"Time flies” rues Billy McNeill, captain of the legendary 'Lisbon Lions', the Glasgow Celtic team which, in 1967, made history by becoming the first side from these islands to lift the European Cup. “This season is the 40th anniversary, it’s quite poignant. And it does nae seem like it. It seems like it happened yesterday.”
His team-mate, Tommy Gemmell, also allows himself a fond, nostalgic smile at the memory. McNeill, Gemmell and the other surviving Lions recently returned to the scene of their greatest triumph, an excursion which brought all the memories flooding back.
As Gemmell says: “It was a wonderful occasion, and it reminded us that what we did that night will last forever. Most of us have been back umpteen times since, but this was the first time we’ve all been back as a collective. And it was made more emotional by the fact that all the fans were there. There must have been about three thousand of them, and as you know, they’re quite a sight when they all get together.”
The occasion was tinged with sadness, the boys’ beloved team-mate James Connolly Johnstone died this March aged 62 after a long battle with motor neurone disease. As McNeill explains: “We’re getting used to the sadness and the grieving, cause Jinky wasn’t the first to go. We’ve now lost three of the Lisbon team, Ronnie Simpson, Bobby Murdoch and now Jinky. We cannae forget him, and every time we get back together again, we do end up talking about him. And invariably, someone comes up with a new Jinky story you’d not heard before.
All the players that were involved, and their wives, and their widows, have been invited out to Dubai by the Celtic Supporters’ Club, we’re all going next week. So the widows have not been forgotten, we involve them as much as we can. That’ll be a nostalgic trip altogether.”
The Celtic eleven that made history that year are widely remembered as one of the greatest teams ever to bestride a football pitch. During a period of unprecedented supremacy under the guidance of legendary manager Jock Stein, the “Celts” won nine Scottish championships in a row (1966-1974) in an age where the league’s competitive stock was far higher than it is today.
After decades of relative decline, the team’s fortunes have followed a relentless upward curve since the arrival of Martin O’Neill as manager in 2000. He won three Scottish titles in his five seasons as manager, reversing a trend which had seen the league dominated for a decade by their bitter rivals Rangers.
O’Neill left in the summer of 2005 to care for his ill wife Geraldine, to be replaced by the effervescent Gordon Strachan. Though some fans harboured initial doubts, Strachan’s record has been nothing short of phenomenal. In his first season, the team won the League by a clear 17 points from nearest challengers Hearts. The 2006/7 campaign, so far, is shaping up to be even more successful. At the time of writing (early December) the team holds an almost unheard of 16 point lead in the championship, and has already qualified for the Champions’ League knockout stages with a game to spare.
Though neither McNeill nor Gemmell entertain any serious hope that the team are about to become European champions for a second time, they’re enjoying the run while it lasts. As McNeill points out: “Irrespective of who the opposition is, every game in the Champions’ League is difficult. What we do have is a tremendous support, that know exactly how to get behind the players, and lift them, and encourage them to maybe do things they wouldnae ordinarily be capable of.”
Gemmell concurs, enthusing: “You couldnae explain the atmosphere at Celtic Park on these European nights, unless you’ve experienced it, and then you’d know why they call it ‘Paradise’. Those fans sing from the first minute to the last, no matter what the score. It’s magnificent, and the team tend to raise their game.”
Despite playing in a relative backwater league, the club last season attracted a stunning average attendance of 58,149, a figure which, in the British context, is bettered only by Manchester United.
Much of this support, of course, comes from Ireland, and always has. A stirring new DVD, narrated by Jimmy Magee and entitled Celtic: The Irish Connection, traces the club’s Irish genealogy, from the moment of the club’s founding in 1888. As McNeill explains: “Everyone’s aware of the history. The club was founded by exiled Irishmen who were escaping the Great Famine, and the colours denote that, and the Irish tricolour flies over Celtic Park. The name ‘Celtic’ was clever though, ‘cause it settled on something which was common to both countries. If they’d called it ‘Shamrock’ or ‘Harp’ it would have invited more hostility, and there would have been more obstacles put in the way. And what an amazing organisation they founded. The idea was to raise money for the poor in Glasgow’s East End, but it grew into something much bigger and became a focus – mainly for the Catholics, obviously, but not just for Catholics.”
