How Tommy Burns revived Kilmarnock and 'fell in love' in the process
The ultimate Celtic man joined at the lowest ebb and led Killie back to the top flight
There’s no question that the late Tommy Burns will be forever synonymous with Celtic.
Having grown up supporting the Hoops in the East End of Glasgow, he would go on to play over 500 games for his boyhood team and win six league titles.
Burns would later return to the club as manager, and was on the coaching staff right up to his untimely death from skin cancer in 2008 at the age of just 51.
While he may have been Celtic to his core though, the late midfielder is also fondly remembered for his time at Kilmarnock.
Joining in 1989, Burns would make 174 appearances while scoring 21 goals as he sparked a revival which took the club from the third tier back to the top flight.
This is the story of how he brought Killie back from the doldrums.
When Burns joined in December of 1989, Kilmarnock were at arguably their lowest ebb.
They had been relegated to the third tier the previous season in heartbreaking fashion, and were in turmoil off the pitch too.
Going in to the final day away at Queen of the South, Killie knew if they won and Clyde failed to beat Partick Thistle at Firhill they would stay up, while if the Bully Wee were victorious at Firhill a huge score would be needed thanks to the goal difference situation.
In the event Willie Watters scored five in a 6-0 win for the Ayrshire side, and with Clyde 1-0 up away at Thistle the two teams were level on goal difference - meaning Killie would stay up on goals scored.
With the game at Palmerston already concluded though Colin McGlashan added a second at Firhill in the 97th minute, the game only going on so long because his side were unaware of the score in the other game and were time wasting to try and hold their 1-0 lead.
“The great Alfred Hitchcock would have been struggling to come up with a better plot,” wrote Hugh McKinlay in The Herald.
The drop to the Second Division was the culmination of years of drift under an unpopular board, who rejected a close to half a million pound takeover bid from a consortium led by Bobby Fleeting just days later.
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Wrote The Herald: “The despotic nature of football directors, particularly those in smaller clubs, is legendary, but the people who control the affairs of Kilmarnock appear to have reached a new level of misguided conceit.
“We are talking about a group of men who have watched, in a torpor it seems, as the Ayrshire club has slipped further into decline.
“Kilmarnock supporters must hope the shareholders are more astute, not to mention ambitious, than those who enjoy the privileges of the boardroom. The club is on the road to nowhere, but perhaps no-one has been allowed into the boardroom to inform the directors of this depressing reality.
“How Mr (Bob) Lauchlan (chairman) and his colleagues could sit in their room and dismiss a genuine and lucrative attempt to turn Kilmarnock back in the right direction is astounding. They may have the power to hire and fire at Rugby Park, but do they really have a right to deny a once great club the chance of a future among the top teams?”
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