Andy Walker remembers the dawning realisation, while he and Tony Mowbray were Celtic team-mates in season 1994-95, that Mowbray was a natural leader of men. The two players shared an uncertain and unsure Celtic dressing-room, which in turn was led by Tommy Burns, at the time still quite an inexperienced manager at the top level.
Mowbray was accursed as a player at Celtic through injury. As a rugged defender with Middlesbrough he had spent the previous ten years of his career being virtually injury-free, prompting the then Boro manager, Bruce Rioch, to famously say, “If I had to fly to the moon and I could take one player with me, it would be Tony Mowbray.” But very soon after arriving at Celtic, Mowbray suffered one setback after another, much of it linked to a complicated hamstring injury.
Off the field, meanwhile, tragedy awaited him in those days. Mowbray fell in love with and duly married a Glasgow girl, Bernadette Doyle, only for his wife to die shortly afterwards of cancer. The death had a profound effect on Mowbray, many of whose values remain shaped by that experience.
It is in football terms, however, that the Celtic fans are now savouring his return to Celtic Park as manager, and Walker yesterday provided a convincing portrait of the man who is likely to be appointed as Gordon Strachan’s successor.
“I always found Tony Mowbray to be a very impressive guy, a really strong character,” Walker said. “I first met him in a Celtic dressing- room when he and I were at the club in the early-to-mid 1990s, and at that time Celtic had a very inexperienced squad, with some players, like Paul McStay, who had won things previously, but with a lot of other younger players who hadn’t won anything.
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“At that time, the fact is that Celtic were going nowhere as a club, and a lot of the players who were there — guys like Mark McNally, Mike Galloway and Pat McGinlay — were sick to death of hearing about Celtic’s 1988 double-winning team. So it was a strange dressing- room atmosphere to be a part of.
“What I remember about Tony was him coming into this as a Celtic player, realising that there was this problem, and setting about doing something to fix it. He was a great presence and influence around some of the younger players at the club, who were clearly having trouble coping with the demands of being at a club like Celtic. Tony would speak to them, encourage them, lift their spirits. And it was big Mogga who introduced ‘the Celtic huddle’, which endures to this day, simply as a symbol of the players saying, ‘Come what may, we are in this together, we play and fight as a team’.”
Walker recalls that Mowbray gradually became a player that the other Celtic players looked to for leadership and inspiration, despite the fact that he wasn’t actually the club captain. “At that time Paul McStay was the captain of Celtic, but Paul was a captain who led by example,” he says. “Tony always bowed to Paul, appreciating the huge number of games McStay had played for Celtic, which was something Tony respected. But Tony’s became the dominant voice in the dressing-room. He had a great way of binding players together, and he became a huge influence, despite the fact that so much of his time at Celtic was hampered by injury.”
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Mowbray’s proposed return to Glasgow as Celtic manager this week has surely resonated deeply within him. Since the death of his first wife he has subsequently married again and started a family, but the memory of that tragedy in 1995 has not left him. Coming back to Celtic will trigger a fusion of feelings, not all of them happy ones.
“Everyone associated with Celtic remembers that awful, difficult time that Tony had,” Walker says. “But there was this great dignity and humility about Tony. He went through the dreadful tragedy of losing his wife to cancer while he was a Celtic player, and anyone who knew Tony and saw the way he handled that situation will know what an impressive figure he is.”
Walker is confident that, if Mowbray is installed this week at Celtic, the club will have a buoyant future. “In the context of football Tony has always had leadership qualities. He was made the captain of Middlesbrough \. Then he did really well when he embarked on management with Hibs. Then I think most people recognise the good job he has done at West Brom.
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“He is a really strong guy, a great leader, and a great communicator. I think the Celtic fans will see all of that, as well as some really good football, if or when this deal to land him as manager proves successful.”