Recently,” he continues, “they put a statue up of Brother Walfrid, the club’s prime founder, and I remember wondering whether it would be abused in any shape or form. But that’s never happened, it’s left there and it’s lovely. On match days the punters all want their photograph taken next to Brother Walfrid. Even if you pass it during the week, there’s almost always someone beside it getting their photo taken. I always sensed that most of the support used to come from the north of Ireland, from Belfast, from Donegal, and places around the border. And then it became maybe more southern when you had the great success of the Irish national team, with Packie Bonner, Mick McCarthy and Chris Morris. Then you started to see the Celtic strip at Ireland games, and vice versa. It’s grown massively, and it’s tremendous to see the amount of support we get from Ireland.”
Unlike their cross-city rivals, Celtic have never applied a sectarian policy to player recruitment, and indeed, pride themselves on their anti-sectarian history. Nonetheless, attention has focused in recent years on a minority element of the club’s Irish support who can best be described as sectarian thugs. Easily distinguishable by their shaven heads and Tiocfaidh Ár Lá tattoos, they come close to resembling a native version of the British National Front. This attitude manifests itself in the booing of Rangers players who play international matches at Lansdowne Road: players such as Rangers’ Peter Lovenkrands, who cannot possibly be blamed for his club’s dodgy history, and probably isn’t even aware of it.
McNeill and Gemmell, though apparently unaware of the problem, are not slow to condemn such behaviour.
“There’s always a few,” laments Gemmell. “Look at the poison that you’d get at Windsor Park in Belfast, when Neil Lennon was playing for Northern Ireland, getting dog’s abuse from loyalist Linfield fans. There’s millions of people who support Celtic, and there’s no way you can have a fan-base of that size without getting a few idiots here and there. You’ll always have a small percentage of troublemakers, and shit-stirrers and bigots and racists. But as you say, it’s only a small minority.”
McNeill expounds: “Brian Wilson wrote this book on the club, A Century Of Honour, and I was concerned that I might discover there was indeed something sectarian about the way the club was founded. But there never was. It was an open club right from the day it was founded. Scotland has always had this religious division. In Edinburgh, you had Hibernian against Hearts – Hibernian were always seen as the Irish Catholic club. In Dundee, you had Dundee Harp, now Dundee United, who also had a massive Irish connection. But the founders of Celtic were always careful to maintain the non-sectarian principle.”
Though one suspects his attitude isn’t shared by 99% of the Celtic support, McNeill professes that, when Rangers play in Europe, he wishes them well.
“Partly because they’re Scottish,” he explains, “but also because the better they do, the better it is for the co-efficient which determines how many places a nation is given in European competitions. If they do well, it has beneficial effects for Scottish football as a whole. I’d like to see both sets of fans rooting for the other side in Europe, but maybe that’s too much to hope.”
Like most seasoned analysts of the Scottish footballing body politic, Gemmell and McNeill don’t realistically expect that any club outside the Rangers-Celtic axis is likely to break their stranglehold in the near future. In McNeill’s words: “Sometimes you think it’s about to happen, and for whatever reason, it never does. Hibs have always been able to produce exciting young players, but the problem is hanging onto them. I felt the Hearts team that George Burley had last season were actually going to do it. One of the reasons I thought Hearts were about to make that jump was the amount of money coming in, and the quality of players who’d arrived. Also, George is a brilliant, enterprising manager. They could have done it, if it wasn’t for all the interference. I think with the way things are at the moment, I doubt very much that we’ll ever see anybody other than Rangers and Celtic win the league. Not unless someone pumps millions into one of the other clubs.”
Mention of the situation at Hearts provokes Tommy Gemmell to observe, “I think everybody and their brother, in that dressing-room, has a knife in their pocket, because the amount of back-stabbing that’s going on is not real. It’s like a civil war. What the players must be thinking, I cannae imagine. They don’t know who’s going to turn up and take training the next day. It’s incredible. Apparently Mad Vlad (Vladimir Romanov, the owner) orders them to have piggy-back races.
