Johnny Doyle was a Viewpark Bhoy, born on May 11, 1951, and like another famous Viewpark winger, Jimmy Johnstone, Doyle would also wear the green and white Hoops. His route to Paradise was not a straight one, however. He joined Ayr United in 1968 and spent eight years at Somerset Park before he got his move to Celtic Park.

He joined his boyhood heroes on March 15, 1976, and made his debut just five days later at Dens Park in a 1-0 victory for Jock Stein’s side, the only goal of the game coming from Kenny Dalglish.

It would be the following season that he began to establish himself in the first-team, and he netted the first of 37 goals in a 3-0 League Cup sectional win over Dumbarton. He was a regular in the side as Stein steered the club to an impressive league and Scottish Cup double, with Doyle and Tommy Burns the substitutes in the Cup final victory over Rangers.

Between 1976 and 1981, Johnny Doyle made 143 appearances for Celtic, scoring 37 goals including, perhaps most memorably a header in the 2-0 victory over Real Madrid in the European Cup quarter-final in 1980.

In the famous ’10 men won the league’ game in May 1979, Doyle was the 11th man, red-carded early in the second-half against Rangers. He was the most relieved man at Celtic Park when his team-mates won the game 4-2 to clinch the title.

Johnny Doyle was only 30-years-old when he died, on October 19, 1981, the result of a tragic accident while he was working in his house. He was mourned as a husband, father, brother, friend and team-mate by all who knew him, while the Celtic support mourned his loss as a fellow Celt.

And the words of Tommy Burns, speaking to the Celtic View in 2005 about his friend, have a particular poignancy, given that we also lost this great Celt far too soon. “It was a tragedy when Doyley died, and it makes you realise just how fortunate you are when there are people who come into this world and then leave it so suddenly.”

Johnny Doyle
Forward 1976-1981
Celtic debut: March 20, 1976; Scottish League, Dundee 0-1 Celtic

A             S              G
League   82           13           15
Scottish Cup       10           2              7
League Cup         25           4              14
Europe 6              1              1
â€‹Total                      123         20           37

On This Day: Johnny Doyle, born to play for Celtic