Sinclair, Graeme

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Fullname: Graeme James Sinclair
aka: Sinky, Graeme Sinclair
Born: 1 July 1957
Birthplace: Paisley
Signed: 12 Aug 1982
Left: 19 May 1985 (free); 13 June 1985 (St Mirren)
Position: Defender, Full back
Debut: Dunfermline 1-7 Celtic, League Cup, 28 Aug 1982
Only goal: St Mirren away 4-2 League 18 April 1984
International: Scotland U/21

Biog

Graeme Sinclair signed for Celtic on 12 August 1982 from Dumbarton, for £65,000. He was marked as the best marker in the First Division (second tier of Scottish football) and this was hoped to pay Celtic dividends.

As a full-back he never really set the heather on fire, in an era when the ‘New Firm‘ of Aberdeen & Dundee Utd had taken a lead and dominance in Scottish football. Celtic still fought for honours but came short in what was a strong era for Scottish football.

However his name will be remembered greatly for one sublime performance in particular in Europe. In the European Cup in 1982, Celtic were drawn against the highly respected Ajax side which contained the returned Johann Cruyff who was still an exceptional player. Graeme Sinclair though had the unenviable position of marking and controlling the legend in the away match. To put the whole challenge in context for him, only six weeks previously he was in the Stirlingshire Cup Final against Stenhousemuir.

Celtic, against all predictions, won the match 2-1 which is remembered for Sinky to have marked Cruyff out the game, Sinky setting up Charlie Nicholas for the first goal and then McClusky having scored at the death. It was exceptional. Cruyff actually broke Sinky’s nose during the match (accidentally). However that didn’t dampen the joy at the result, and Graeme Sinclair has the right to live off this match performance. He was an unlikely hero.

He takes pride from that game but he was to put his role modestly and espoused instead about the whole team work ethic:

“Ajax were a great team but we had some terrific players, too, like Charlie, Murdo, George, Danny, big Pat Bonner, and one of our subs that night was Davie Moyes. It was a great night, and I’ll never forget it.”

At home he also had some good memorable performances, including marking out the highly regarded Paul Sturrock against Dundee Utd.

In truth, many weren’t wholly convinced of his ability, and flak his way wasn’t uncommon as it was towards various others. He never repeated to match again that quality performance from that night against Ajax but few ever could.

Injuries and a loss of form saw him ultimately fall out of favour at Celtic. New Celtic manager Davie Hay didn’t fancy him in the first team, and so with his gametime at Celtic limited, he was put out on loans to Man City (Nov 84) who were now managed by Billy McNeill and then to Dumbarton (Feb 85). He later joined St Mirren on a free in May 1985.

Graeme Sinclair made 75 appearances in all competitions in his time at Celtic with just the one goal (ironically against St Mirren who he joined from Celtic).

Sadly, in the same year he left Celtic he was forced to retire prematurely from play due to injuries at just 27.

Apparently he was a bit of an Elvis impersonator, with “All shook up” being his favourite. (You may insert whatever pun you wish to at this point).

Post-playing
At time of writing, it was reported that Graeme Sinclair suffers from arthritis, but he is as cheerful and uncomplicated as he was that night he played Johan Cruyff off the park. He also owns a newsagent’s shop in St James’s Court, Paisley,

The Ajax match was the undoubted highlight of his Hoops career, which will ensure he is very fondly remembered for in retrospectives.

A good Celtic man we all have some fondness for.

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The man who stopped Johan Cruyff

Match: 29 Sep 1982 Ajax 1-2 Celtic (link)
By: Mark Henderson on 12 Jun, 2012 09:43
Official Celtic site

WHEN Celtic announced a pre-season friendly match against Dutch giants, Ajax,for thisJuly, it evoked fond memories for Graeme Sinclair.

Back in September, 1982, just six weeks after signing for the Bhoys from Dumbarton, ‘Sinky’ delivered the performance of his life to shackle the threat of Johan Cruyff and help the Hoops progress in the European Cup at the expense of a gifted Ajax side.

Celtic had managed to earn a 2-2 draw at home in the first leg of the European Cup first round tie, with Charlie Nicholas and Frank McGarvey on target.

However, in truth, the Hoops had been fortunate to escape with a share of the spoils, with Ajax, inspired by the likes of Cruyff, Jesper Olsen and Soren Lerby, the superior team on the night.

