Tully, Charlie – The Celtic Wiki

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Fullname: Charles Patrick Tully Tully, Charlie - Pic
aka: Charlie Tully
Born: 11 July 1924
Died: 27 July 1971
Birthplace: Belfast
Signed (Celtic): 28 June 1948
Left (Celtic): 2 Sep 1959
Position: Inside-left
Debut: Celtic 0-0 Morton, League, 14 Aug 1948
Internationals: N Ireland, Irish League
International Caps: 10 caps (N Ireland), Irish League 1 cap
International Goals: 3 goals (N Ireland)

Biog

“At an early age, I discovered that my face and tongue were due to get me into a lot of trouble.” Charlie Tully

“At an early age, I discovered that my face and tongue were due to get me into a lot of trouble.”
Charlie Tully

While the history of Celtic has featured many great characters, it is doubtful if many others have been as colourful or as well loved as Charles Patrick Tully.

Blessed with a rare abundance of skill Charlie Tully was the darling of the Hoops fans for over a decade and his cheeky approach to football has made him one of the best loved Celtic icons of all time.

Tully moved to Parkhead in June 1948 from his hometown side Belfast Celtic where he had been idolised by the support. His journey across the Irish Sea – for a then sizeable fee of £8,000 – triggered a frenzied response from fans in Glasgow. Celtic were really in the doldrums at this point in the club’s history, and Charlie Tully with his magical skills and ‘Cheeky‘ personality lifted the whole club to help Celtic to start winning honours & much needed respect again.

There is as strong case for claiming that Charlie Tully was really the first “Celebrity” footballer long before the arrival of George Best, David Beckham and such like. At his peak with Celtic it was possible to buy items like Tully ties, Tully cocktails and Tully ice lollies which were obviously green and white in colour. It was “Tullymania“.

The winger’s debut was a low key 0-0 league draw at home to Morton on 14th August 1948 but soon the crowds would be flocking to Parkhead to get a glimpse of a true football showman.

On his game, Charlie Tully would relentlessly tease the opposition with his outrageous ability and his ball skills would bamboozle opposing defenders and thrill the crowd. In a League Cup match at Parkhead in September 1948 Tully’s skill simply savaged the feared Rangers rearguard whose brute force was simply no match for an on-song Charlie Tully. Time after time the Irishman danced around the blue clad Iron Curtain as Celtic won 3-1.

His antics on and off the pitch soon became the stuff of myth and legend, and could take up a whole site on its own. Tully was the most talked about player in Scotland (if not the whole of the UK & Ireland) and he loved the limelight. When Charlie Tully was in town everyone wanted to be there. The Celtic support adored this cheekiest of heroes. One famous incident involving Charlie Tully was when he and Bobby Evans came to blows in the dressing room over an article Charlie Tully had written for the Daily Express which had a veiled pop at Bobby Evans – Sean Fallon had to intervene and it subsequently transpired that the said article had been ghost-written for Charlie Tully and he hadn’t read the proof before it was even published.

Charlie Tully loved to play up to the crowd and loved nothing more than hearing the crowd roar their approval as he left another embarrassed defender trailing in his wake. Nothing typifies the skill and impudence of Tully better than his goal in the Scottish Cup at Falkirk on 21 February 1953. With Celtic awarded a corner the Irishman surveyed the scene in the penalty box before whipping the ball straight into the back of the net. The perplexed referee insisted that Charlie Tully had taken the kick from outside the corner markings and ordered a retake. Charlie Tully duly obliged and again whipped the ball straight into the net – goal! This goal from a corner was no fluke as Charlie Tully repeated this feat in an international for Northern Ireland against England.

For all his delightful tricks and undoubted ability Charlie Tully could also frustrate and his happy-go-luck approach to the game made him an inconsistent performer and at times he would contribute very little to games. Jock Stein and some other fellow players were often incensed by Charlie Tully’s lack of commitment to track back and help whenever the defence was under the cosh. His game was also not helped by a love of “the good life” off the field.

But those faults did little to affect his hero status among the Celtic support. When he left in the summer of 1959 for Cork Hibs, Charlie Tully had won just one league title at Celtic and two Scottish Cups. He also won two League Cups and was a key member of the side which destroyed Rangers 7-1 in the final of 1957. On the international front, Charlie Tully was capped 11 times by Northern Ireland.

In truth, his medal haul was a vast underachievement respective to what he could have achieved with the talents he was gifted with. One man does not make a team but some sure can push a side to their limits. Charlie Tully wasn’t to be the great talisman for Celtic but in fairness the club was poorly run during much of his tenure. The coaching was poor and constant board meddling was undermining the side.

