News

Burns Loses Battle With Cancer

|
Image for Burns Loses Battle With Cancer

Former Reading manager Tommy Burns, has died of skin cancer at the age of 51.

Burns, best known for his time as a player and manager at Celtic, had an unsuccessful spell as Reading manager between 1998-99.

He made his mark with the Royals, making a record breaking 7 signings on transfer deadline day of the 97/98 season, but was unable to prevent them from being relegated and was later sacked after a poor start to the 1999/2000 campaign.

Perhaps Burns` biggest achievement at Reading was the signing of Graeme Murty from York City. Murty has since gone on to play over 300 games for the Royals and is the club captain.

Although sadly he didn`t bring success to Reading, he was a Scotland and Celtic legend and a true gentleman off the pitch.

Celtic`s official website said:

‘It is with great sadness that Celtic Football Club confirmed this morning that Tommy Burns has passed away.

‘Tommy, a true Celtic legend and wonderful man will be sadly missed by us all.

‘Clearly, our thoughts are very much with Tommy’s wife Rosemary and his family at this extremely difficult time.’

Burns originally contracted skin cancer in 2006 and despite receiving treatment, the disease returned in March.

Recently he had been receiving treatment for the disease in Glasgow and France but unfortunately lost his battle this morning.

Despite the unsuccessful spell at Reading, Tommy will be sorely missed and our thoughts go out to his wife Rosemary, and his four children.

Share this article

Good times never felt so good.

4 comments

  • uroyals says:

    RIP big man. Thanks for bringing us Graeme Murty and Nicky Forster and I finally forgive you for signing Jimmy Crawford and Paul Brayson.

  • uroyals says:

    Just realised, he was last manager to lead out our team at Elm Park and first to lead out the team at the Mad Stad, thats enougth o cement his place in Reading history.

  • MASTER-RFC says:

    I had the pleasure of working with Tommy Burns during my time as an apprentice at RFC, He was a very kind man off the training ground and always liked to share in a joke with the youth team. Was always willing to give young players there chance, but was unsuccesful at guiding Reading out of League 1 not because he was a bad manager but because he believed in Football being a passing game and at the time the league was about lumping the ball forward to a big striker and RFC was a small team!!!
    Thoughts are with his family!

  • R.K says:

    Thanks for the tributes guys. Tommy will be a massive loss to everyone in the footballing family. Us at Celtic are taking this very badly. He was one of our favourite sons and on top of that he was a genuine, decent, kind person. RIP Tommy.

Comments are closed.