That led manager Billy McNeill to turn to Sinclair, who had forged a reputation as a formidable man-marker, to negate the threat of the influential Cruyff.

For someone who had been starring in a Stirlingshire Cup tie a matter of weeks earlier, it was certainly a daunting task – but one he was determined to accomplish. And it was one of the few occasions that the great Johan Cruyff came out second best.

“As far as highs went, it probably was the greatest game I had every played in. It was just an incredible experience,” reflected Sinclair, speaking exclusively to the official Celtic website.

“Big Billy was speaking about the tactics before the game. He came to me and said ´Sinky´s going to be marking Cruyff´, and I think everyone must have thought: ‘What!?’ – as I had only been there six weeks.

“He said, ‘Even if he walks back to the goalkeeper and realises what´s happened, I just want you to walk beside him. Or even if he goes off the park to the toilet – I want you to go off the park with him!´

So I knew specifically what I had to. I was nervous but I was thinking, fair enough I have to do it. Before the game when all the teams were lining up and there was all the music before the game, it makes you get more nervous. You just wanted to get started.

“Big Billy justtold me tostick tothe task. There are times where it wouldn’t work. ButI knew how to man-mark people so I justwent outand did it.

“I had a good start to the game. I got a couple of good tackles in. I always tried to get the ball before people – to anticipate it. I got a wee bit of confidence from it and the team started playing really and I actually made some positive runs. Not everything was negative.”

In the 33rd minute, the visitors stunned the home side by taking the lead through a tremendous individual effort from Nicholas. This wasn’t in the script. Sinclair was involved in the build-up.

“I made a run up the left hand side and I lost the ball and it eventually broke to Charlie and he scored, and everyone was going daft as that was us in the lead and we had the away goal,” he said.

However, Ajax restored parity, and went ahead again in the tie in the second half, through a fortuitous strike from Gerald Vanenburg.

Celtic now required another goal to progress. However, their performance up to that point fuelled a belief that they could still succeed in that endeavour. And so effective was Sinclair in shadowing Cruyff that the Dutch master departed the game prematurely.

As full-time approached substitute, George McCluskey, collected the ball inside the box and drilled a shot into the far corner to earn Celtic one of the greatest ever European results.The final whistle brought a feeling of sheer elation, which Sinclair never experienced again in his career.

“Everything was going really well, and they scored a terrible goal,” he said. “It was shocking. I don´t think the guy, Vanenburg, meant it. It was a like a cross to nothing which he hit with the outside of his foot, and I think Packie was unsighted and it just crawled into the net. That was just into the second half.

“But we weren´t really deflated. I remember big Roy saying, ‘We’ve done well anyway, so if we go out we will go out with our heads held high,’ and the game just went on and on.

“I had a run down the right-hand side and Frank McGarvey hit the bar. We brought on George McCluskey. He got the ball on the left hand side – I can´t remember who passed to him – and he hit a good shot, a daisy-cutter, and it went in.

“There was only a minute to go, and I haven´t experienced anything like that in my life. It was just unbelievable. No one ran to anybody. You know how normally players will run to congratulate the guy who scored. No one seemed to do anything – well I certainly didn’t anyway.

“And then the whistle went and all the players were running about the park.Ajax were an incredible side withthe likes of Soren Lerby who was the Danish captain, Wim Kieft and Jan Molby.

“It wasn´t we didn’t believe we could win. It was just the way we won that was incredible. Collectively we never really got together. I was running about daft. If someone could have pumped you up, you would have just floated away.

“Big Billy was going nuts as well. I seem to remember going to the Celtic fans and the whole back terracing was heaving and I think they were was a cage there. And we were standing up on the cage and all the Celtic fans were going wild. I have never experienced anything like that in my life.”

The full interview with Graeme Sinclair will be shown on Celtic TV at the start of the new season.

Two slips from Amsterdam and Celtic were through

Updated on the 16 March 2003
The Scotsman

ON the plane carrying the Celtic official party to Amsterdam more than 20 years ago, that manager of many clubs, Alex Smith, approached the then boss of the club, Billy McNeill, somewhere over the North Sea.

Smith, who often accompanied Scottish sides on their journeys abroad in his never-ending quest to learn more about the beautiful game, pointed to young starlet Graeme Sinclair.

“What a comedown for him,” quipped Smith. “Here he is in the European Cup playing Ajax, but six weeks ago he was in the Stirlingshire Cup Final against Stenhousemuir!”

