Robert Evans (16 July 1927 – 1 September 2001) was a Scottish

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

player and manager, most notable for his time with

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

Career

Evans began playing football for Glasgow Junior side Pollok. He then joined Celtic during 1944 from another Glasgow junior side St. Anthony's. He started out as a forward, but it was not until manager

Jimmy McGrory James Edward McGrory (26 April 1904 – 20 October 1982) was a Scottish footballer who played for Celtic and Clydebank as a forward and then went on to manage Kilmarnock before returning to Celtic as manager after the end of the Second World Wa ...

moved him back to

right half A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

that Evans became a Celtic great.Bobby Evans Interview (1980s)
The Celtic Underground 14 January 2019 Celtic's long-awaited Scottish Cup victory of

1951 Events January * January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950). * January 9 – The Government of the United ...

and the historic Saint Mungo Cup win of the same summer gave Evans his first taste of major success. He then went on to give the sustained performance of a lifetime throughout the unexpectedly triumphant Coronation Cup run two years later. In the final, Evans played the great

Lawrie Reilly Lawrance Reilly (28 October 1928 – 22 July 2013) was a Scottish footballer. He was one of the " Famous Five", the Hibernian forward line during the late 1940s and early 1950s, along with Bobby Johnstone, Gordon Smith, Eddie Turnbull, and W ...

out of the game and instigated the move that led to Jimmy Walsh's clinching strike in the 2–0 defeat of favourites Hibernian. Evans was the first Celtic captain to lift the Scottish League Cup in

1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim ...

and he famously helped defend it a year later against

Rangers A Ranger is typically someone in a military/paramilitary or law enforcement role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called “ranging”. The term most often refers to: * Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with protecting and ...

in the final that became known as ''

Hampden in the Sun The 1957 Scottish League Cup Final was the final of the 1957–58 Scottish League Cup. The football match was played on 19 October 1957 at Hampden Park, in which Celtic beat rivals Rangers in a record 7–1 victory. The final was nicknamed ...

''. He made 535 appearances for Celtic and scored 10 goals in 16 years with the club. During this time he won 48 caps for Scotland. Evans also won 25 caps for the Scottish League XI, the most of any player. Evans left Celtic in 1960, heading south to Chelsea, where he played for one season before being appointed player-manager of Newport County. He returned to Scotland in a playing capacity with

Greenock Morton Greenock Morton Football Club is a Scottish professional football club, which plays in the Scottish Championship. The club was founded as Morton Football Club in 1874, making it one of the oldest senior Scottish clubs. Morton was renamed Greeno ...

in 1962, then joined Third Lanark as a player with coaching duties in 1963. He was promoted to manager in June 1964 but left after a difficult 1964–65 season. He played with Raith Rovers for two further years. He played for them as they won promotion from Division Two to Division One in 1967 before retiring at the end of that year, at the age of 39. Evans died of pneumonia in 2001, after suffering for several years with dementia and Parkinson's disease. In 2008 he was posthumously inducted to the Scottish Football Hall of Fame.

Career statistics

International appearances

Honours

; Celtic * Scottish Division A: 1953–54 * Scottish Cup: 1950–51, 1953–54 * Scottish League Cup: 1956–57, 1957–58 * Saint Mungo Cup: 1951–52 * Coronation Cup:

1953 Events January * January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. * January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a Estonian government-in-exile, government-in-exile in Oslo. * January 14 ** Marshal Josip Broz Tito i ...

* Glasgow Cup: 1948–49, 1955–56 * Glasgow Charity Cup: 1949–50, 1952–53, 1958–59 *

Victory in Europe Cup The Celtic Football Club, commonly known as Celtic (), is a Scottish professional association football, football club based in Glasgow, which plays in the Scottish Premiership. The club was founded in 1887 with the purpose of alleviating po ...

1945 1945 marked the end of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It is also the only year in which nuclear weapons have been used in combat. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. Januar ...

; Scotland *

British Home Championship The British Home Championship * sco, Hame Internaitional Kemp * gd, Farpais lìg eadar-nàiseanta * cy, Pencampwriaeth y Pedair Gwlad, name=lang (historically known as the British International Championship or simply the International Champio ...

: 1948–49, 1955–56, 1959–60 ; Individual *

Rex Kingsley Footballer of the Year The Rex Kingsley Footballer of the Year was an award given annually to the Scottish footballer who was adjudged to have been the best of that year (calendar year and not season) in Scottish football between 1951–1964. The award was handed out by ...

: 1953

References

External links