Patrick McCluskey (13 April 1952 – 24 August 2020) was a Scottish
footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...
. He spent most of his career in the Scottish League, except for part of one season in Ireland and one season in the United States.
Career
In 1970, McCluskey began his professional career 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 Foot ...
. However, he went on loan that first season to
Sligo Rovers
Sligo Rovers Football Club is an Irish professional association football, football club playing in the Premier Division of the League of Ireland. The club is based in Sligo in the west of Ireland.
The club was founded in 1928 and have been in ...
in Ireland. When he returned to Scotland, he soon became a fixture in the Celtic first team, garnering 195 appearances in all competitions (12 goals), winning five domestic honours – the Scottish League title in
1972–73
Year 197 ( CXCVII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Magius and Rufinus (or, less frequently, year 950 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 197 for this y ...
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,1973–74 and 1974–75, and the
Scottish League Cup
The Scottish League Cup, also known as the Premier Sports Cup for sponsorship reasons, is a football competition open to all Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) clubs. First held in 1946–47, it is the oldest national League cup in ...
European Cup
The UEFA Champions League (UCL) is an annual club association football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that is contested by top-division European clubs. The competition begins with a round robi ...
semi-finals (
1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, ...
and
1974
Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; ...
),Unsung Hero: Pat McCluskey The Celtic Underground, 24 June 2017 but fell out of the team after the emergence of
Roy Aitken
Robert Sime "Roy" Aitken (born 24 November 1958) is a Scottish former football player and manager. He made over 480 league appearances for Celtic, and later played for Newcastle United, St Mirren and Aberdeen. Aitken also made 57 international ...
and the signing of Pat Stanton, moving to second-tier
Dumbarton
Dumbarton (; , or ; or , meaning 'fort of the Britons (historical), Britons') is a town in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, on the north bank of the River Clyde where the River Leven, Dunbartonshire, River Leven flows into the Clyde estuary. ...
in 1977 for £15,000, where he spent three seasons.
In 1980, he transferred to Airdrieonians for two seasons. In the autumn of 1982, he signed with the Pittsburgh Spirit of the Major Indoor Soccer League. He spent only one season in the United States before returning to Scotland where he finished his career with Queen of the South.
He was not related to forward George McCluskey, who played at Celtic during the same era.
McCluskey died on 24 August 2020, at the age of 68.