Sinclair did, indeed, play in that final for Dumbarton, but a few days later was transferred to Celtic for 65,000.

Within a few weeks he would play a vital part in what is recognised as perhaps the finest away victory by Celtic in Europe, 2-1 at Ajax, and a feat which the present side will do well to emulate when they face Liverpool on Thursday.

Celtic have already performed wonders away from home this season against Blackburn Rovers, Celta Vigo and VfB Stuttgart, the result against the English team being particularly satisfying. You need to go back 21 years, however, to find the last time Celtic went away from home in Europe after a scoring draw at Parkhead, and won.

On September 19, 1982, Celtic met Ajax Amsterdam in the Netherlands after a memorable first leg in Glasgow in which the Dutch side somehow contrived to let their opponents scrape a 2-2 draw, with goals from Charlie Nicholas and Frank McGarvey.

Sinclair, fresh from Boghead, trooped on to the lush turf of Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium with the job of marking no less a personage than Johan Cruyff.

“And I remember it well,” said the man universally known as Sinky, “because he ended up breaking my nose. It was an accident, of course, but I don’t think he liked the attention.

“Cruyff was out of this world in that first game at Parkhead. The touch he showed to lay off the ball for Jesper Olsen to score was just incredible.

“When Billy McNeill originally told me I was down to mark Jesper Olsen, I thought he was winding me up. I was hardly in the door, and Olsen had given Danny McGrain a really hard time in the first leg – he said it was his best-ever game.

“But Billy changed his mind in the days before the game, and I had to go everywhere with Cruyff. That suited me, because I had my instructions, and I knew what to do.

“And, of course, Danny McGrain roasted Olsen that night – it was difficult to know who was the right-back and who was the left-winger, as Olsen just couldn’t cope.”

Ajax boasted three great Danes in Soren Lerby, Jan Molby and Olsen, who would later play for Manchester United.

“And when you find out the two subs they had on the bench,” said Sinclair, “you realise what a team they had – Marco Van Basten and Frank Rijkaard, no less.”

Ajax switched the tie to the Olympic Stadium because they were convinced that Celtic would draw a huge crowd – the move may have backfired on them, because Scottish support arrived in numbers.

The match has assumed legendary status among Celtic fans, a suspiciously-large number of whom claim to have been there. One who definitely was in Amsterdam – he has the ticket stub to prove it – was diehard supporter Gerry O’Hare, who travelled from Renton, west Dunbartonshire, “more in hope than expectation,” as he recalled.

“They massacred us 2-2 in the first leg,” said O’Hare, “and it really was a footballing exhibition. We went to Amsterdam because we just wanted to see another great game, like we had seen at Parkhead.

“I would say there was a lot more than seven or eight thousand of us there, but we were all hemmed in to one area, so it is difficult to be accurate.

“The Celtic View had told us that under no circumstances would we be able to get a drink anywhere near the stadium: it didn’t take us very long to discover that some decent Dutch beer was available inside the stadium itself, even if it was served in plastic tumblers. The beer made things go merrily.”

Sinclair, who now owns a thriving newsagent’s shop in St James’s Court, Paisley, recalls almost every detail of a game in which he was “superb”, according to Billy McNeill.

It was Sinclair’s pass which set up Nicholas’s 34th-minute wonder goal. Champagne Charlie promptly waltzed past two men, played a one-two with McGarvey, and coolly lobbed Dutch international goalkeeper Piet Schrijvers.

“When Charlie scored that amazing goal, we began to think the impossible could happen,” said O’Hare. “But they equalised, and it was looking like we were out.”

Celtic threw everything at Ajax, but their efforts appeared to be in vain until big George McCluskey popped up with the winner in the last minute, shooting low under Schrijvers from the corner of the box. Celtic were through, though Real Sociedad put them out in the next round.

Graeme Sinclair now suffers from arthritis, but he is as cheerful and uncomplicated as he was that night he played Johan Cruyff off the park.

“Ajax were a great team,” said Sinclair, “but we had some terrific players, too, like Charlie, Murdo, George, Danny, big Pat Bonner, and one of our subs that night was Davie Moyes. It was a great night, and I’ll never forget it.”

If the present-day Celtic squad wish to acquire similar golden memories for themselves and their followers, Anfield on Thursday might be a good place to start.

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