Who was the Lady who unfurled the League flag at Paradise?

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The Celtic Star

·3 aprile 2026

Who was the Lady who unfurled the League flag at Paradise?

So who was the Lady who unfurled the League flag at Paradise?

Something a bit different to share with you today from the correspondence kindly sent to The Celtic Star recently by Dave Galloway, Aberdeen supporter and football memorabilia collector.

It’s a letter typewritten on club notepaper and sent by Desmond White to Lady Kelly in March 1983, regarding the book written by her husband Bob Kelly, White’s predecessor as Celtic chairman. At that time, Celts were chasing a domestic treble under manager Billy McNeill, although within the next couple of months those dreams would be gone, as would Cesar and eventually star striker Charlie Nicholas. The end of a special era for Celts of my vintage.

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Addressed to Lady Kelly informally as ‘Dear Joey,’ the letter advises her that Celtic had agreed to pay for around 2,500 copies of the book – titled simply ‘Celtic’ and published independently in August 1971, just one month before his death – in May 1978, curiously enough the time our greatest-ever manager was allowed to leave the club. White’s explanation is that Celtic did that to ‘save these unbound copies from destruction’ and that in the intervening five years or so, around 900 had been sold by the club, raising an amount some £100 shy of their outlay.

White continues:

“What was done in the past was done to continue to make your husband’s book available to Celtic Supporters, not basically to make a profit. These books are still being sold but now at a relatively slow rate. I do not know when the project will get into profitability.

I trust that you think the above is reasonable as we did this only to perpetuate your husband’s name in the context of Celtic history.”

As a young Celtic supporter in the 1960s, there were a few certainties in life, amongst those being that Jock Stein was the manager, Billy McNeill was the captain, Celtic were the champions, and every summer Bob Kelly and his wife would emerge from the tunnel and clamber into a black limousine, which then drove past the front of the stand and east terracing before coming to a halt at the junction of the Jungle. There, the couple would emerge, and the most recent League Championship flag of the original nine-in-a-row era would be hoisted to huge roars around the old ground. It was an annual occurrence.

Sir Robert Kelly with Jock Stein

But who was this ‘Lady Kelly?’

Lady Kelly and her husband Sir Robert Kelly, Celtic Chairman

I like to consider myself as a bit of a club history buff (ok, I’m a saddo) but until reading this letter and following up on it I couldn’t even have told you her first name.

Maria Josephine Reilly was born on Wednesday, 31 May 1905 at her home in Shawpark Street, Maryhill, just a stone’s throw from the Barracks estate where the aforementioned Charlie Nicholas would grow up seven decades later. Her parents were Cornelius Reilly, a Journeyman Cooper, and his wife Helen, nee Tierney, who had married six years earlier in the Gorbals.

On Tuesday, 19 September 1933, confectioners’ cashier Maria married stockbroker and Celtic director Robert McErlean Kelly at Holy Cross RC Church on Dixon Road, Crosshill. The groom was 30 years old and lived in Blantyre, whilst his new wife was two years younger and resided in the shadow of Hampden on Mount Annan Drive. I literally drove past her house yesterday morning without realising that. Interestingly, she signed her name on the marriage lines as Josephine Reilly, which would align with the informal ‘Joey’ used in the 1983 letter.

Charlie Napier image from Celtic Curio for Celtic in the Thirties by Matt Corr out now on Celtic Star Books.

That same evening, Celtic hammered Cowdenbeath 7-0 in a rescheduled League match, with Charlie Napier then Jimmy McGrory each scoring hat -tricks and Hugh O’Donnell also on target. I wonder if Bob got a ‘honeymoon pass’ to watch that!

Jimmy McGrory, Celtic FC. Photo The Celtic Wiki

Josephine’s dad Cornelius was by that time deceased, as was Bob’s father, James Kelly, the club’s first captain and superstar, who had passed away in February 1932, within nine months of undertaking Celtic’s groundbreaking tour of the USA and Canada in his role as a club director. His death created the vacancy for Bob to join the board, which he would continue to serve for the best part of 40 years until his own passing just two days after his 38th wedding anniversary in September 1971.

Walfrid and the Bould Bhoys from Celtic Star Books, written by Liam Kelly, David Potter and Matt Corr – available on Kindle

As an aside, Bob’s mum, Margaret McErlean Kelly, also had early Celtic connections. Her dad, Francis McErlean, was one of the Founding Fathers featured by Liam Kelly in Walfrid & The Bould Bhoys, the book (published on Celtic Star Books) he wrote in collaboration with our much-missed friend and colleague David Potter and myself, long since sold out as a hardback and only available now on Kindle. Margaret McErlean married Celtic captain James Kelly at St Michael’s RC Church in Parkhead in January 1891, with the young couple living with her parents at nearby Burgher Street for some time afterwards.

Margaret’s widowed daughter-in-law Josephine Kelly would pass away exactly a century later, in Glasgow on Monday, 23 January 1991 aged 85. She had been ill for some time and had survived her husband for the best part of 20 years.

The wee girl from Maryhill who got to fly the League flag at Paradise.

We’ll continue to have a look through the correspondence and share some items which we think might be of interest to the families involved and the wider Celtic support.

Hail, Hail!

