Farewell to the King

Farewell to the King

What can you say about Billy McNeill that hasn’t already been written?  He was a leader, the alpha male of a pride of magnificent Lions who mauled all comers in Scottish football for a decade and led Celtic to a place among the most feared teams in European football.  Billy was man in whom his team mates and the supporters had supreme confidence. Jimmy was the brilliant virtuoso, Bertie and Bobby the engine of a fantastic side, Lennox and those wonderfully swashbuckling full backs tore into teams but it was Billy who inspired, cajoled and led them with such dignity and pride. Here was a man you were glad you had on your side; a man the famous hooped shirt was made for. Some players you admire for their guile or their trickery but with Billy the first impression you got was that here was the natural leader of the team.

In memory’s view he is eternally young, standing proudly on the marble dais of the Estadio Nacional in Lisbon, the sun glinting of the polished silver of the European cup as he hoists it towards the azure sky. John Clarke, his lifelong friend said of that magical moment…

‘The look on Billy’s face lifting that trophy; It says: ‘I am the ruler. We rule the world. We are the best.’

In those magical years at Celtic, Stein and his green machine smashed record after record as the trophy famine and disappointments of the hungry years were replaced by a banquet of exquisite football and a cabinet full of honours. McNeill, ever his Manager’s officer on the field, led Celtic to 9 titles in succession 7 Scottish Cups and 6 league cups and all of this whilst remaining true contenders on the European stage. No one wanted to be paired with Celtic in the draw for the European Cup in those heady days when Scottish football was reaching its zenith.

For Billy McNeill though the road to the sunlit uplands of footballing glory could have been very different. His father, Jim, was a fitness instructor in the army and Billy spent two years of his childhood in England as his old man was posted there. He played rugby at his English school for two years and showed some promise at the game. Fate though would take the family back to Scotland and if his father wasn’t interested in football, his aunt Grace was and took Billy to see Celtic for the first time in 1949. For the young boy standing at the old Celtic Park watching Tully, Collins and McPhail defeat Aberdeen 4-2 it was to be the start of a love affair with Celtic which would endure all his life. As a Bellshill boy he did watch Motherwell play on occasion but at heart he was a Celtic fan. Football in the late 1940s was a physical game played on pitches the modern player would baulk at. For spectators the conditions were Spartan and Billy said in later life that his aunt Grace actually lost her shoe on the terraces on that October day when he first saw Celtic play. That didn’t stop her bringing Billy back though and like many a young boy of that era he saw a Celtic side capable of brilliance at times but also frustratingly inconsistent.

Like most boys of his era he played football and developed into an imposing defender for his school, Our Lady’s High in Motherwell. As a teenager, he was soon playing for Scotland at schoolboy level an impressed a watching Celtic scout enough in a match against England that he was signed by the club. Celtic’s youth coach in that year of 1957 was a certain Jock Stein and Billy recalled Jock saying only half-jokingly to his mother, ‘If he steps out of line is it okay if I skelp him?’  Stein was already developing into a talented coach and young Billy could not have imagined then how their fates would be entwined.

His early months as a youth player at Celtic saw his look on as Celtic demolished Rangers 7-1 in the League Cup final of 1957 and he must have thought he was joining a club on the rise. However the archaic management structure of the club in which Chairman Bob Kelly told Manager McGrory who to put into the team and who to leave out took its toll. Good players were sold; wages were poor for such a big club and the one shining light at Celtic Park, the talented coach running the youth side was eventually allowed to leave for Dunfermline. McNeill developed into a very good centre half and represented Scotland in an era when his club was struggling badly. By 1965 he was at the peak of his powers but as a 25 year old with a wife and growing family to support he was actually contemplating his future. Spurs had shown some interest in him and it was well known that the very effective English side of the time paid well. Fate however intervened when Celtic’s autocratic chairman, Bob Kelly, saw sense and appointed Jock Stein as Manager. Things were about change dramatically at Celtic Park and Billy McNeill was about to lead Celtic into an era of unprecedented success.

Celtic’s first great test under Stein came in the final of the Scottish Cup in 1965. In a match which the Fifers had led twice, Celtic refused to wilt as they had done so often in the eight barren years which had followed the 7-1 league cup victory over Rangers. Bertie Auld, resigned by Stein, equalised as the huge Celtic support in the 108,000 crowd dared to dream they could at last win a trophy. Then as the game ticked down to the closing minutes Celtic won a corner and the ball was flighted into the Dunfermline box by the unerring right foot of Charlie Gallagher. What followed was one of those moments in football which signals that something had changed and changed irrevocably. McNeill leapt into the air with that determination and forcefulness which he was becoming known for. He connected with the ball perfectly and it crashed into the net behind Jim Herriot. The vast majority of supporters at Hampden let out a huge roar. It was a roar of joy, of relief, of release from the pent up frustration stored up during the bitter years of failure. Celtic were in the in the lead and nothing would stop them winning that cup. The dam had burst, Celtic were back and their young skipper had in that one iconic moment signalled that all things were now possible for Stein and his young side.

