So highly did Harry Catterick rate John Connolly, a dashing 21-year-old winger, that he left his sick bed, where he was recovering from a heart attack, to complete the Scot’s £75,000 signing from St Johnstone.

It was March 1972 and the Everton manager was seeking to rebuild the League Championship winning side of two years earlier, which had since suffered a dramatic loss of from.  Connolly was slated as a replacement for Johnny Morrissey, who was nearing the end of his lengthy Goodison career.

Through the troubled 1972/73 season, in which he was almost ever present, playing more games than any of his colleagues, Connolly was virtually the only bright spot as Catterick’s reign fizzled out to its disappointing end.  ‘Connolly was really playing well and had scored some great goals,’ recorded George Orr in his diary of the era, Singing the Blues.

Wiry, exceptionally quick and on his day an electrifying presence, Connolly harked back to the era of great Scottish wingers. Like Joe Harper, Connolly was one of the most highly rated young footballers in Scotland but similarly struggled to consistently replicate his form north of the border in England.  At St Johnstone he possessed an extraordinary goalscoring record, scoring nearly a goal every other game.  At Goodison such feats were harder to replicate, although his form was nevertheless good enough to win him a solitary Scotland cap in 1973.

Entering a team in transition, he struggled to consistently maintain his form, and his confidence diminished after Catterick’s departure.  Billy Bingham utilized him in the first half of the 1973/74 season, but then preferred George Telfer.  After regaining his place at the start of the next season he suffered an appalling broken leg in an FA Cup tie against Altrincham in January 1975 and dropped out of a team challenging for the title. 

After a year on the sidelines he made his return for the disappointing run in to the 1975/76 season.  But as Bingham sought to rejig his resources the following summer, Connolly was deemed expendable and sold to Birmingham City for £75,000.  There followed spells with Newcastle United and Hibernian, but the bountiful potential once shown in his youth was never quite realised.

On his retirement, Connolly worked for Vaux Breweries and as an advertising sales manager for a golf magazine. He returned to football in the noughties, serving as manager of Queen of the South and St Johnstone. Later he worked for the Scottish Premier League as a match delegate and for a scouting agency.