Danny McGrain

At one point in his playing career, Danny McGrain was the finest full-back in world football. The fact he managed to achieve that status despite the many hurdles he had to overcome speaks volumes of his character. It was also to Celtic’s great fortune that he remained faithful to the club, remaining at Celtic Park for 20 years, having joined just before the Lisbon triumph in 1967 and finally bidding farewell to Paradise in May 1987. Not surprisingly, he would later return home to where his heart remained.

He was part of the famous Quality Street Gang, a group of highly-talented young players coming through the ranks at Celtic in the wake of the legendary Lisbon Lions, but even among those youngsters, many of whom would go on to have impressive football careers, Danny McGrain and Kenny Dalglish were the two names who stood above all the rest.

And they learned from training and playing alongside the great Celts that Jock Stein had forged into an all-conquering team.

He was part of the famous Quality Street Gang, a group of highly-talented young players coming through the ranks at Celtic in the wake of the legendary Lisbon Lions.

PRELUDE TO PARADISE
Danny McGrain caught the eye of Celtic while playing for Scottish Schools at Ibrox. Legend has it that Rangers approached the young player but on hearing that his name was Daniel Fergus McGrain, they wrongly presumed he was Catholic and didn’t pursue the matter further. The same day he played at Ibrox, on May 13, 1967, Sean Fallon was sitting with McGrain’s parents in their Drumchapel home, when he got home he signed for Celtic that same day. He was farmed out to both Queen’s Park Victoria XI and Maryhill Juniors while another recent signing, Kenny Dalglish did likewise with Cumbernauld United. It soon became apparent that this group of Celtic reserves would be worthy challengers and successors to the Lisbon Lions in the first team.

DEBUT BHOY
On August 26, 1970, Celtic travelled to Tannadice for a League Cup sectional match with the Hoops already qualified. The 16,000 crowd saw the home side take the lead in the 31st minute and Davie Hay equalise with eight minutes left. In the 89th minute, United took the lead again only for Lou Macari to equalise 30 seconds later. The young Danny McGrain replaced Harry Hood in the 65th minute of that match. Three days later, the fifth consecutive league flag was raised at Celtic Park and McGrain made his first start and home debut. Bobby Lennox scored in each half while Bobby Murdoch missed a penalty in the 2-0 win over Morton watched by 35,000. There were seven players on the pitch that day that had, or would go on to make more than 300 starts for Celtic. One of them was in the blue and white hoops of Morton; at the age of 39, Bobby Collins was still playing. Danny McGrain wasn’t even born when Bobby played his first game for Celtic.

He skippered the club in two of their most famous title triumphs – the 4-2 game of 1979 and the last-gasp glory of Love Street in 1986.

HIGHLIGHTS
There were a multitude of highs for Danny McGrain in a career in which he started off mixing with the Lisbon Lions and carried on through to the late 1980s, though his departure in 1987 meant that he just missed out on the glory of the centenary year. There were six championships, five Scottish Cups and two League Cups, his first two championships coming as part of the nine-in-a-row sequence, while his final three were as skipper as he was the proud captain of the Hoops for a decade. Not only was he around at the time of Lisbon and around for most of the nine-in-a-row years, he also skippered the club in two of their most famous title triumphs – the 4-2 game of 1979 and the last-gasp glory of Love Street in 1986, one of his favourite games as a Celt.

BOWING OUT
Danny McGrain’s first and last appearances for Celtic both featured on the front page of the Celtic View - the first after making the breakthrough as a 20-year-old and the last after playing his part in the magnificent 5-0 win over St Mirren in Paisley when Dundee’s 2-0 defeat of Hearts at Dens Park also helped win the title in the most dramatic of circumstances. He also played a central role in Celtic’s stunning third goal that day, starting the move on the edge of his own penalty area, which ended with the ball in the back of the St Mirren net. Danny McGrain’s first league appearance heralded the raising of a flag and his last on May 3, 1986 delivered one. It was a fitting curtain call on the remarkable career of an extraordinary player.

"Danny McGrain was probably a player who had no superior anywhere in the world." Hugh McIlvanney OBE

PARADISE FOUND
Danny McGrain left Celtic on May 12, 1987, just one day short of the 20th anniversary of his signing for the club. There would follow a 10-year absence from Celtic Park, with a brief playing spell at Hamilton Accies, before coaching stints at Hamilton, Arbroath and Clydebank, but his home was always Paradise, and he returned there in 1997, and there he remains. His coaching skills, whether in the Youth Academy or more recently at first-team level, have been vital to the club, and the many players who have arrived in the intervening years have benefited from his experience and expertise. And those players who need a crash-course in the club’s history upon joining, very quickly discover that Daniel Fergus McGrain has a central role in this grand old team.

IF I HADN’T BEEN A FOOTBALLER…
‘If I hadn’t been a player I would have been a mechanical engineer,” Danny McGrain admitted. ‘That’s what I trained for in college in my early years at the club and I had the qualifications for it. But I think I’d have been rotten at it! I struggled with the maths side of it and eventually Kenny Dalglish and I went to Mr Stein and asked if we could leave college and go full-time and thankfully, he said yes. Kenny was training to be a joiner, so Mr Stein has saved the world from a lot of disasters. Had we qualified there would have been buildings, bridges and book shelves falling down all over Scotland.’

663 CELTIC CAREER APPEARANCES
League: 441, Scottish Cup: 60, League Cup: 106, Europe: 56

8 CELTIC CAREER GOALS
League: 4, Scottish Cup: 1, League Cup: 3

13 CELTIC CAREER MAJOR HONOURS
League Titles: 6, Scottish Cup: 5, League Cup: 2