The Celtic Bhoys Exclusive Interview with Stephen O’Donnell

The Celtic Bhoys had the oppurtunity to interview Stephen O’Donnell, one of the most prominent writers in Scottish football today.

What can fans of both sides expect from Fergus McCann Versus David Murray?

I’ll be honest and say that the book is aimed much more at Celtic fans. Rangers fans are unlikely to be interested because they don’t like criticism of their club and the book shows how their dominance of the Scottish game in the 1990s was lost to Celtic. For Celtic fans it’s a celebration of the recently achieved ninth consecutive title.

The book tells the story of how nine in a row was ultimately achieved considering how bad things were for the club in the early 1990s. Celtic were facing potential insolvency before Fergus McCann arrived at the club, while Rangers were winning nine consecutive titles. Compare that to today when Celtic have won nine and Rangers have faced the reality, not just the threat, of insolvency and liquidation. The book tells the story of how this transformation occurred.

What are some things you uncovered while researching the books that surprised you?

I think uncovering the true nature of the relationship between Rangers and the Belfast based shipbuilders Harland and Wolff in the early part of the 20th century was perhaps the biggest surprise. I talked about this in Tangled up in Blue; The Rise and Fall of Rangers FC but I also go into more detail in the new book.

In 1912 Rangers were still struggling financially with the fallout of the disaster at Ibrox in 1902. In the same year Harland and Wolff moved onto the Clyde and loaned Rangers £90,000. This agreement was tied up behind the back of H&W’s more liberal chairman, who was recuperating from a serious operation at the time.

The Rangers chairman in 1912 was John Ure Primrose, a man who was vehemently opposed to Irish Home rule or any ideas about Catholic emancipation. Harland and Wolff had often taken a similar hard line back home in Belfast, particularly in regard to their employment practices, and it seems certain that as part of the loan agreement between Rangers and the shipbuilders, the Ibrox club were exhorted to become a Catholic free zone, which of course it remained for most of the century.

Do the Scottish media need to change regarding how they cover football in the country?

Yes. The newspaper industry in general in Scotland is facing grave concerns over its future. Sports stories often generate sales for titles, which has left too man papers and journalists compromised, resorting to little more than telling people what they think they want to hear. That’s not journalism. Of course, this issue goes back a long way but perhaps reached its nadir in the 1990s during the tenures of Fergus McCann and David Murray.

Murray was lauded to the heavens while McCann couldn’t seem to do anything right according to the press. The sycophancy from the media fed into the aura which surrounded Murray and in all probability led the Rangers chairman to believe that he ultimately could do no wrong. This belief in his own infallibility eventually resulted in him making poor decisions, for example over the EBT scheme, which in the end contributed to the club’s annihilation.

Which book did you enjoy working on the most?

I enjoyed working on them all. It’s hard work writing a book and there’s no immediate reward. Gratification can be delayed even for many years, until the feedback starts to seep through and you finally get paid. I probably enjoyed this one the most because I knew it was going to be published when it was completed, and I had a confidence more of a fluency in what I was doing by that stage.

Have there been any unpleasant experiences with angry fans?

Yes, there’s been the usual crap. My picture was posted on rival fans forums, there were trolling reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. My local MP sent two nice WPCs round to my house to advise me on how to deal with it. It can be pretty unpleasant and relentless but I do my best to ignore it and others have suffered far worse.

What are your plans for future writing and is there a dream project?

I don’t want to say too much about this as there’s nothing definite happening and I don’t want to give away my best ideas yet! I would like to write more books about football, particularly centred on Celtic and Scottish football, but I started off writing novels and I may return to that next.

We at The Celtic Bhoys would like to thank Mr. O’Donnell for giving us the opportunity to pick his mind and wish him the best of luck for his upcoming book Fergus McCann Versus David Murray: How Celtic Turned The Tables on Their Glasgow Rivals, which comes out on July 27th