Jimmy Quinn (Scottish footballer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See also Jimmy Quinn (Northern Irish footballer).

Jimmy Quinn (born Croy, East Dunbartonshire (now North Lanarkshire), Scotland, 8 July 1878, died November 1945) is for many the archetypal Celtic centre forward, still revered a century after his heyday by those who know him only as a name. “There’ll never be another Jimmy Quinn” is a statement still heard today.

In football, enduring memory can be a fair indication of greatness—while many are doubtless unfairly forgotten, few are unjustly remembered. What makes Quinn’s case more remarkable is that he was swiftly succeeded as Celtic's centre forward by the redoubtable Jimmy McGrory yet even that succession has not eclipsed the memory of Quinn, who is still remembered as unique.

It is not that he was Celtic’s first great goalscorer: that title belongs to Sandy McMahon. Nor was Quinn even an immediate success: signed for Celtic by the great Willie Maley from junior club Smithston Albion in 1900, he took several seasons to make his mark, playing at outside- then inside-left before being moved to centre. He was, by all accounts, a most reluctant recruit, refusing to believe that he had the talent to succeed at senior level, despite a superb physique: though not notably tall—174 cm—he had powerful shoulders and a deep chest. His early outings on the wing suggest that he had a fair turn of speed too. Like so many players of the time and since, he was a coal miner.

[edit] 1904 Scottish Cup Final

The foundations of his enduring fame were laid in the Scottish Cup Final of 1904 when Celtic faced the side who, even then, were their greatest rivals, and have remained so ever since – Rangers. At half-time, things did not look good: Rangers led by two goals to nil. In the second half, however, Celtic came back to win 3-2, Quinn scoring all the goals. This was the second Scottish Cup Final hat-trick. It was 68 years before the feat was repeated by John "Dixie" Deans in Celtic’s 6-1 defeat of Hibs in 1972. However, Quinn’s single-handed reversal of a 2-0 deficit is unique in a Cup Final.

Had he never played again, that Cup Final victory alone might have ensured his immortality, but Quinn’s career statistics show that he was no one-match wonder. He scored 216 competitive goals in 331 appearances – 187 in the league (273 appearances) and 29 cup goals in 58 appearances, 7 or 8* of those goals in finals (1904, 08, 09, & 1911). He won six successive championship and five Scottish Cup medals with Celtic and was capped eleven times for Scotland, scoring seven times, including four out of five goals v Ireland in 1908. His strike rate of 0.65 – almost two goals every three games – is surpassed among Celtic goalscorers only by McGrory, Larsson and McMahon. Ninety years after he hung up his boots, he remains the club’s fifth highest goalscorer, the first of only five players to score two hundred goals or more for the club; as a scorer of league goals, his total of 187 is surpassed only by McGrory's.

Although he might often have played like a one-man team – it was said no game was ever lost until Quinn had left the field – he was one of a galaxy of stars in what can be fairly acclaimed the first superteam, since the same small group of players furnished the championship-winning side six years running, from 1904-10, a feat without precedent at the time, and unequalled for six decades, until Jock Stein’s Celtic matched it in 1971, on their way to nine championships in a row.

[edit] The greatest ever?

It is futile to argue over who was the greatest Celtic centre forward of all time, since the point can never be resolved; it is difficult even to establish the relevant criteria for such a judgement. Goal-scoring is a large part of it, though not the whole, and the total of goals scored is not the sole measure - not all goals are of equal value. It would be a worthwhile exercise to discover how often in his career Quinn was the scorer of vital match-levelling or -winning goals, as he was in that 1904 Cup Final.

Viewed in these terms, Quinn’s achievements stand up well: he was a key part of a team that dominated the game in a way none had before and few have since – something that could not be said of the Celtic side McGrory played for. That cup-final hat-trick was the first a Celtic player scored against Rangers in a major competition, and he also scored the second - a league hat-trick on New Year’s Day 1912 in a 3-0 victory. He remains the only player, from either side, to have twice scored a hat-trick in an Old Firm match. He was the first Celtic player to score 200 goals for the club, and only four others have done so—McGrory, of course, Lennox (273) Larsson (242) and Chalmers (228)—and it must be remembered that the last three had European Cup and League Cup competitions to score in, besides the Cup and League that were Quinn’s and McGrory’s only opportunities.

In sum, Quinn was an exciting player who scored frequently over a long period, often in vital games against arch-rivals Rangers, and in so doing contributed to his team’s outstanding and sustained success: thus he is justly remembered as one of the greatest Celtic players of all time. David Potter’s recent biography The Mighty Quinn: Jimmy Quinn, Celtic's First Goal Scoring Hero (Tempus, 2005) is a long-overdue tribute to his memory, and may do something to correct the glaring and inexplicable omission of the great man from Celtic’s own Hall of Fame, for which he has (apparently) not even been nominated, let alone selected.

[edit] Sources

(NB. Football career statistics, in particular games played and goals scored, are notoriously variable, since some sources include games and competitions which others omit.)

Internet:

• http://www.scottishleague.net (go to SFAQS)
• http://www.croyhistorical.org.uk/
• http://www.celticfc.co.uk/
• http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/
• http://edu.archive.scotsman.com/

Books:

• Factfile - Celtic ed Chris Mason, pub Parragon 1998