On the other hand, many players (including Charlie Tully) could have pulled their weight more for the team, but instead blaming the management alone was an easy excuse. The legendary coach Jimmy Hogan was brought in by the board to assist the first team, yet was poorly used by players. Tommy Docherty described various players’ attitudes as follows: “It was in the days of Charlie Tully and players like that, and they looked upon coaching as a bit of a joke.” Charlie Tully (and a number of his peers) wasted the valuable resources in front of him, and that marks him down.

Some who knew Charlie Tully actually say that it’s a myth that he hated training but actually he just hated the type of training as was exercised at the time (which compared to now was primitive consisting of loads of sprints and little ball practise). He was said to also love Jimmy Hogan. According to some sympathisers, Charlie Tully was a hard training player, you can’t be as good as he was without practise. However, other reports say if he could get out of training somehow he would (he was full of devilment). It’s a mixed picture.

There is some misfortune in his career as well. He missed the final of the much celebrated 1953 Coronation Cup through injury but it was actually a typically sparkling Tully performance that inspired the Hoops to victory against Manchester United in the semi-final which got the team to the final. His absence left him out from one of the club’s most celebrated successes but it’s players in the cup final sides that are remembered most (similarly Joe McBride wasn’t in the final Lisbon Lions side of 1967 yet played an invaluable part in earlier rounds).

Admittedly, were hardly hitting the heights the decade prior to his arrival having not won the league for the ten years beforehand, but with the talent at the disposal of the management Celtic still vastly underachieved despite Tully being on the club’s books. One league title (and a few cup wins) in that time is not as great a return as should have been expected. This doesn’t help in retrospectives on Tully’s career.

Curiously in 1959, Charlie Tully signed for Rangers! Okay, not exactly the true whole story and not how it reads literally. On 11 March 1959 Tully, together with four other Celtic players, signed a short-term deal with Rangers to allow a Celtic/Rangers XI to play Caledonian FC in a friendly to mark the turning on of their new floodlights. This was due to Scottish FA rules requiring all players fielded by a club to be signed to that club. Therefore, this was a Rangers team with Celtic players as guests.

Overall, Charlie Tully played 319 times for Celtic and scored 43 goals. He performed many wonderful tricks and treats on the pitch which all fortunate to have seen them will fondly cherish those memories.

Many players have won more than Tully ever did as a Celt but very few will have ever claimed the hearts of the Celtic support the way the Belfast Bhoy did. His name is still fondly recalled in the great “Willie Maley Song“.

If only he had applied himself more fully during his career with Celtic to have helped his teams to win more than they did, then his name would be celebrated as much now as is done for many other luminaries from the club’s history, yet somehow his name has been more of interest for the avid Celtic historian than to anyone else.

However, following the establishment of the Belfast Celtic Museum in Belfast followed by a memorial walk for him in 2011, there has been a sympathetic revival and a fair reassessment of his time at the club. His name is of great importance to the Irish support in the north of the Emerald Isle and in that way his name will live for evermore.

A very interesting character in Celtic’s history.

Quotes & Anecdotes

“Neilly Mochan was a greyhound enthusiast. I remember he wanted a dog from Ireland, and I put him in touch with an owner that I knew. Neilly bought it for eighty pounds. A few days later it dropped dead! He never forgave me.”
Charlie Tully

“Who is that fella standing beside Charlie Tully?”
Charlie’s popularity was such that when Celtic were in Rome in 1950 to play Lazio in a Friendly the team was granted a Papal Visit and when Charlie got his picture taken with the Pope the joke was to ask the question “Who is that fella standing beside Charlie Tully?” – The joke being that Charlie was more well known than the Pope himself. (see link)

“At an early age, I discovered that my face and tongue were due to get me into a lot of trouble.”
Charlie Tully

“It took me three hours to decide on the Timaloys as opposed to the English glamour clubs…it had always been an ambition of mine to play for the great Scottish club!”
Charlie Tully

“I always wished I was born on the Twelfth of July, just to be awkward, like!”
Charlie Tully

“You’re the Irish coffee, I’m the cream!”
Charlie Tully to Bertie Peacock

“And Charlie Tully! Wonderful player, awfie man. My digs were in Rutherglen, Miss McGuigan’s, and Charlie would stay over if he had a drink in him rather than face the wife. I’ll never forget the first time he sat on the ball – against Rangers! No-one, as far as I knew, had ever done that before. Their players looked stunned. We all used to get given passes to games, and Charlie always played with them in the pocket of his shorts. If he was playing well he’d hand them out to the opposition: ‘Here, you’d be better off watching me from the stand.’ In a cup-tie at Falkirk he scored two goals straight from corners.”
Sean Fallon