Few at Hampden on that spring day in 1965 could have guessed the heights those men in hooped shirts would attain in the years ahead. Not only did they embark on a decade laden with silverware and glorious memories; they did it playing wonderful attacking football in the best traditions of Celtic. Billy McNeill would become a familiar figure raising cups above his head and leading Celtic into so many new adventures. Lisbon in 1967 was of course the pinnacle of his career and on that shining day beneath the Portuguese sun Billy led his men onto the emerald turf of the Estadio Nacional and into immortality.

Following Celtic is an emotional journey on which we share all the joys and sorrows, ups and down, triumphs and disasters this fine old sport has to offer. Today at Celtic Park his beloved Celtic will hopefully take another step towards the league championship. For the tens of thousands of Celtic supporters attending the game it will be a day of pride and tears. One of our finest sons will be remembered in song, in 67 seconds of rapturous applause and in a thousand memories. There he stands at the bottom of the Celtic way immortalised in bronze so that future generations will always remember him. Children as yet unborn will ask their parents and grandparents who he was and will be told, ‘he was our captain, our leader and one of the greatest men ever to wear that famous shirt.’

Rest in peace, Billy; few men have worn that famous shirt with the distinction and honour you did. As long as there is a Celtic Football Club we’ll speak your name with pride and remember your deeds with a smile.

Goodbye Skipper and thank you.

The day the music died

The day the music died

The first concert I ever attended took place at the old Apollo theatre in Glasgow. I still remember the excitement of waiting for the Eagles to take the stage and then that exhilaration which gripped the audience when they started to play. I was just 15 but found in that concert the ability to lose yourself in the music; to be so caught up in enjoying yourself that you forget all your worries for a while. I can remember heading home after it with my friends soaked in sweat from all the jumping around we did but totally happy. The only thing which matched that feeling was watching Celtic win a big game.

Growing up in Glasgow in the 1970s we were always aware of the struggle and suffering going on just a hundred miles away in the north of Ireland. I would come home from school and be greeted with news items about the latest tragedy and looking back the reporting of events there was always a little skewed. ‘Here are those two tribes of Paddies killing each other again while the good guys from England tried to keep them apart’ was the general drift of the narrative. However the Irish community in Glasgow always had a network of friends and family there and the tales we heard from folk on the ground often differed from the narrative on the news. No one who is being objective can deny that there were truly dreadful acts carried out by the para-militaries on all sides of the conflict but there remains an underlying conviction that the state forces at play were themselves fighting a covert and very dirty war. A war they tried to hide from the public and still remain very reluctant to discuss.

Those who were interested in what was going on in the six counties didn’t have to rely solely on the mainstream news outlets, back then you could always buy left wing or Republican newspapers at certain stores in places like Glasgow or from street vendors hanging around Celtic Park on match days for an alternative slant on events. There were occasional documentary series like ‘World in Action’ which gave a more balanced insight into events. I always found talking to people who travelled over for the football to be most illuminating though. The tales they told suggested the forces of law and order could be far from impartial at times.

This week I finally got around to watching the excellent documentary ‘The Miami Showband Massacre’ on Netflix and it delved into some dark places indeed. The band was made up of young men from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and was of mixed religion. They didn’t play political music but rather offered a safe space for young people of both communities to come together and leave the stress and worry of the troubles behind for a couple of happy hours and just enjoy being young. Footage of their concerts from the time shows a sea of happy young people lost in the music and finding that same escape and exhilaration I did at my first concert.

The band played a concert at Banbridge in County Down in July 1975 and after the gig loaded their mini bus up for the long drive back to Dublin. As they travelled down the A1 towards Newry in the darkness they were stopped by what appeared to be a British Army checkpoint. Stephen Travers, the band’s bass player who hailed from Carrick-on-Suir in county Tipperary was initially unconcerned as such checks were not uncommon in those times. The band were ordered out of their mini bus and lined up in a layby by the road side by men in the uniform of the Ulster Defence Regiment, a locally raised unit within the British army. Travers also noted a man with a strong English accent there too.

At least four of the men in uniform that night were indeed soldiers in the British Army’s UDR regiment but they were also members of the UVF. As the band waited by the roadside the soldiers attempted to load a bomb onto their mini bus with, it seems, the intention of it exploding as the group headed south. It is thought that the bomb was meant to explode en-route, so that it would appear that the band was republican bomb-smugglers and thus stricter security measures would be established north and south of the border.

