“He Loved Each Celtic Supporter Individually” – Hugh Keevins Shares Touching Tommy Burns Story

Regular readers of my blog will know I love listening and sharing news from the fan media. Mainly because it gives an analysis of the club and the team from a fans perspective but also because a lot of the times you get to hear stories about players or the club that you would never get to on the main stream media.

On The Only As Good As Your Last Game podcast host Regan Stevenson had a special guest on the show to discuss all things football but mainly Celtic related content.

Hugh Keevins recounted many stories from the Lisbon Lions, Billy McNeill, Kenny Dalglish and Neil Lennon.

But one story that I could really relate to was Keevins recollection of a story involving the late, great Tommy Burns.

Tommy was a player I loved as a kid and in my later years as a young adult, became a further hero to me after his revitalisation of a Celtic team that had been in the doldrums for a number of years prior to the Fergus McCann era.

Tommy’s footballing style won over the hearts and minds of the Celtic supporters but only ever managed to win a single Scottish Cup due to the financial doping exploits of the club across the Clyde. But lets not digress.

Keevins recounted the day when he was working with Tommy on the Celtic legends autobiography, and revealed the esteem that Tommy held the Hoops fans in, “I wrote Tommy’s book, Twists and Turns, and we were getting pretty late in terms of delivering the book to the publisher.

“And I said to him, ‘Tam, you need to come to my house, and we need to spend the weekend finishing this book. It has to be finished. I have to give it to them at Monday.‘

“So he turned up to my house just as my wife was leaving with our children. Both of the grandparents were still alive then. My wife always took the children round to see the two grannies on a Saturday.

“So Tommy came in, gave everybody a big hug and away they went. Ten seconds after they gone, the doorbell rang, and I open the door and my wife said to me, ‘There’s a wee boy outside, he saw Tommy come in. Can he come in?’

“So the wee boy came in and Tommy signed his autograph book and we took a photograph and away he went. Shut the door.

“I said, ‘Right Tam. Let’s get started.’ The doorbell rang again, opened the door. It was my wife again. I said, ‘What is it now?’

“She said, ‘Everyday knows he’s here. There are kids all over the place. They’re swarming ass around the garden.‘

“We had to bring them in, one by one. And everybody had to get a photograph or an autograph or whatever. And I always say that Tommy Burns loved the Celtics supporters on an individual basis. He didn’t love them depending on which stand they sat in. He didn’t love them depending on which supporters bus they came in.

“He loved each Celtic supporter individually.”