The Celtic Thread

Forget the statistics and the honours for a moment and you have a love story, a story of the underdog in a foreign land fighting for survival, literally, to put the next meal on the table. We were born not simply as a football club, we were a means to an end.

Brother Walfrid was quick to realise the potential for feeding the poor of the parish that the game of football brought and he knew too that to survive he needed to attract the cream of the crop to play a new brand of fast, attacking, entertaining, football that would provide a beacon of light for the impoverished Irish Catholics of the East end to look up to and take pride in.

Men like John Glass came to the fore as Brother Walfrid’s right hand man, alongside Dr John Conway, a brilliant Doctor who could have earned top dollar in London but instead chose to remain in Glasgow’s East end. Pat Welsh stepped forward too, accompanying Brother Walfrid and John Glass to the home of the Maleys in December 1887 to sign Tom Maley,when they ended up inviting Willie Maley along too, a move which changed the next 50 years of the club in an instant.

Founding fathers William and John McKillop, as well as Joseph Shaughnessy, Hugh Murphy and David Meikleham, Daniel Molloy, first Secretary John O’Hara and first Chairman John H McLaughlin and Tom White, all pioneers who played their part in establishing Celtic FC.

And what do they all have in common?

They all lie at rest in one of most historic sites in Celtic’s history after Celtic Park itself and the Estadio Nacional, Lisbon, that of St Peters Cemetery, Dalbeth, just a stone’s throw from Celtic Park itself. In its historic grounds lie not only many of the founding fathers who turned a ghetto club into one of the biggest clubs in the world but so too lie many of the hundreds of Irishmen who laboured to build the initial Celtic Park and make it the finest in the land.

It is a treasure trove of Celtic history and within its walls lie at rest many of our ex players who made us great.

Early players such as Dan Doyle, Michael Dunbar, Jerry Reynolds, Sandy McMahon, David Hamilton, Barney Battles, Johnny Divers, Mick McKeown, Johnny Campbell as well as Jimmy McMenemy, John Bonnar, John McAlindon and the legendary Jimmy McGrory.

The Celtic Graves Society aim to ensure that all those who played their part, no matter how small, in the rise of our club will be remembered and commemorated. Their graves,where necessary, will be marked and their lives celebrated and their achievements never forgotten.

To stand at their graves is to stand in the shoes of men like Willie Maley, maybe even Brother Walfrid and many other great names from our past who would have been in attendance as they were laid to rest.

We encourage you to take advantage of our tours of the cemetery and remember our dead.

"They never die who live in the hearts they leave behind"