It was a chilly afternoon on January 30, 1965 when John Hughes borrowed a pair of Billy McNeill’s training shoes and wore them in the league match with Aberdeen.

The result was 8-0 in Celtic’s favour with the ‘sannies’ of Hughes bagging five goals.

Those five goals were part of an overall haul of 188 goals for the Hoops, making him the seventh highest scorer in the club’s history.

Those strikes, allied to an excellent close control and mean dribbling ability, made him a formidable weapon in the arsenal of the brilliant Celtic side which dominated Scottish football and conquered Europe in the latter part of the decade. Sannies or not, Hughes was a Celtic great.

He later said of that day: “I just remember that I didn’t particularly like the rubber boots at the time.

“At that time the boots had wee pimples on them and always felt unsteady on my feet but at training I used to feel quite steady with these things on. So I asked if I could play with them and I should have patented it shouldn’t I?

“It was great, I seemed to be a lot more sure-footed than other people and I think that was emphasised in that I scored five goals!”

Here we take a short look at the career of the Hoops legend, who sadly passed away in August 2022.

PRELUDE TO PARADISE

A Coatbridge Bhoy, born on April 3, 1943, Hughes starred for St Augustine’s School before blazing a trail with Kirkshaw Amateurs and Junior side, Shotts Bon Accord. It was from there that me made the move to the team had always supported and joined Celtic on October 3, 1959 at the age of just 16. It wouldn’t take this towering striker long to make the step up to the first team.

FIRST START

Still only 17-years-old, he got the call-up on August 13 for the opening game of the 1960/61 season, a League Cup tie against Third Lanark at Celtic Park and the 25,000 crowd saw him open the scoring in the 50th minute before Neilly Mochan tied up the 2-0 win. Although he would later become a valued member of Lisbon squad, Billy McNeill and Stevie Chalmers were the only other Lions on the field that day. A week later, the teenager ran Rangers ragged in the same competition at Ibrox and scored what proved to be the winner in a 3-2 victory for the Hoops, watched by a crowd of 60,000.

HIGHS

There were no fewer than six championship wins for Hughes, all of them in a row and he also played in the game that kick-started the glory years, the 3-2 Scottish Cup final win over Dunfermline in 1965. He also played in four League Cup-winning teams, the first three successively and the first of those featured two Hughes penalties in a 2-1 victory over Rangers watched by 107,600. As far as individual performances go, though, there was his glancing header to put Celtic back in the driving seat on aggregate against Leeds United in the 1970 European Cup semi-final at Hampden as 136,505 looked on. However, in domestic terms, the red letter day was that performance against Aberdeen on January 30, 1965 when he borrowed Billy McNeill’s sandshoes to play on the icy rock-hard surface and score FIVE goals in the 8-0 win.

THE LOWS

Leaving Celtic would have been a wrench for Hughes but, after missing out on being on the pitch in Lisbon, he more than most would have wanted success in the Hoops’ next European Cup final just three years later. This time he was on the pitch but he took the Feyenoord defeat to heart more than most when he failed to net what looked like a stick-on goal, but just as the Lions won as a team, the 1970 version lost as a team as well.

LAST START

Just as Kenny Dalglish was breaking into the team with the three scoring performances against Rangers at Ibrox in as many weeks, John Hughes was having his last hurrah. He played in the first game at Ibrox and starting three other League Cup ties plus one appearance as sub before playing his final league game on September 25, 1971. It was at Broomfield and Celtic were 2-0 up when he replaced Jim Craig in the 60th minute and the Hoops went on to beat Airdrie 5-0 with Lou Macari netting a hat-trick while Bobby Lennox and Dalglish also found the net. His final game was against BK 1903 Copenhagen in the European Cup with the Celts 2-1 down from the first leg. Willie Wallace had levelled the tie on aggregate by the time Hughes replaced Bobby Lennox at half-time. Roared on by a 53,000 crowd, the Celts took the game thanks to Tommy Callaghan finding the net and another counter from Wallace for a 4-2 aggregate win.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

Both he and fellow Celt, Willie Wallace, moved south to Crystal Palace on the same day, October 19, 1971 and then Hughes teamed up with younger brother, Billy, at Sunderland. He had moved to Roker Park in January of 1973 but was freed at the end of that season and retired from the playing side of the game in October of that year. Two spells as coach with Ballieston Juniors sandwiched a spell as manager with Stranraer before he spent four years until the start of 1982 as manager of the Scottish Junior side – a period during which he capped former Celt, Paul Wilson against Eire.

AND ANOTHER THING...

John Hughes was known as ‘Yogi’ and although the genesis of this is debated – a likeness to Yogi Bear, or, in the slogan of the cartoon character, he was ‘smarter than the average bear (Rangers player), or he got lost in the woods on one of Neilly Mochan’s legendary pre-European match walks before emerging from the undergrowth unharmed, it did lead to the ‘Feed the Bear’ chant that also served Roy Aitken. However, one chant that couldn’t be levelled at big Yogi was, ‘There’s only one John Hughes’. Because, there have in fact been three players of that name to play for the club. The first was a keeper who played five games while on the club’s books between 1922 and 1925. The second was our five-goal hero and the third was the John Hughes who played between 1995 and ’97 who, of course, with not a whiff of originality, was also known as Yogi.

The day five-star Yogi sunk Dons in his sannies!