Craig, Tommy

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Tommy Craig was appointed first team coach and assistant to David Hay in the week prior to 25th February, 1987.

Tommy Craig had been a midfield player with Aberdeen, Sheffield Wednesday, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Swansea and Carlisle.
On retirement from playing he became Assistant Manager at Hibernian to John Blackley. Alex Miller came in at Hibs in November 1986 and brought his own backroom staff which meant Craig working more as a national team trainer in the short period between leaving Hibs and joing Celtic.

David Hay, with the Board's approval had sacked Frank Connor who had been his assistant and first team coach since his arrival. (Frank went to manage Raith Rovers until he came back to Celtic in 1990). Hay felt that there was little coming from Franks's involvement with the first team and from 2nd February 1986 Hay had run the first team by himself. This presented a few problems. As Tom Campbell and Pat Woods point out in "Dreams, and Songs to Sing", Danny McGrain pointed out that a knee injury prevented Hay from personally conducting and taking a full part in training sessions. It therefore seems odd that Hay fired Frank Connor.
In the year beween Connor's dismissal and Tommy Craig arriving Danny McGrain had been the ideal candidate and went about some of the work that a first team coach might do given that Danny himself was winding his playing career down. Indeed it was somewhat contentious that McGrain himself was not appointed First Team coach prior to his departure from the club at the end of the 1986-'87 season and led to a good deal of acrimony. It wood appear that the appointment of McGrain was vetoed by the Board at the time and Tommy Craig was arriving with all the necessary coaching qualifications in place.

Tommy arrived at a crucial period in 1987 at Celtic, where a comfortable lead in the league was being frittered away through poor defending.

Tommy Craig has since had a full career as coach and assistant manager at Aberdeen (as assistant to Roy Aitken), Scotland U21 team, Newcastle Utd, Hibernian, Charleroi in Belgium (as assistant to John Collins continuing the association made at Hibernian), St Mirren (as assistant to Danny Lennon) before taking over the manager's job there. He was sacked by St Mirren in December 2014.

Tommy Craig