You and I have seen some special Celtic teams. For me, the double winning team in 1977, the Centenary team and, of course, the Martin O’Neill team, were without doubt above anything we’ve had since the 60s.
I am in no way disparaging Gordon Strachan’s remarkable achievement of twice reaching the knock out stages of the Champions League. This was down to Gordon’s superior ability as a manager; the wee man didn’t have a squad to compare to the others on the list.
By contrast, this team, in its embryonic state, finished fourth in the Champions League group, but that was then. Now, they are within touching distance of winning an undefeated treble. This is the finest Celtic team I’ve seen.
The ’77 team wasn’t so much a team as a support act for Kenny Dalglish. A season later, without King Kenny, they finished fifth, without even a Uefa Cup spot as compensation.
It was sheer force of Billy McNeill’s personality which drove the Centenary team on, but they returned for preseason without their elixir.
It was like going to school watching Martin O’Neill’s team. We learned so much about the game that we’d never seen at Celtic. This was a guy who knew how to get results. But without another King, we discovered that team too was built on a single foundation.
There are no Kings in this Celtic team. They are a team in the true sense of the word. Last night, without Dembele, Armstrong, Tierney, Lustig, Simunovic and Sinclair they rolled around the Firhill surface like a machine from the 22nd century.
It was breathtaking. This is the greatest Celtic team since the one which walked off the Hampden pitch in front of 136,000 fans in 1970.
I saw a preview of the BBC documentary film, Glasgow 1967: The Lisbon Lions, which airs across the UK on Wednesday 24th May. It was heartfelt, entertaining and inspiring. I intended to review it today, but I was so annoyed at the coverage some in the media gave it, I thought I better step back to do the job justice.
They had some of the Lions, of course, and some wives too, but they sat a microphone in front of a few of our more experienced CQN’ers Some of the best things you have read on this site come to life on the screen. We’ll talk about it again next week.
Stunned and humbled at the support for the marathon, which takes place on Sunday morning, to benefit the Celtic Foundation. I just don’t know what to say. There are spectacular donations (here) there – a simple thank you does not seem appropriate, but I know every donation, large or small, means someone has taken the trouble to spend hard earned money.
It is appreciated, thank you.
If you’d like to get an historic week off to a unique start I hear there’s a projector screening of the original live broadcast and whole 90 minutes from Lisbon in a Govan warehouse tonight (Friday, 19th), it’ll run from around 6.30 till 9. If interested drop an email to cqnopen@gmail.com
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DU getting promoted would probably strengthen the league – but my BIL is a Hamilton STH so I will be hoping they stay up
Already far too excited …. hahahaha
THE_HUDDLE on 20TH MAY 2017 5:11 PM
50 shades of green on 20th May 2017 5:08 pm
@@#
Just talking shite then.
Nickers 2 u 2.
H.H
2 years 31 days
A little bit of justice
BRTH – Medically stricken? Sounds like you have run yourself into the ground with your Lisbon organising efforts. I hope you recover quickly my friend
HH
In a day dreaming moment I was thinking about 5-a-side football and how certain people have to simply win – no matter how insignificant the game. Then I imagined a 5-a-side game 20 years from now, a leisure centre in Glasgow, a Tuesday night, 8:00 pm. In walks Bronnie, Mikael, Griff, KT, Jozo (I was tempted to put wee Paddy in) and Craig – guess who wins, no matter who the opposition. I think we have a core of born winners in the team at the minute and this is one of the reasons why we are having the season we have had.
BRTH.
Caught up on your poetry in the class story.
Quite brilliant.
Hope your on the mend for the big cup anniversary.
Inverness relegated!, delighted, that’s crack of dawn trips tae the heelands halved for next season.
No be able tae sleep the nicht.
Great nostalgic week for the club.
God bless them all.
Hail Hail.
One Malloy
No — I have been stricken by food poisoning or some other type bug which has left me helpless more or less for the last 2/3 days.
I am hoping to God I feel much better in the next 12 hours and certainly in the next 48!!
Former Celtic youth player , Greig Spence has put Alloa 2 1 up against Brechin
Get well soon mate,your muckers need you , ;))
HH
Fantastic celebration at St Mary’s Calton this morning.
Only got a chance to speak to VFR very fleetingly and lions roars before and after the mass.
I’m blessed to be part of this community of Celtic …
Heading of to Irvine for a wee night of Celtic men n women
Let the celebrations begin☘️☘️☘️☘️
Celtic -3 are 15/4 with Ladbrokes tomorrow. very tempting.
Can we win by 4 ? Yes we can.
Resurrection Crew.
Respect
BT.
At the Irvine club ask for big David. Ex sleamuir bhoy.
A long lost buddy of mines.
