, including the five boys from Markinch in Fife who never returned home, along with his team mates.
But as a lad of just 18 himself, it took a heavy toll on him psychologically. “It was an awful time,” he said. “I lost up to a stone in weight because I wasn’t eating. It was so difficult to comprehend.”
Rangers fans were unable to understand Conn’s decision to join their city rivals. But it was, as the Americans say, a no brainer for him. His previous two years had been blighted by a succession of injuries. He had, too, not seen eye-to-eye with Terry Neill or his replacement as manager Keith Burkinshaw and had fallen out of the first team.
When Jock Stein approached him about returning home, he did not hesitate despite the uproar which he knew his choice of destination would cause.
“No disrespect to Albion Rovers, but if Jock Stein had been Albion Rovers manager I would have joined them,” he said. “Yes, it was a big shock for half the city. But I did it because I wanted to play under Jock.
“It was huge news at the time. But I didn’t think about it at the time because Jock Stein wanted me. It was just incredible playing under him. He was an incredible man.”
Conn enjoyed teaming up with the likes Kenny Dalglish, who he had been close friends with since they played together in the Scotland youth team, Johnny Doyle, Danny McGrain and Pat Stanton on the park too. He helped the Parkhead club to complete a Premier Division and Scottish Cup double.
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His first game back at Ibrox that season provoked an inevitable outpouring of hostility. “I used to go out and listen to 50,000 Rangers fans singing for me,” he said. “But that day I had 50,000 Rangers fans booing me. You just have to get on with it I suppose. It didn’t affect me at the time. If somebody shouted abuse at me I thought, ‘So what?’
“I hit the woodwork twice that day. Years later I was on a night out and a couple of Celtic supporters came up to me. One of them said, ‘You meant to hit the post didn’t you? You didn’t want to score against Rangers did you?’ But they were laughing about it.”
“I didn’t realise at the time how big it was. We didn’t go out a lot when we played. It was only afterwards when I was getting the abuse that I realised. I got abuse at Old Firm games obviously. But it was worse after I finished playing. Some of the abuse was just terrible.
“I remember going to a Rangers do up north with Bud (Willie Johnston) and a few other players. Bud decided he wanted to stop at a Rangers pub in Perth that a pal of his ran. I was recognised by two or three fans. Then all of a sudden more and more got involved. I had to walk out because of the abuse I was getting.
“It still goes on. But that’s life I suppose. I can honestly say I have no regrets about anything I did in football. I enjoyed it all. When you make a decision you live by it.”
Conn added: “The injuries were a big, big hindrance to me. I reckon I lost four years through injuries. I suffered a fractured ankle and then I had cartilage problems. My biggest problem was my knees. I couldn’t turn a certain way.
“In those days, getting operated on was like going into a butcher’s shop. I was in hospital for 10 days and lost nearly a stone after getting a cartilage operation when I was at Rangers. I couldn’t eat because of the pain. It is all different now. My boy got an operation on his cruciate ligament and he was in and out the same day.
“I remember when I was at Celtic I went in to see Pat Stanton in hospital when his cartilage went. I said: ‘How’s your knee?’ He said: ‘I think the surgeon’s left his wedding ring in there!’. I suppose the only disappointment was I didn’t get more caps for Scotland.”
His only start for the national team proved eventful. They were on the receiving end of an infamous 5-1 drubbing at the hands of England at Wembley in 1975. The aftermath was even more harrowing.
His cousin Tony was the front man in the psychedelic jazz-rock combo The Tony Evans Association and had organised a reception for the Scotland players at the Empire Ballroom in Leicester Square. Despite the result, they felt compelled to attend.
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When some members of the Tartan Army gatecrashed the party a riot – prompted by one of the band members holding up five fingers – broke out.
“Bottles were flying and folk were punching lumps out of each other,” he said. “It was a war zone. Tony pleaded with me to get up on stage and appeal for calm. As soon as I did so a bottle whizzed by my head and smashed off the wall. I’m no UN diplomat.”
“I had my time and I enjoyed it,” he said. “Why bring it all back up? But the time was right when my wife passed. I just thought, ‘Why not? I’ll try to raise as much money for them as possible’.
“That is the only reason I have done it. I wouldn’t have done it if my wife had been alive. Every pound that is raised from the book is a pound towards a cure. It is not about me making money.”
There have been charity events both in Scotland and England in recent weeks which have raised thousands for MND Scotland. The softly-spoken, self-effacing septuagenarian has been moved by the support he has received. It says much about the high regard a man who last kicked a ball decades ago and is no longer especially interested in the game is held in.
“I am still a Rangers fan,” he said. “I like to see them win. But I go to Ibrox very seldom. I rarely sit and watch a game on the telly to be honest. My pals will say, ‘Come on out and watch the Celtic v Rangers game’. But I am not interested. I think it is just football nowadays. I am not into it.
“Football has changed completely. It is all sideways, back, sideways, back. I watched a game one night and a player had the ball outside the 18 yard box he was attacking. All of a sudden it was back with his goalkeeper. I thought, ‘What’s that all about? How can you be entertained by that?’ It is brutal.
“Somebody gets a wee push on the shoulder and they go down as if they have been shot by a sniper. They should have tried playing back in our day when it was Tommy Smith or Norman Hunter clattering you! The criticism that referees get is over the top as well. The last man who didn’t make a mistake was nailed to a cross.”
What’s It All About? The Alfie Conn Story by Alfie Conn and Jeff Holmes is published by Pitch Publishing and costs £25. It is available online and from bookshops now or from co-author Jeff Holmes by emailing jeff.holmes4@btinternet.com.
Jeff offers free postage and a limited edition Alfie Conn bookmark. A significant percentage of the royalties is going to MND Scotland.
