He’s played against the Glasgow Celtic team which would become the famous Lisbon Lions.
And led his team to a historic Scottish Qualifying Cup triumph against St Cuthbert Wanderers in 1969.
Although it’s half a century since Creetown’s Johnnie Hanlon hung up his boots he’s still light on his feet.
Now retired, the 83-years-young former joiner, builder and footballer still has a twinkle in his eye.
“The numbers are the wrong way round – I’m really 38,” he says as wife Mary laughs and shakes her head.
Over a cup of coffee in his self-built bungalow overlooking the Moneypool Burn, Johnnie tells me he was born at Kirkcowan in 1939, the first year of the war.
I remark that Hanlon is an Irish name which likely lost its preceding ‘O’ in Scotland, just as so many Irish surnames did when the bearers arrived here in the years following the Famine.
“My grandfather was also John Hanlon and I think his family did come over from Ireland,” Johnnie tells me.
“I believe he maybe came across to Scotland with his father for farm work like thousands of other Irish folk did at the time.
“He worked as a linesman on the railway and was blinded in a railway accident. He was standing close to the line when a train went past and a brier caught on the side raked him across the face and badly damaged both his eyes. It was before nationalisation and he didn’t get a penny of compensation.
“He had a couple of sheds in his garden at Kirkco’en and barrowed in timber from the woods then sawed and chopped it up for logs and kindling. He sold that to the school and local folk to make a pound.
“He did the Sunday papers as well and either delivered them or folk would just come to his door. He just had enough sight to see where he was going but he couldn’t read.”
After Kirkcowan Primary School Johnnie attended the Douglas Ewart in Newton Stewart.
And although he was in the top class, 1A, university was out of the question for money reasons.
But football, I learn, was his first love and he had no qualms about starting work in his mid-teens.
“I had nothing but football in my head,” Johnnie smiles.
“I played for the Ewart at inside forward against teams from Dumfries, Dalbeattie and Annan.
“I was not a rough player and I did not tackle rough.
“I played my first game for Tarff Rovers when I was 15 – that was in 1954 at Ballgreen Park, Kirkcowan.
“I left school at 15 – we all did.
“You could not afford to go to university unless you were well off.
“My first job was in a grocer’s shop in Kirkco’en (the local pronunciation of Kirkcowan).
“Like many wee places then it was busy and had 14 businesses.
“By the time I was 16 I was working as an apprentice joiner with T&D Murray in the village.
“It was a five-year apprenticeship – I made the tea the first year.
“But at 21 I was fully qualified and was put in charge of doing the joiner work on the new Penninghame Primary School in Newton Stewart.”
All the time Johnnie was playing football – and at 18 his skills brought him to the attention of Everton.
“The South league was high standard – we were playing against a lot of former Celtic and Rangers players who were coming to the end of their careers,” he says.
“We had a game against Greystone Rovers in Dumfries and me and my mate Jock Rennie decided to drive there.
“We went to the wrong pitch – there wasn’t a soul and we thought the game had been put off. In those days you only went on with the team you had.
“And because we were AWOL Tarff had to start the game with nine men and the trainers came to look for us.
“They found us shopping in Woolworth’s – they weren’t best pleased.
“We rushed back and got on just before half time when it was 1-0 to Greystone Rovers.
“Not long after Jock scored the equalizer and then I scored the winner with a volley from 15 yards.
“It was a big win – and at the training meeting on the Monday after the game we were told that a scout from Everton had been there.
“That’s how I was noticed.”
Johnnie, it turns out, actually got three letters from the Goodison Park club – the first two of which he refused.
“The third time I accepted and went for a trial,” he recalls.
“I decided to go because I had a relation in the RAF who lived near Liverpool.”
Johnnie fishes out the original letter from a considerable file of memorabilia and shows it to me.
Dated April 1, 1958, the offer from a Mr Buchan states: “I am glad to hear that you are able to accept our offer and note that you will be able to travel down on Saturday next, April 5th.
“I have arranged for you to stay with a Mrs Moreton, 27 Tatton Road, Liverpool and I am sure you will be very comfortable with her.”
For 18-year-old Johnnie, his trial for Everton against Blackpool ‘A’ at Lytham St Annes did not produce the desired result.
“I was very green in those days and I was not mature enough,” he tells me.
“I was quite slight as a player and had not fully physically developed.”
Tarff Rovers were no mean team in South football and Johnnie recalls how on January 28, 1961, the club played Hearts in the Scottish Cup first round at Tynecastle.
“We were beat 9-0 but that didn’t matter,” he smiles.
“Tarff Rovers were an amateur team and Hearts were very professional.
“It was quite an experience – I was just overawed and excited who we were playing.
“They had Scotland internationalists in the forward line.
“But the money the club made, about £1,500 if I remember, kept it going for years.”
The match programme, produced by Hearts, says of Johnnie: “Tarff have several fine players and one of their stars is John Hanlon their inside right who despite a bit of knee trouble this season has been playing well.
“Hanlon has been watched by Everton, Stoke, Celtic and Kilmarnock but has rejected offers from all of them.
“He is a joiner to trade and wouldn’t mind making football his career – preferably in Edinburgh.”
That oblique reference to Johnnie’s footballing ambitions can only mean one thing – that his footballing loyalties lay with the capital’s other big club, Hibernian.
