Jimmy Quinn (Scottish footballer)

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For other persons of the same name, see James Quinn.

Jimmy Quinn (born Croy, East Dunbartonshire (now North Lanarkshire), Scotland, 8 July 1878, died November 1945) was a Scottish footballer who played for Celtic F.C.

Signed for Celtic by 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. Like so many players of the time and since, he was a coal miner.

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 Jimmy McGrory, Henrik Larsson and Sandy McMahon. As a scorer of league goals, his total of 187 is surpassed only by McGrory's.

The foundations of Quinn's enduring fame were laid in the Scottish Cup Final of 1904 when Celtic faced the side who, even then, were their greatest rivals, Rangers. At half-time 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.

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, Bobby Lennox (273) Larsson (242) and Stevie Chalmers (228). Ninety years after he hung up his boots, he remains the club’s fifth highest goalscorer.


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Persondata
NAME Quinn, Jimmy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
DATE OF BIRTH 1878-7-8
PLACE OF BIRTH Croy, East Dunbartonshire
DATE OF DEATH 1945
PLACE OF DEATH