Fallon remembers the Celt mourned on derby day No matter how many Glasgow Derby victories Sean Fallon and Jock Stein enjoyed – and there were plenty – neither ever forgot the first they secured together. Nor were they likely to. When Celtic beat Rangers 2-1 on September 20 1952, it was the club’s first derby win in two years and Stein’s first success in the fixture since signing the previous December. Fallon, for his part, was fielded at centre-forward in what the Glasgow Herald described as “a successful Celtic experiment”, while noting that the converted full-back was “frequently pulled up for his method of charging”. One such thrust, the Irishman recalled with a smile, sent Rangers keeper George Niven careering over his own goal-line. The match was further illuminated by a wonder goal from Jimmy Walsh, lauded by The Herald as “one of the finest ever seen in Scottish football”. Yet despite the manner and significance of Celtic’s triumph, none of the players – not Fallon nor Stein; not even Walsh or the normally irrepressible Charlie Tully - were in celebratory mood. Derby day had, after all, begun not with a light breakfast and talk of the game ahead, but with the funeral of a friend and team-mate. Jackie Millsopp, a versatile and popular player, had died just three days earlier, having collapsed during a training session with a burst appendix. He was just 22. Today marks the 61st anniversary of his passing and, in Fallon’s upcoming biography, he shares his memories of a heartbreaking episode for everyone at Celtic Park. “That was a dreadful time,” he said. “Jackie had been taken ill and needed an operation, but everyone at the club thought he would recover. It was a terrible shock when he didn’t make it. There were complications with his operation and we were told a few days later that he had died. I’m not ashamed to say that I shed a few tears around that time. “I had got to know him well because we’d shared a cabin on the boat over to America the summer before, when the club took us over for a tour after we had won the Scottish Cup. We became good friends and Jackie was a lovely lad. Everyone at Celtic liked him, and it affected us all for a long, long time.” These days, there would be no question of the weekend’s fixtures being honoured in the wake of such a tragic event. Yet remarkable as it might now seem, the players were expected not only to immediately come to terms with their friend’s death, but to make their way directly to Celtic Park from his funeral, to face their biggest game of the season. The photograph above shows Fallon bearing down on Niven during the ensuing action, with players from both sides wearing black armbands in honour of the Celt buried that morning. “It seems amazing, looking back,” Sean said. “But on the day of the funeral itself, we just got on with it. We were all there at the service, of course, and few of the Rangers boys came along too. It’s hard to believe now that we all had an Old Firm match the same day, but what happened to Jackie ended up bringing everyone at Celtic together. We won the match, and it’s a game I’ll always remember.” CUTCH
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 09:48:17 +0000