But Hibs never came calling and Johnnie signed for Stranraer – who to his puzzlement played him at
outside right.
“When we played Motherwell in the Scottish Cup they switched me to inside right – my natural position,” he says.
“We were drawing 1-1 at Stair Park, me being the scorer, but with ten minutes left their fitness told and they got two more goals.”
Johnnie hands me a newspaper cutting of the report on the game, played on February 16, 1962.
The author estimates the crowd at 6,000 – a far cry from the usual 300 to 400 at Stair Park these days.
He writes: “When handing out bouquets my thanks go to John Hanlon who treated the whole affair as if it was a Cree Lodge Cup tie and emerged the best forward on view.
“In his proper position (inside right) – 13 weeks wasted – he was immense.
“John Hanlon’s goal will long be remembered – he took it coolly and calmly and simply hammered the ball past Wyllie.
“Fortunately my cameraman was on the qui vive and elsewhere the historic occasion is on film for posterity.”
Johnnie’s next move, he tells me, was to the sunny climes of Australia in 1965.
“There was an ex-Rangers player called Allan Elliott who had come to Stranraer to play. He was at the end of his career and was going out to manage Melbourne Hungaria.
“The team was formed by Hungarian exiles in Australia after the Russians invasion of Hungary in 1956.
“He wanted me and Davie Logan, another Stranraer player, to come.
“Davie didn’t go but I agreed – and shortly after the club gave me a contract and arranged my flight.
“Melbourne was a lovely place but I only played there for three-quarters of a season.
“In January 1966 I decided to come back to Scotland and joined Stranraer again.”
Weeks later, on February 5, 1966, Stranraer came up against the mighty Glasgow Celtic in the Scottish Cup first round – the first time the two sides had ever met. Stranraer lost 4-0, but the game gave Johnnie a first-hand look at players who the following season would become the Lisbon Lions and champions of Europe.
“You couldn’t hold a candle to Jimmy Johnstone,” he laughs.
“They were much superior to us and that was proved when they went on the next year to win the European Cup.
“I played at Stranraer for another three years then signed for Derry City.
“They heard I was getting freed by Stranraer and had a guy over from Ireland watching me, who signed me.
“I would go over on the ferry to Larne on the Thursday evening, get the train to Derry and stay there on the Friday night before the game. If the match was in Belfast I would go straight there from the boat. Derry City were quite a top team and I enjoyed my time with them.
“There was never anything brought up about religion.”
Johnnie laughs as he recalls one game when a group of supporters began heckling him – in Wigtownshire accents.
“We were playing an away game when this crowd started shouting at me,” he recounts.
“It turned out they were over from Kirkco’en on holiday.
“They had found out where I was playing – and I didn’t know they were coming. They gave me dog’s abuse – I recognised the Kirkco’en lingo straight away. They pulled my leg the whole game. I couldn’t believe it – I thought how the hell did they find me here?
“After a year with Derry I packed it in.
“I couldn’t be bothered with all the travelling.
“I was starting up my own business, John Hanlon Carpenter, Joiner and Contractor, and I rejoined Tarff.”
Johnnie works out he was 29 or 30 then – still good enough, he says proudly, to lead Tarff to victory in the Scottish Qualifying Cup, the South’s most prestigious trophy.
And indeed, the records show that in 1969, Tarff Rovers beat St Cuthbert Wanderers 4-0 at Ballgreen – then lost the return leg 0-3 at Kirkcudbright to scramble a 4-3 win on aggregate.
“We were confident of winning after giving them a doing at Kirkco’en,” Johnnie smiles.
“In the end we were lucky to escape with the cup – but we did.”
With Mary keeping him right, Johnnie tells me first met his wife to be, Stranraer girl Mary Garrett, at a dance in Dunragit village hall in 1960.
“I went up to her and said ‘excuse me, can I have this dance?’” he laughs.
“She was dancing with the man she came with at the time. Nothing came of it and we never saw each other again for another six years. There was a dance at Portpatrick and George Smith and the Southern Airs, a band from Stranraer, were playing.
“I spotted Mary across the dance floor – the women were on one side and the men on the other. This time I asked her if I could take her home to Stranraer in my new car – a Hillman Imp made at Linwood.
“I’d bought it after coming back from Australia that January. She said yes – but only because she didn’t want to go back on the bus. I dropped her off and asked if I could see her again.
“She said ‘yes’ and that was the start of our romance. That was 1966 – the year England won the World Cup – and we married the following year.
“We stayed in a council house in Kirkcowan for seven years then I built our own house.”
Johnnie ran a successful self-employed joinery and builders business in Kirkcowan – which looking back still gives him pride.
“And at its biggest, John Hanlon Joinery and Building Contractor employed eight or nine men, plus sub-contracted plumbers and electricians,” he says.
“Mary and I moved to Creetown exactly 20 years ago, in summer 2002.
“I built two houses here – our one and next door which I sold to Mary’s brother.
“Before that I must have built 50 bungalows in Wigtownshire plus an office for the Forestry Commission in Gatehouse of Fleet.”
Johnnie and Mary have three children, John, Mark and Nicola, and five grandsons.
“We’ll be 55 years married this year,” he smiles. "Coming to Creetown wasn’t difficult. I knew a lot of folk from my school days and football days.
“It’s a nice place to retire to.
