Books – Tommy McInally: Celtic’s Bad Bhoy? (2009)

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Details

Title: Tommy McInally: Celtic’s Bad Bhoy?
Author: David Potter
Published: 2009
Player Homepage: Tommy McInally

Synopsis

McInally, Tommy - Book

“Tommy McInally was a star of Celtic’s team of the 1920s. He was a tremendous player with pace, trickery, passing ability and a cannonball shot – yet his record of only one Scottish Cup medal, two Scottish League medals and two Scottish caps was a profoundly disappointing one for a man of his talent.

This is a lacking record which was mainly due to Tommy’s self-destructive tendencies. This book deals with his two spells at Celtic – the team that he loved – and his sojourns at Third Lanark and Sunderland before he went on his travels and died in obscurity in 1955.

He has now been dead for over fifty years, but questions still remain about Celtic’s Bad Bhoy – ‘the boy wonder’, who had the potential to have been the greatest player of them all.”

Review

David Potter is quite a gifted football historian and we can be proud that his speciality and love is for Celtic. In his book on Tommy McInally he gives us more than just a run-of-the-mill review of his life. McInally is a bit of an enigma, and a celebrated little rogue who can delight you as much on the field as he could rile the more prudish off of it. Living life to the full he was a greater player than even his achievements suggest and Potter gives an honest account from the records of the man’s successes and failings.

Holding up his life as a window into the past, he describes his youth and early days with Celtic that makes you almost feel as if you could touch what is happening. Comments on most matches are brief – except the most important – so as to avoid repetition, but he still captures what the fans loved about this little rogue. Going through his spell at Third Lanark, Celtic (again) and then Sunderland, you see the picture of this man’s real deep longing for Celtic, and Potter manages to paint the player as honestly as possible. No whitewashing, sanctifying or black-marking the player.

Lots of humourous stories capture the little man at his best, and it’s to Potter’s credit that he is able to put together succinctly as many different events in his life (real & rumour) without it becoming all too bogged down. If there are any complaints on the book then simply Potter can be a bit patronising in how he writes. In this reviewer’s career, I can’t recall ever seeing a company or person ever referred to as “impecunious” in a financial journal let alone an entity or person in football (in this case Morton). He has strong views on certain aspects of Celtic’s history and can appear to be quite dismissive of others view that are counter to it (such as on Scotland selection for Celtic players over the years). In any case, that shouldn’t take away from the book as a whole. It’s endearing and enjoyable, without any over done emotional jibberish about our central character as you can find in many biogs on footballers.
Ardently academic in his overview in places but still accessible, Potter allows the character to be judged by the reader themselves without any over-sentimentality.
A good book and one to recommend to every Celtic fan. In this time of pampered footballers in the highest echelons of the game, it can be quite refreshing to read of the old times gone by and you’ll find little better than this.

Product Details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Black and White Publishing (30 Jul 2009)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1845022602
ISBN-13: 978-1845022600
Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.8 x 1.8 cm

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Other Reviews

(from Not The View)
David Potter’s most recent biography of a player from the distant past focuses on Tommy McInally, who had two spells in the Hoops between 1919-1922 and 1925-1928.
 Essentially it’s the study of a player who was as gifted as any at the time and who could have become a true Celtic legend. Instead, despite being hugely popular during his first spell at Celtic Park, he frittered his talent away as a result of a suspect temperament and an attitude to training that made Jackie Dziekanowski look like Paul Lambert.
 Potter charts his meteoric rise to stardom and subsequent degeneration, but appears to hold McInally in genuine regard, despite his faults and failings. The book never shirks from presenting the player’s flaws, but the author rarely judges McInally or condemns him too harshly. Like Willy Maley, perhaps, who seems to have had more patience with the player than most others under his charge, indulging McInally’s foibles while taking a harder line with some of his team mates. Comparisons with the likes of Jinky or George Best are apt, even if Tommy never achieved much in the way of medals.
 As ever with this author, this is an excellent book, well researched and written by one of the best Celtic historians of our time. He does us a great service by preserving the memory of these great characters from the club’s past and doing so in a style that is vibrant enough to make his reader’s forget that the events he is recounting happened nearly a century ago.
 Grandpa Tim will enjoy the social history as well as the memories of a fascinating Celt.