James Quinn (8 July 1878 – 21 November 1945) was a Scottish footballer who played for Celtic for 15 years, becoming one of the club's leading goalscorers of all time. He also represented Scotland.
A native of the village of Croy, North Lanarkshire and signed for Celtic aged 22 by Willie Maley from junior club Smithston Albion in 1900,[1] Quinn took several seasons to make his mark, playing at outside-left then inside-left before being moved to centre. Like so many players of the time and since, he was a coal miner.[1]
A man who was strong and powerful in stature but shy and unassuming in character,[1] the foundations of Quinn's enduring fame were laid with a hat-trick in the 1902 British League Cup final against Old Firm rivals Rangers,[3][4] and cemented in the 1904 Scottish Cup Final against the same opposition. At half-time Rangers led by two goals to nil. In the second half, however, Celtic came back to win 3–2, Quinn scoring all the goals.[5][6] This was the second hat-trick in a Scottish Cup Final; it was 68 years before the feat was repeated by Dixie Deans in Celtic's 6–1 defeat of Hibsin1972.[5]
That cup final hat-trick was the first a Celtic player scored against Rangers in a major competition, and Quinn also scored the second, in a 3–0 league victory on New Year's Day 1912. He was the only player from either side to have twice scored a hat-trick in an Old Firm match until Ally McCoist emulated him in the 1980s.[a]
Quinn won six successive championship and five Scottish Cup medals with Celtic[1][9] as the focal point of a forward line which became well known across the country: Bennett, McMenemy, Quinn, Somers and Hamilton. He scored 218 goals in 331 appearances in the two major competitions – 188 in the League (273 appearances including a playoff in 1905) and 30 in the Scottish Cup from 58 appearances, eight of them in finals (1904,[10] 1908, 1909,[11] and 1911),[12] plus dozens more in various minor tournaments.[9][b]
His strike rate of 0.65 – almost two goals every three games – is surpassed among Celtic goalscorers only by Jimmy McGrory, Henrik Larsson and Sandy McMahon. As a scorer of league goals, his total of 187 is behind McGrory alone. Quinn was the first Celtic player to score 200 goals for the club, and only four others have done so—McGrory, Bobby Lennox (273), Larsson (242), and Stevie Chalmers (228). Ninety years after his retirement, he remains the club's fifth highest goalscorer.
He received a benefit match in 1926, in which Celtic played against a Scottish League team, ending in a 3–3 draw.[14]
Quinn scored seven goals in 11 appearances for Scotland including four out of five goals against Ireland in 1908, and eight in as many games for the Scottish League XI.[16]
^McCoist scored all three goals in Rangers' Glasgow Cup final victory in May 1986[7] to add to the treble he'd netted against Celtic in the League Cup final two years earlier.[5][8]