As it’s quiet tonight
Francis/The Barca Mole will be buried fittingly on Thursday 25thMay
Unfortunately I and May of his friends will be unable to attend
I’ll light a candle at mass on Thursday in Lisbon
God bless Franny/ TBM
St Stive
I’ll ask around.☘️
Blinking coffee, not drinking yet.
GFTB
No La Lanterna then?
TheTimReaper,
Mail duely sent, cheers.
BMCUWP,
Mail Duely sent cheers
Very happy that ICT were relegated. They are, imo, the dirtiest team we played against this season ( and, of course, that’s saying something).
a few days up at the cottage with my mum, the doc and Derry. Reading CQN wHile I sit on the dock as lunch cooks on the Barbara. Not Lisbon, but still pretty nice.
GFTB .. I saw you have Celtic with a joker tomorrow. Good on you for sticking to your guns. Good luck tomorrow.
Warning to any Irish bhoys … Liam in toronto and his better half are driving around Ireland for the next 10 days or so … so watch out if you are on the roads!
Sorry to see that ex Celt , Stephen O’Donnell released by Luton today after they failed in play offs.
I am sure he will do a great job for any SPL club looking for a dedicated footballer with a great attitude to his sport. Luton’s loss will be someone’s gain. All the best big man!
OnThisDay in 1953, CelticFC won the Coronation Cup!
https://twitter.com/celticfc/status/865847128916193280/photo/1
Kevin Mckenna: Lisbon Lions didn’t merely roar for Celtic fans – they roared for working class Scotland
Kevin McKenna
A QUIETLY cherished, 14-year-old story has begun the process of entering the folklore of a Glasgow family. It concerns a veteran of the airlift that took 12,000 Scots to Lisbon in May, 1967, to see Celtic win the European Cup and the desire of his children to get him to another final in Seville 36 years later even as cancer was trying to prevent him. They knew – and so did he – that he wouldn’t be around to see his beloved Celtic participate in another occasion such as this. A ticket was procured, flights and accommodation secretly secured and a taxi ordered to collect Joe and deposit him at Glasgow Airport. The family wasn’t normally given to bursts of unruly sentiment but they all sensed that something sacred might be happening here.
Next Thursday, May 25, marks the 50th anniversary of Celtic’s triumph in Lisbon when they became the first British side to triumph in the biggest and most glamorous club tournament on the planet. Several English teams have since repeated the feat but Celtic’s success will never be equalled. The implacable forces of pure capitalism now ensure that only a handful of football’s richest clubs in four countries can ever win the European Cup. Celtic did it with 10 working-class men born within a few miles of the east end of Glasgow. The 11th was a foreign import from Ayrshire.
The occasion will be commemorated with a gala evening at the SSE Hydro featuring Sir Rod Stewart and Sir Alex Ferguson while the BBC has produced a Lisbon documentary. Newspapers, including The Herald, will empty their archives of what remains of their Lisbon collection featuring photographs that have become as iconic in their way as those marking the beginning and the ends of wars and the deaths of presidents.
Among thousands of Scottish families and their loved ones scattered abroad memories will be rekindled of men and women who watched this team and bore witness to their achievements unto the next generation. Those who remain impervious to football’s febrile charisma rarely get to understand why so much human emotion can be expended on a game, and this one game in particular, when political events that affect real lives are unfolding rapidly around us. Isn’t it really just a game; another drug for the masses? And aren’t we all being made to remember One Afternoon in Lisbon merely to slake the eternal tendency of Glaswegians to elevate their triumphs on clouds of sentiment?
Willy Maley, professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow, is a lifelong Celtic supporter and explains why Celtic’s victory in Lisbon and the men who achieved it are still being garlanded 50 years on. “It’s all about family and community,” he says. “Celtic and many other clubs around the world took shape and grew within disadvantaged working-class communities struggling with social exclusion generations ago. The football clubs reflected the fierce pride of that community and their achievements helped to engender a sense of pride and identity in dark days. When they wore the colours they also bore the aspirations of their towns and villages on their shoulders.
“Celtic was formed to help save the lives of the poor Irish fleeing famine and persecution for their faith in Ireland. So, from the outset, they were at the centre of a people’s aspirations to be accepted on equal terms. Their early triumphs built self-confidence in this community and reinforced a sense of pride.”
A mile or so from the professor’s wood-panelled study is the storied western district of Maryhill, a sprawling working-class enclave still fiercely proud of its identity. Its daily social challenges are met each morning, it seems, with a razor-sharp wit and a rough laugh. When asked where he comes from, a Glaswegian abroad will rarely say Scotland; it has to be Glasgow. A citizen of Maryhill narrows it down still further. Bertie Auld, the oldest and best-loved of Celtic’s Lisbon Lions, comes from Maryhill, growing up in Panmure Street which runs parallel to the canal running behind Partick Thistle’s Firhill Stadium. Those who were born and grew up around here are fiercely proud of that connection. Peter Grieve and his son Peter Jr are both taxi drivers and citizens of the Republic of Maryhill. Each was reared on stories of Celtic and Peter Sr remembers vividly watching the game on the family’s old black-and-white telly. “Bertie is part of the fabric of Maryhill; everyone around here loves him, no matter which football club they support. He has always been proud of the place where he was brought up and, like all the other Lisbon Lions, he is tireless in helping local causes. None of them ever really left the communities that reared them and they were always proud to represent us.”