Matt Corr

Follow Matt on X @Boola_vogue

An Alphabet of the Celts and Talking With Celtic. Photo The Celtic Star

READ THIS…Introducing Celtic in the Fifties and some rather special correspondence

I spent a large chunk of the last week browsing through and organising a large bundle of old Celtic-related correspondence, kindly sent to The Celtic Star Editor recently by Dave Galloway, an Aberdeen supporter and collector of football memorabilia…

Matt Corr, author of Celtic in the Thirties, at Celtic Park. Photo AJ (The Celtic Star)

Dave thought it might be of interest given the work we do on sharing Celtic’s history. He wasn’t wrong!

It’s an Aladdin’s Cave of nostalgia, mainly letters from Celtic players dating from the 1930s to Cesar’s wonderful Centenary team, many familiar names and some perhaps less so.

First task was to establish the connection and context for what appeared to be such a random selection. A bit of digging provided the answer. The letters are mainly from former players to respected Celtic writers Eugene MacBride, Frank Glencross or George Sheridan and most are in response to requests for information from those gents regarding their Parkhead careers.

An Alphabet of the Celts and Talking With Celtic. Photo The Celtic Star

The earlier ones were straightforward, as they relate to a book called An Alphabet of the Celts, written by Eugene, George and Martin O’Connor and published in 1994. Some of the paperwork was in the exact format presented in that book, a brilliant source of reference which sits permanently on my desk beside my computer. It contains information on players from the early days until publication and is a great starting point for lesser-known Celts.

Sean Fallon representing Republic of Ireland. Photo The Celtic Wiki

The Foreword for An Alphabet of the Celts was written by Sean Fallon, who is also the author of several of the enclosed letters, and I’ve just noticed that it is signed off using a scan from one of those, as the ‘Yours in Sport’ comment is in Sean’s own handwriting. Pretty cool.

More puzzling were the letters sent after Alphabet was published, but a bit of digging online threw up another book written by Eugene which I had never heard of, ‘Talking With Celtic,’ issued in 2001. Curiosity got the better of me, so I managed to order a copy online, and when it arrived yesterday, hey presto, it consists of a series of scripted interviews between Eugene and Celts from every era from Willie Buchan in the 1930s to Billy Stark in the late eighties, many of whom are the authors of the letters in the pack.

And the Foreword is written by George Sheridan, who with Eugene was involved in editing The Celt fanzine from the 1980s. Some of the correspondence is actually thanking the guys for sending copies of the fanzine.

Another wonderful Celtic author, our late and much-missed friend and colleague David Potter, paid tribute to their work in the summer of 2018 when news broke that The Celt would soon be ceasing publication. The link to that article in The Celtic Star is HERE.

Sadly, Eugene passed away a few years after his ‘Talking With Celtic’ book was published, and some of the letters are messages of condolence sent to Frank or George at that time. Frank is also no longer with us but we’ve now reached out and made contact with George, which I‘m delighted about. That should be a huge help moving forward.

Some of the content is quite private in nature and we will, of course, respect that privacy and use our discretion in what is shared but there is much that we believe the families and wider Celtic support might enjoy seeing, perhaps for the first time. One such item is a letter relating to Sean Fallon, who is the subject of one of Eugene’s chapters in Talking With Celtic.

Celtic manager Jimmy McGrory. Photo The Celtic Wiki

The letter is typewritten on SFA-headed notepaper and was sent by their infamous secretary George Graham to Celtic manager Jimmy McGrory in September 1950 regarding the sending off of ‘J. Fallon’ against Queen of the South. It includes the referee’s report outlining his view of the proceedings. ‘J. Fallon’ is better known to us as Sean, a true Celtic legend.

I’ve been lucky enough to befriend Sean’s son of the same name in recent years and to see at first-hand some very special memorabilia from his career, so that would be interesting enough in its own right but it was also of particular help to me at this time.

Celtic in the Thirties, Published by Celtic Star Books, 4/11/24. Image: The Celtic Star

Now would be as good a time as any, I suppose, to share some exclusive news with The Celtic Star readers.

Since the beginning of last year, I have been working away on the story of Celtic in the Fifties, a follow-up to the two-volume Celtic in the Thirties series published in 2024 by Celtic Star Books.

As part of my research, I came across an SFA Referee’s Committee finding on Sean, but details were vague, the fixture mentioned was not part of Celtic’s schedule and his dismissal did not seem to have been reported in any of the newspapers around that time.

As far as I can see, it was not even included in Sean’s own excellent biography, Celtic’s Iron Man, although I’m happy to stand corrected on that. In any case, the additional info on the letter prompted a further search yesterday and helped me finally identify the match involved, which was a non-first-team fixture where only the scoreline had appeared in the Press as a one-liner. No more spoilers!

Sean Fallon, Celtic FC. Photo The Celtic Wiki

So more than 75 years after that SFA letter was written, it has inadvertently helped me add another tiny piece to the jigsaw that is the Celtic Story, with information I suspect even Sean’s family were unaware of. That is the real beauty of all of this.

We’ll continue to have a look through the correspondence and share some items which we feel will be of interest to the families and the wider Celtic support.

And with regard to the book, the first volume of Celtic in the Fifties is now almost complete and all things being equal will be published later this year. It’s an incredible Celtic story, full of magical players, heartbreak, controversy and glorious triumph, which I hope you will love.

So to recap Celtic in the Fifties Vol 1 will be published by Celtic Star Books in the early autumn of 2026.

Hail, Hail!

Matt Corr

Follow Matt on X @Boola_vogue