Things went awry though when the bomb exploded prematurely killing two of the soldiers handling it. One can imagine the confusion and terror the band felt as the explosion blew them off their feet. The other members of the ‘army’ patrol then began firing their weapons at the band members killing three of them and seriously wounding two others. Steven Travers’ wounds suggest they used ‘dum-dum’ bullets which are filed to ensure they fragment on impact thus inflicting dreadful internal injuries.  It was, even by the standards of the time, a cynical and despicable crime.

Three men were convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. Two were serving soldiers and one was a former soldier; all were thought to be members of the ‘Glenanne gang’ a loose alliance of rogue UDR soldiers, RUC officers and loyalist paramilitaries. The role of British military intelligence in supplying and directing the gang in their activities remains a point of great contention. Collusion between state agents and loyalist paramilitaries during those dark years remains an area shrouded in disinformation and obfuscation but there is little doubt it went on. Many of the counter-insurgency tactics the British military employed in their colonial struggles were imported into Northern Ireland with deadly effect. The sheer hypocrisy of claiming to be upholding law and order, while assisting in, covering up or failing to halt serious offences occurring, remains an utter scandal.

What I took from the documentary though and subsequent reading about the attack on the Miami Showband was not just anger at the inexcusable behaviour of those who carried out and assisted in the execution of this atrocious crime but admiration for the courage and integrity of those who survived it. Stephen Travers was a man clearly traumatised and changed utterly by what he had suffered and witnessed that night but he used his pain to try and find some truth about what happened. The documentary revealed a little of the journey he has been on in his quest to find truth. It took immense moral and physical courage to meet and speak with a UVF spokesman about their version of events. Even when the man was not being entirely honest about what occurred, Stephen calmly told him so but also simultaneously assured him that their dialogue should continue and be carried out without rancour and recrimination. This ability to listen to the ‘other’ is something which was wholly missing in the dark days of the 1970s.

Remarkably he carries little bitterness and spoke eloquently about the need to confront the past with honesty something many, including the British establishment seem unwilling to contemplate as yet. He is rightly angry at delays, cover ups and barriers put in his path to stop him learning the truth of what happened that July night in 1975 and who ordered it. The victims of the conflict are often the ones who receive the least attention but long after those who perpetrated such crimes are gone and forgotten we’ll remember people like Stephen. Such voices speak quietly for the victims on all sides who were guilty of nothing save being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Stephen Travers courage reminds us that there are still good people who can rise above tribalism and petty politics to remind us that the victims of violence aren’t statistics but real human beings who are physically and psychologically scarred for life by their experiences. The Miami Showband documentary reminded me in some ways of another documentary film I watched late last year. The Ballymurphy Precedent,’ which told the story of the army’s killing of civilians in Belfast in 1971, again reminded us of how the innocent suffer.

The words of Briege Voyle, daughter of Joan Connolly, one of the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre echoed in my mind as I watched the documentary about what occurred on a roadside in County Down all those years ago…

‘Everybody’s pain is the same. A soldier gets shot, his parent’s, his family’s pain is the same as mine. What makes people think that their pain is any worse than mine or any less than mine? We’re all suffering the same thing. So the truth needs to be told. That’s the only way you can draw a line under the past; tell the truth.’

Stephen Travers is closer to the truth now than he was in the past but some still hide behind their lies and cover ups. I hope one day he finds out the whole story and finds some sort of closure. Like so many others he was a good man caught up in dreadful events.

Rest in peace Fran O’Toole, Tony Geraghty, Brian McCoy and all the innocent victims caught up in the troubles. The best memorial to them all would be to ensure such things never happen again.

Mind the gap

                                                                                                                                                     Mind the Gap

There was a feeling of déjà vu among Celtic supporters after last weekend’s win in the derby match against Rangers. Once again the visiting side lost their discipline and finished the game with three players either red carded or, in the case of Ryan Kent, facing an inevitable ban once we got through the charade of an appeal which had no purpose other than to make him available for the Hearts game. The media of course presented it as an ‘Old Firm shame game’ despite Celtic’s players being guilty of little more than winding up more volatile Rangers players. Such gamesmanship is as old as football and to take the bait as spectacularly as Morelos did is just plain stupid. Scott Brown was accused of behaving like a ‘complete tit’ by Journalist Graham Speirs who was unimpressed by his winding up of opposition players but anyone who has played football at any level knows there are players out there who like to give the opposition the ‘verbals.’ They also know that the best thing to do is to smile in their faces not plant an elbow on their chin. Alfredo Morelos is responsible for his red card and no one else. Steven Gerrard said after the game of Scott Brown…

‘You're playing against a player who loves to antagonise. Morelos and Kent are both provoked. Celtic fans have the right to celebrate but not to do it right in your face. Halliday has the right to protect his own people. The guy who antagonised it all from the beginning deserves to be punished as well. When you're provoked, it's only fair that both sides get punished in my view. We've hurt ourselves badly this season with a lack of discipline.’