The new manager, Malofeev, was described by one player off the record as ‘fucking ridiculous’. He screams at them in Russian, then everyone looks at one another waiting for the interpreter to translate. He got sent off last night for grabbing the fourth official, and Pressley walked out when he saw the team-sheet.”
“Och, it’s crazy,” concurs McNeill. “Last season, with George Burley in charge, they were flying. They were eight points clear at the top of the league, and he sacked Burley, who’d won his first ten matches. And then he fired Rix, and now Ivanauskas is gone. I don’t think anyone can work under those conditions, no matter who they are. It’s crazy. I can half-understand chopping and changing if you’re trying to improve the team. If it’s done for a purpose, you say ‘fair enough’. But rather than mending the team, trying to make it better, he’s doing the opposite. He’s tearing it apart.”
While clearly unconvinced about Mr. Romanov’s footballing wisdom, Gemmell is full of praise for ex-Celt John Collins, recently appointed manager at this correspondent’s beloved Hibernian: “He’s made a bloody good start, hasn’t he? Four wins, two draws, no defeats. The best start he could get was to beat his local rivals in his second game, that’s a dream come true for him. And it wasn’t just the win, it was only 1-0, but the manner in which they did it. They gave Hearts a going-over. Hearts were never in it, at any time.”
McNeill confirms Gemmell’s assessment: “John is a boy who, when he does anything, he throws himself into it totally and completely. He’s spent the last few years getting a UEFA coaching badge, which entitles him to coach anywhere in Europe. He’ll have them playing good passing football, very much in the French style, and I think you’ll find that he has excellent contacts from his time at Monaco and in England. He’ll be right on top of the job.”
Gemmell and McNeill are dismissive of the theory, popular among the more embittered sections of Hibs and Celtic’s support, that Scottish refereeing is subject to a Masonic Lodge influence.
“It’s bullshit,” Gemmell states flatly. “It’s like everything else. Say it’s a Rangers-Celtic game: if the decision goes to Celtic, the referee’s a Fenian bastard. If it goes to Rangers, he’s an Orange bastard. The truth is, they’re human beings, like referees anywhere else. If you demonise them, you’re entering dangerous territory. Hugh Dallas got a brick through his window, and a coin flung at his head. He’s a human being.”
“When I was at Aberdeen,” McNeill recalls, “Aberdeen fans and players were convinced that both Celtic and Rangers got preferential decisions. Football makes people very emotional, and when you’re dealing with referees, the easiest thing is to lose the head and blame them when things go against you. Refereeing is a difficult and specialised job, and I think it must be very difficult for any referee to remain impartial when sixty thousand people are screaming dog’s abuse at him, jeering every single decision he makes. When we were at our most successful, winning nine League titles in a row, I sometimes felt referees favoured the other teams quite a bit. Whether that’s right or wrong, it’s difficult to establish.”
The lads are unanimous in their praise of Celtic starlet Aiden McGeady, who, though Scottish by birth, declared for the Republic of Ireland at the age of 17.
“I’d have preferred he went for Scotland,” admits Gemmell, “but no harm to him, he’s a nice lad and he’d every right to choose Ireland. At the time, I thought we needed players a bit more than Ireland did. He’s got great ability, and there’s no way he’s reached his peak, there’s a lot of improvement left in him. He was eligible for both, he had the choice, and he chose Ireland. The rules are there to be used, and I hope he’s successful with Ireland.”
McNeill cuts in, “I was disappointed, I have to say. I want to see a successful Scotland team. So a player of Aidan’s quality comes along, obviously you want him on board. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a compliment to Ireland, and all credit to the boy. He’s made up his mind, and good luck to him.”
The two Lions are, if anything, even more upbeat in their assessment of Ireland prospect Anthony Stokes, currently top scorer in the SPL for Falkirk, and recently linked with Celtic.
“He’s scored two hat-tricks in succession,” points out Gemmell, “and got one against Celtic. He belongs to Arsenal, but he’s far better off staying at Falkirk and getting his game every week. He’s only 18, but he looks a player. He puts himself about up front, moves around a lot, and knows where the goal is. He’ll be some player.”