FORMER Celtic boss Davie Hay has revealed that the club carried out secret drugs tests on striker Mo Johnston after allegations were made against his behaviour off the pitch.
In his new autobiography Hay has told how he swore a handful of people to secrecy and arranged for Mo – known as MoJo – to have a drugs test without his knowledge.
The star striker was told he was to have a full medical test by doctors to assess his general health – while the club’s chiefs anxiously waited to see if any trace of drugs showed up in the player’s system.
Mo – who would later transfer to Rangers, becoming the Catholic to play for the Glasgow side – was often seen in nightclubs and bars, dated a string of models and owned sports cars.
And allegations of his drug taking dominated the Scottish press for some of his time at Celtic, pushing his image from the back page to the front cover.
In his new book, The Quiet Assassin, Hay explains that he had to know whether the allegations of drug use were true or not.
The 61-year-old said: “Mo featured on the front pages of newspapers too often for comfort – one story that would not go away was the allegation that Mo was taking drugs.
“Eventually I decided to act and put everyone’s mind at ease, and I hatched a plan that would get Mo into hospital for several checks.
“We told him he had to undergo an exhaustive medical check – the doctors, though, had arranged tests that would once and for all ascertain if there were traces of any kind of drugs in his system.”
The Celtic boss – who would go on to win the Scottish Cup in 1985 and become Scottish champions in 1986, said the plan to keep the tests a secret was touch-and-go.
He said: “Only a handful of people knew – and Mo of course was not one of them.
“The press would have had a field day if it had leaked out.”
“The test told me what I had known all along – Mo Johnston was clean.”
Johnston, 46, who is now director of football of Toronto FC in Canada, said that the original allegations had come from people jealous of his success.
He said: “You simply could not perform at that sort of level if you were taking drugs.”
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