RENOWNED for his gritty play and commitment to Celtic, Peter Grant was one of those players who was regularly described as a "heart-on-his-sleeve" type. No player gave more for the cause, not least when he gave a man-of-the-match performance in Celtic's 1995 Scottish Cup final victory over Airdrie, in which he played with an injured knee.
His avowed passion for the club he supported from childhood drove Grant on, and though he was never classed as a silky superstar and was only capped twice by Scotland, the midfielder's courage and drive – his sheer heart – made him a hero to the Park
head fans.
Yet it was a cool, calculated, cerebral decision to walk away from Celtic in 1997 that ultimately led to his return to the club earlier this week as part of new manager Tony Mowbray's coaching team. In a true case of head winning over heart, Grant left Parkhead just as the Henrik Larsson era began, the then manager Wim Jansen having begged him to stay.
An older, wiser Grant revealed the truth behind his decision to leave Celtic – a mysterious move which baffled fans at the time. It was simply that having been a fixture in the team for so long, he could not face the inevitable decline as a player. He was then aged 32, had always wanted to play to his mid-thirties, become a coach and stay in football, and he knew that would not happen at Celtic.
"I'd agreed to go to Wolves but I'm still waiting on the call from Mark McGhee," said Grant. "Seriously, I think (Wolves' chairman] Jack Hayward had pulled the wool over Mark's eyes and said he wasn't making any more signings after I'd agreed a deal. I'd already returned from Celtic's pre-season. We played Parma in a friendly and Wim offered me three years but I couldn't have handled not playing which might have been the case by the time of the second or third season. I'd have been pulling my hair out.
"I'd made my mind up to go. I always remember Wim saying it took a brave man to make a decision like that. He'd done the same in Holland when he joined Ajax after being at Feyenoord.
"We played St Johnstone in the Cup and the fans were chanting my name. Jock Brown said to me Norwich had been on the phone, and he thought I wouldn't want to speak to them. But I told him I did. Raymond Sparkes (his agent] took me down – no flight, nothing – and I arrived in Norwich about 1am to meet Mike Walker. I signed the next morning. I phoned my wife Lorraine and said I'd signed for Norwich and she said 'I thought you were signing for Wolves'."
Speaking at Celtic's sumptuous training centre in Lennoxtown, Grant recalled one aspect of his former days that he won't miss – the old Barrowfield training ground and the daily attempts to poison the squad by youths, perhaps not of a Celtic persuasion, setting fire to tyres on a nearby dump.
"It's different from the 10 o'clock tyres fire at Barrowfield," he said. "We'd see the boys saying 'right, that's them started their jog, let's set it on fire now'. Then there would be all this black smoke and you'd be coughing as you were running and they'd be waving to you. You see people running about with masks on now because of swine flu – we'd have needed them to stop inhaling the smoke."
Now 43, with spells in coaching at West Ham and West Brom either side of his year-long stint as manager of Norwich City, Grant is adamant that he's learned from his experiences – "now I think before I go mad," as he puts it.
To coin a phrase, Grant was always Celtic-hearted, but it will be his mind and that of Tony Mowbray which will determine the club's immediate future. He knew his mind in 1997 and was proven correct in the long term. Celtic's fans will hope his thinking is right this time too.
The full article contains 704 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