As in all the other places where those anointed 11 were born and raised the Celtic colours were passed on from mothers and fathers to daughters and sons. Peter Jr mentions the petition that’s been raised in Saltcoats to have a statue made in honour of Bobby Lennox, its own Lisbon Lion. “There should be one in Maryhill of Bertie Auld,” he says. “Because don’t forget, he also went on to be a successful manager of Partick Thistle. In fact there should be statues of each of the Lisbon Lions in those places where they were born. It wouldn’t just be to honour Bertie Auld of Celtic but Bertie Auld from Maryhill.” He is counting down the days until he can take his two young daughters to Celtic Park. “I’ll tell them all about Bertie Auld too.”
A dozen or so miles east along the M8, where Glasgow’s edgiest enclaves look towards Lanarkshire, lies Viewpark, a large working-class neighbourhood originally constructed to house miners and their families. All along the Old Edinburgh Road are the bus stops that once picked up five of the Lisbon Lions as youths and deposited them near Celtic Park. One of them was Jimmy Johnstone, voted the greatest Celtic player of all time.
He was born and raised in the streets of Viewpark and after his death in 2006 a statue was made in his honour. It sits just back from the Old Edinburgh Road in a little memorial garden surrounded by seven stones representing the Number 7 jersey that he wore. There are three benches in this immaculately-maintained little retreat which beams with civic pride. The public subscription for it attracted donations from supporters of Rangers, Celtic’s great rivals, as well as two of their finest players, Willie Henderson and Graeme Souness. After the funding target was reached the organisers found there was enough left to give £5000 for research into motor neurone disease, which claimed Jimmy. The statue now sits proudly on the site of the old St Columba’s Primary School where his skills were first honed. Jimmy Johnstone gave this community and the miners’ families who first formed it pride and a sense of achievement, and when he died they put him at the heart of it. Each rain-soaked child who hurried past us on Tuesday afternoon slowed when approaching the garden and glanced up at the statue. They knew why we were here.
Margot McCuaig, an award-winning documentary maker, made a film last year about Jimmy Johnstone. She once worked at Celtic Park and has come to know the Lisbon Lions and their families. “What you soon get to know about these men is that they are a real band of brothers who have remained very close into old age. They have been devoted to each other in sickness and in health and through each other’s triumphs and troubles.
“They have come to know what they represent not just for Celtic fans but also to Scotland and I’ve always felt that they have never stopped feeling blessed and privileged at having been chosen for Lisbon. They are all proud men but humble too and, in all the time I have known them, they make every effort to attend supporters’ events all over the country and abroad. The bond they have with the supporters is very moving to witness and is just as strong among younger fans who never even saw them play.”
This week’s events to mark the 50th anniversary of Lisbon will be tinged with a degree of sadness and loss. Four of the men who won the European Cup have since died, the most recent being Tommy Gemmell, who scored the first goal in the 2-1 victory. Jock Stein, their boss, died while managing the Scotland international team in Cardiff in 1985. Billy McNeill, the captain, is suffering from dementia. In sickness and in death though, the Lions’ connections to the people who supported them have been strengthened further still. Premature death and health inequality have stalked the communities that reared them, a pattern of disadvantage that has not diminished with the passing of the generations. The traditional afflictions that have harrowed these places have not spared the men who became their champions.
In a 10-year period between 1965 and 1975 these players and the wider squad members won 22 trophies and reached five European semi-finals and one other final. They were feared and saluted throughout Europe, yet they were ill-rewarded for their labours. Celtic raked in untold riches on the back of their endeavours but the players saw very little of it. Many of them were forced to head south to unremarkable English clubs such as Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough, and only then discovered how poorly they had been paid in comparison by a board of directors who ran businesses on the dividends of their success.
Jim Craig, the left back from Govan whose pass set up Tommy Gemmell’s goal in Lisbon, split his apprenticeship at Celtic between training and studying for a degree in dentistry at the University of Glasgow. He says the players were very much of the communities that raised them. “I don’t want to speculate on the living standards of today’s top players and how they spend their time away from football but there was no question of our players receiving life-changing amounts of money,” he said.
