Wee Hughie

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Nice story of Hughie Gallacher's arrival at the Toon in The Times that I thought you might like to read:

Tall story of striker who won hearts of Newcastle faithful

By RICHARD WHITEHEAD - The Times

December 1925
The atmosphere at St James’ Park crackled with expectation. Then, as now, there was nothing that Newcastle United supporters coveted more than a footballer who brought the promise of goals and glory to the black and white stripes. On December 12, 1925, as they gathered for the match against Everton, all the talk was of the expensive new signing who would be making his debut that afternoon. The speculation on Gallowgate was that his arrival would be all that was needed to turn a team that had promised, but not delivered, in the league since the end of the Great War into champions.

When their heroes emerged from the tunnel, necks were craned and eyes strained to catch the first glimpse of the striker whose signing was the talk of football. When they saw him, however, the cheers stuck in the throats of the Geordie connoisseurs — the man on whose shoulders so many hopes rested stood just 5ft 5in. How could a player of that stature cope against the ferocious hard men who manned the defences of the first division? You only had to glance across at Dixie Dean on the Everton team to see the sort of physical attributes that a modern-day centre forward needed.

Years later, Hughie Gallacher, perhaps the greatest and most loved of all Newcastle centre forwards, recalled his frosty first meeting with the Tyneside public. “The home fans cheered the first few players tremendously” he said. “As I ran out, the deafening cheers turned to an ‘Oh’! The crowd had just noticed how small I was. Never had I been more aware of my size.”

It took the 22-year-old Scot less than 90 minutes to win over the doubters. That afternoon, the lucky 36,000 who were present at St James’ saw the start of a stormy, but remarkable, Newcastle career and the first appearance of a man who would, within 18 months, do something that no Newcastle player — not Milburn, Macdonald, Keegan, Gascoigne or Shearer — has done since: bring the championship to Tyneside.

That Gallacher was a special talent was revealed on the half-hour, when he received the ball on the edge of the area with his back to goal, turned smartly and eluded two challenges before finishing with the cool certainty that was his trademark. He scored again later and created a third goal and it was only the fact that Dean scored a hat-trick that denied him a winning start.

The public and his team-mates had no doubts. “Gallacher had a big name in Scotland but we were staggered by his size” Charlie Spencer, the centre half, recalled. “Then, soon after the match began, I turned and gave my fellow defenders a thumbs-up signal. We knew a real star had joined us.”

Newcastle’s pursuit of Gallacher was long and patient. He was the star attraction at Airdrieonians, but they could hardly keep his talent a secret — especially when he scored four goals in his first five games for Scotland. Scottish fans were used to seeing their biggest names move south of the border — at Airdrie, supporters threatened to set fire to the main stand if their hero was sold — and there was to become an inevitability about his sale.

The fee that proved too good for Airdrie to refuse was reported by one newspaper to be a record-breaking £10,000, although Newcastle’s archives note the figure as £6,500 — £50 less than the record fee established a week earlier, when Bob Kelly joined Sunderland from Burnley.

Whatever the figure, it was money well spent. In that first half-season, Gallacher scored 25 goals in 22 games and, when the next season kicked off, was controversially installed as club captain. That, too, proved to be an inspired decision. He scored 39 times in 41 games — despite some horrendous physical assaults by opposing defenders.

So what sort of player was this extraordinary goalscorer whose flamboyant lifestyle might have been a prototype for George Best 40 years later? In his excellent 1989 biography, The Hughie Gallacher Story, Paul Joannou wrote: “He was fast, elusive and difficult to knock off the ball. Close to goal he was sharp and able to take chances with either foot, or his head.” And in his classic book, The Goalscorers, published in 1978, Tony Pawson wrote: “Gallacher was like a combination of Greaves and Müller, with a cold certainty in his finishing and also the elastic, explosive action which let him touch the ball in from the most awkward postures.” Popular with the critics he may have been, but not always with his team-mates. In his biography, Legend, Bob McPhail wrote: “He was a selfish wee fellow, he thought of no one but himself . . . he had a vicious tongue and he used it on opponents. I learnt swear words from Hughie I had never heard before.”

-- Anonymous, December 01, 2001

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A pigmy?

-- Anonymous, December 01, 2001

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