Ready to rival Rangers again: Celtic are under new management. Brian Wilson hopes for an upturn in the club's fortunes

ADYNASTY has finally tumbled. As of the weekend the Glasgow football club Celtic, founded to bring status and success to the city's Irish community, has new names in control for the first time this century. The club that gave the football world such giants as Jock Stein and Kenny Dalglish is now effectively in the hands of a small bespectacled man with a flat cap, moustache and Scottish-Canadian accent.

The image of boardroom supremo and people's champion does not yet rest easily on the shoulders of Fergus McCann, saviour of Celtic. But for the time being the club's supporters are happy to suspend their critical faculties. McCann has two essential virtues: his apparent access to large sums of money - a commodity lately in short supply at Celtic Park; and a name that is neither Kelly nor White - the two families which dominated the affairs of Celtic for three long-lived generations.

The hereditary principle is rarely a satisfactory way to run anything, and a football club was unlikely to be an exception. Yet until the Bank of Scotland launched the final, decisive tackle on the club last Friday, these two families believed in their right to maintain a proprietorial link with the club's earliest days: their shareholdings were easily traceable to the day in 1888 when the club was founded.

The supporters also identify with the club and its origins, to a degree perhaps unique in football. And their loyalty has been bolstered over the years both by success and by the stimulus of rivalry - part footballing and part tribal - with Glasgow Rangers. Celtic's achievements reached their peak in 1967, when they were the first British club to win the European Cup; a feat which brought them a far wider base of admirers.

Not long after Celtic were founded, one of the pioneers described the club's early success as 'proof of the ability of Irishmen to manage any concern in which they took an interest'. Yet an incredible spiral of events, accompanied by six years without even a domestic honour, led their successors to the brink of receivership. Last Friday the Bank of Scotland warned that the plug was about to be pulled on debts that could total pounds 10m. By then, antagonism among Celtic supporters towards their club's proprietors had descended into something dangerously close to hatred.

With the bank issuing its ultimatum and supporters boycotting matches, a majority of directors turned to a group of hitherto reviled suitors led by McCann - whose empire is based in Montreal and Arizona - as the only means of survival.

Celtic's precipitate decline had been exacerbated by the pressure to secure stadium improvements in order to meet the all-seat deadline, and the rise of the club's old rivals, Rangers, to a position of absolute pre-eminence in Scottish football.

For Celtic supporters the contrast became increasingly difficult to bear. Rangers had long since turned into a public company and used the revenue from their pools operation to achieve a fine, all-seat stadium by the mid-Eighties. At that time, Celtic were still enjoying on-field dominance. Suddenly the picture was transformed. Control over Rangers passed to a hard-headed businessman, David Murray, who acquired Graeme Souness as manager and put millions of pounds at his disposal to acquire an all- star team. By the end of the decade, Rangers had not only the best club stadium in Britain, but a team to match.

Celtic's ownership structure seemed the major obstacle to a similar transformation. The controlling families did not have the necessary wealth to emulate the progress at Rangers. Their approach had left the club with a stadium in the east end of Glasgow which fell far short of modern expectations and, increasingly, legal requirements.

It was against this background that Celtic started spending the bank's money in a big way. There was the ill- starred appointment of the club's first chief executive, who took on a string of highly paid deputies. Liam Brady took over as manager and spent millions on unsuccessful signings. He, in turn, gave way last year to Lou Macari.

In 1990 the ruling families took the adventurous step of bringing in an outsider, Brian Dempsey, as a director. Dempsey, son of a Labour MP, was a property developer who already paid for the biggest executive box at Celtic Park. He had ideas and was approved of by the supporters, but soon fell out with the club's board and was ousted.

Celtic then brought in a London-based deal-maker named David Smith, whose business reputation was founded on putting together the Gateway supermarket takeover. He assumed responsibility for the intended new stadium on a piece of contaminated waste ground at Cambuslang, on the outskirts of Glasgow.

The Celtic board had become utterly committed to this unlikely enterprise, which was disapproved of by the vast majority of supporters. There was, however, a practical problem: the club had no money to put into it. They were seeking a package that would leave them with a 40,000-seater stadium on the basis of other peoples' investment.

It never looked realistic and was ultimately the rock on which traditional control of the club foundered. Dempsey, who had made common cause with McCann, knew that he had only to wait for the Cambuslang project to collapse. It finally happened last week. The crunch came when the directors' claim that pounds 20m funding was guaranteed by a Swiss bank was flatly contradicted by the bank itself.

At that point the Bank of Scotland took the initiative. The price of financial rescue was the instant departure of Smith and Chris White, the company secretary. The newcomers insisted that Michael Kelly, a former Lord Provost of Glasgow, who had become the club's official spokesman, must also resign as a director.

The new directors - McCann, who left Croy, near Glasgow, aged 22 to make his business fortune in North America - Dempsey and the banker Dominic Keane, can all easily identify with the club's origins and have proven ability in business - something Celtic's founders might have approved of. Bringing success back to Celtic Park, however, may prove to be an even bigger test than winning control of the club.

The author is Labour MP for Cunninghame North and wrote Celtic's centenary history, 'A Century with Honour', published by Collins.

(Photograph omitted)