Sir Bob Kelly Did you like him.. do you still like him

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I think of the money he made at the expense of the club,sold off great players for more money,and paid our players a pittance to what the English where getting back then without the excuse of TV money,and I think if he really was Celtic to the core he'd have backed James McGrory and Big Jock more and signed some quality players thus winning us more European Cups,now Im not suggesting he should have been Murrayesque but Celtic should have dominated Europe a lot more than we did back then.

 

There is only one thing that Kelly did of great note, prior to the appointment of Stein & that was stick up for the Irish culture of the club during the 1952 'Fly the Flag' controversy. When the Irish culture was under attack, following the demise of Belfast Celtic due to that 'mob' from Linfield just a few years before and the SFA tried to force the removal of the Irish Tricolour from Parkhead, Kelly was steadfast in refusing to bow to those demands & vocal in his opposition to them. Eventuually Kelly's perseverence paid off & the Irish colours remain.

Considering the business model that Celtic were reliant depended heavily upon the patronage of the Glasgow Irish community he really had no choice. With a team (of his making & interference) performing so poorly over recent years there was little else in the way of communal spirit that was binding the support to the Celtic cause, other than the shared heritage of the support and it's ties with Ireland.

If Kelly had've attempted to distance Celtic from it's Irish heritage it would have spelt disaster, financially speaking, so even his role in defending the club's Irish traditions and continued links were not all quite as honourable as at first they may appear.

Apart from that, Kelly did remarkably little during his tenure that was positive. Most notable was his penchant to interfere, most notably with McGrory's spell as manager, where he would override the team selection, selling off the better players (without consulting McGrory), extremely tight fisted etc. The failure of Kelly and the board to sustain what Maley had once again developed by the mid to late 30's faded when the old man went. They failed to give McStay any real support during the WWII years, which gave RFC etc a huge springboard going forward in the post-war era, whilst CFC sagged, flirting with relegation in the late 40's.