So Halliday was ‘protecting his own people?’ Against what exactly, someone smiling at them? Gerrard has played at the highest level for 20 years and was no stranger to winding up opposition players or fans on occasion during his playing career. He rightly fined Morelos for his violent reaction and in doing so admits his player’s guilt. His statement that Ryan Kent’s punch on Scott Brown wasn’t violent simply defies belief though. Does he actually believe this guff or is he just trotting out nonsense like that to justify his doomed appeal against Kent’s inevitable ban? Callum McGregor was close to the mark when he said... 

'If you look back to December's game, Rangers deserved to win and they celebrated on the pitch just as much as we did. We took it on the chin, we accepted that - we weren't going to shout about it and make a noise and try and deflect from the actual result.'

He really does have a lot to learn about being a manager as his utterances prove this season. His comment after drawing at Pittodrie this season that Aberdeen were not in Rangers class seems very hollow after the Dons dumped them out of both cups and defeated them at Ibrox in the SPFL too. Morelos continues to be an enigma who scores most of his goals against lesser opposition just as Kris Boyd did during his time at Ibrox. When the chips are down in the big matches with Celtic, the Columbian is either firing blanks or petulantly stomping and snarling his way through matches to no avail. Meanwhile the SFA continue to bumble along like the committee of an Ayrshire Bowling club and there was a risible reaction to their decision to send a notice of complaint to Scott Brown who is charged with breaching Disciplinary Rule 77 which states…

 ‘A recognised football body, club, official, Team Official, other member of Team Staff, player, match official or other person under the jurisdiction of the Scottish FA shall, at all times, act in the best interests of Association Football. Furthermore such person or body shall not act in any manner which is improper or use any one, or a combination of, violent Conduct, serious foul play, threatening, abusive, indecent or insulting words or behaviour.’

Brown, who took an elbow to the face in the game as well as that punch from Kent, was guilty of nothing more than raising his hands in victory near those poor, sensitive souls in the away end who fill the air with bile every time they visit Celtic Park. We see players showing out to opposition fans every week in the SPFL, indeed Mr Halliday wasn’t slow to gesture to the Celtic supporters after his team scored a goal against Celtic recently. We’ve also witnessed Kyle Lafferty, openly celebrate in front of Celtic fans after scoring a rare goal. I’m not complaining about any of this, it’s all part of football and you take the rough with the smooth. The SFA have contrived once more to make themselves look foolish with this trumped up charge against Brown. It did not go unnoticed that his hearing comes in early May and if the charge is upheld Brown could well miss the game at Pittodrie and/or Ibrox.

Celtic will vigorously fight the charge of course and so they should as they have logic as well as video evidence on their side. Mind you when did logic ever influence the folk who make decisions at Hampden? They have led Scottish football into the wilderness with predictable ineptitude over the years and I have little confidence they’ll show common sense over the latest storm in a tea cup involving Brown. It’s fair to say that none of this would be being discussed had not Andy Halliday lost the plot and charged 40 yards to confront Brown like an emotional 5 year old. As their season turned to ash before their eyes, he behaved like a spoilt brat instead of leaving the field with that ‘dignity’ they’re always going on about. Contrast his behaviour with Celtic leaving the field at Ibrox after December’s defeat.

The common thread here is a team unable to take defeat with any grace. It’s plain to see that they really thought this would be their year and believed the press hype which surrounded their appointment of Gerrard and the signing of Defoe and Steven Davis in the January transfer window. Even former Celtic star, Charlie Nicholas, stated that they’d win the title. Disappointment, it is said, is to be found in the gap between our expectations and reality. The reality for Rangers is that despite spending millions on players and Celtic having a host of players injured this season they are still a country mile behind the Champions in the SPFL and out of both cups. Like any side they can rouse themselves when facing Celtic and give them a real game but they have spilled points against the better sides in the SPFL and that has killed any hopes of a title challenge. The frustration of their season ending is such disappointment is a more likely underlying cause of their poor behaviour than anything Scott Brown did.

Celtic will now march on to their eighth consecutive title and continue a once in a lifetime journey towards the magical ten. The Board has a big decision to make about who will lead the side next season and should Neil Lennon complete the treble it would be hard to bet against it being him. Whoever it is will deal with a squad requiring investment and reshaping to ensure this golden opportunity isn’t lost.

This season has been a tumultuous one on and off the field in Scottish football but as Celtic close in on ten in a row I get the feeling we will see much more controversy and discord. Celtic’s dominance of Scottish football is too much for some to take. We saw that last Sunday.