O’Connor, John

Biog

Greenock-born John O’Connor was an outside-left who had played for Celtic in various friendly games before making his competitive debut in the club’s first ever Scottish Cup tie – the 5-1 defeat of Shettleston on 1st September 1888.

Records claim that John O’Connor scored all five goals in this one game, but this is probably not correct. Two newspaper reports from the day don’t state that he did, and probably it’s a case that as he was the centre-forward on the day, he was attributed all the goals by some lazy scribe somewhere. If he had scored all five goals, you’d expect that he’d have been identified and praised to the hilt in the reports, or at least acknowledged for this incredible feat. Still on paper he has been marked to have scored that incredible tally in just this one game.

He went on to play for Celtic in the Glasgow Exhibition Cup final (the club’s first ever final), which Celtic lost 2-0 to Cowlairs, then regarded as a shock result as Celtic entered this hyped up as supposedly to be “invincible“. A real comedown and lesson learnt, although the tag likely was PR hype to help sell tickets for the event.

John O’Connor also played in the 3-0 victory friendly over his former side Hibs away in Oct 1888, notable for a second half pitch invasion by Hibs supporters who having jumped onto the field then surrounded the Celtic players.

He left for Glasgow Hibernian in 1889, but typical of the nomadic existence of some early footballers he soon moved on and eventually played in England with Warwick County, Aston Villa and Port Vale before returning to Celtic in 1892 for another brief spell with the Bhoys, and then back down south to Notts Forrest.

It’s interesting that he moved from Hibernian (the original Edinburgh side) to Celtic and then to Glasgow Hibernian. All three much linked together, but only Celtic survived, with the original Hibernian club closing down due to mismanagement with a new Hibernian club being formed in its place.

In his second brief spell at Celtic, he didn’t even manage to play for Celtic in any of the Scottish Cup games of 1891-92, a shame as he missed out on Celtic’s run to their first Scottish Cup title win.

He only played in one league game that season in that second brief spell, a 0-0 draw v Clyde. Despite the drab scoreline, a point of note: the crowd was 10,000 a sharp rise from crowd sizes from his first spell.

John O’Connor played a total of three league and Scottish Cup games for the Celts, but also played in numerous friendly matches for Celtic in those early days, as the league was not set up at that time, and most matches were friendly competitive matches between clubs with the odd invitation cup competition.

On paper, he will be best remembered for that debut match v Shettleston, albeit with the caveat that it is most likely he never scored the haul some have attributed to him.

According to an Aston Villa site he died in 1929 in Birmingham (TBC), see: http://www.astonvillaplayerdatabase.com/282.html (TBC).

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Note

• It is questioned if this was actually him or possibly a Celtic reserve player called ‘John Connor’ who played in the league game v Clyde in 1892, see https://twitter.com/Jimmy_McColl/status/1361739033785872396?s=19. If correct, then John O’Connor never played in a league match for Celtic! Or was this reserve player actually the same guy?

Playing Career

Honours with Celtic

none

Pictures

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