“We continued to live in or near the neighbourhoods in which we were born. We encountered supporters in the street; at church; at the shops and in pubs and cafes. And this being the west of Scotland they weren’t slow in reminding you of your responsibilities. And perhaps we became better men for it. People talk about tensions surrounding the Celtic and Rangers divide but in those days, when it could be argued that the sectarian divide was deeper, few if any of us encountered any hostility from Rangers supporters. In fact quite the opposite: I always found them to be respectful and knowledgeable and happy to express a little pride too in what we had achieved. After all, the Rangers team of that era would have been more than a match too for most of the great European teams that we defeated.”
Sir Tom Devine, Scotland’s foremost historian, says the cultural and social impact of Celtic’s Lisbon triumph can never be underestimated and that it still resonates to this day. “That team and their achievements gave such a boost to working men all over Scotland but especially to the Irish-Catholic community in west central Scotland, whose story since getting here had been characterised by discrimination and contempt, though this was beginning to fade.
“In Jock Stein we had a giant among men who bridged the sectarian divide but, just as importantly, gave a sense of dignity to working people who shared his Lanarkshire mining background. Stein had no formal education to speak of and, like many others, was dispatched down the mines as soon as he was old enough.
“Yet whenever he spoke he did so with great wisdom, authority and eloquence. Like many others if he’d been given a chance to shine or to attend university he would have been a successful leader in politics and in business.”
Celtic’s Lisbon triumph was watched by millions on live television around the globe. It was the first time in the modern world that Scotland as a nation was being portrayed in popular culture outside of Brigadoon and the images of No Mean City. What they observed was Scotland at its best: attractive, friendly, outward-looking and positive. More than a year later that reputation was further embellished when Celtic, who had been drawn to play the champions of Hungary in a European Cup first-round tie, protested at the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The ties were all subsequently re-drawn and a gift from grateful Czechoslovakian football people sits in the Celtic trophy room.
My father was at Lisbon in 1967 along with his brother-in-law, John, a gentle and academic type who would go on to become head teacher at one of Scotland’s most illustrious fee-paying educational facilities. Joe always remembered his mother-in-law entreating him to “look after our John as he’s not really used to all this”. On the final whistle he looked around and, panic rising, realised “our John” was nowhere to be seen. Instead he had vaulted the moat that surrounded the pitch and invaded the pitch and could be observed kissing the turf in silent adoration.
And that was why our family all clubbed together to ensure Joe made it to Seville in 2003 before the cancer got him. My brother said, “By making it there in one piece he was a goal up against the disease before it equalised a year or so later. So it never actually beat him.” Like many other fathers who have since died Joe was our link to Lisbon and a team of footballers whose achievements will never die.
A wee photo of Charles Patrick Tully with the Coronation cup for 16 Roads :))))
https://twitter.com/BarryMcGonigle/status/865886058931793920/photo/1
Jmccormick 6.26pm
MissGFTB was paying and she loves Maggie Mays (she is Young and appreciates sweets more than mains :-) plus it was chucking it down when we came out Pri(blinking)mark so maggies Mays was closer, even better when I realised it sold Strongbiw dark fruits on tap, with the wee waitress providing a glass of ice instead of filling the pint glass up with ice, that immediately got her a decent tip as well as the grub being absolutely fine, La Lanterna, one of these days !
Mike in Toronto 6.36pm
Cheers, there are plenty in with a shout, Jobo/CRC do a fantastic job with LMS & GFS for a brilliant cause, their effort is much appreciated and apart from the serious side, it’s a good laugh having a wee laugh and joke about each other’s selections :-)
Cracking match on Alba.
BRTH
Don’t know if you’ve had an answer about the banner yet but there’s a trophy shop on Shettleston Road has an advert outside it. I think it’s a trophy shop.
Don’t know the name or the address but it’s below 950.
KEEP THE FAITH
MurdochauldandHay on 20th May 2017 6:41 pm
Thank you for that .HH
2 more goals since my last post. 4-4 on agg with 10 mins to go. Hh
That’s very sad but very poignant too that Francis/The Barca Mole’s funeral will take place on 25th May.
Half a century after his club, our club won the European Cup.
With God’s grace I’ll think of him and all departed Celts when I’m in that stadium.
Hail Hail
To all the CQNrs who are travelling from Liverpool airport on Wednesday morning. If you have hold luggage then you put that in on the ground floor EasyJet desk. I’m guessing most of us will just have hand luggage though – so go straight upstairs. You’ll see a nice John Lennon statue with the words “above us only sky” there – good for a photo.
You then go through passport/security then see a Frankie&Bennys, a Starbucks/Costa place and a shopping/duty free type place – even though it’s not duty free. Go through all of those though and head back downstairs – there’s a decent Wetherspoons and more eating places.
See you on Wednesday – you’ll be able to spot me because I’ll be wearing green and white, I’ll have a massive grin on my face and I’ll have a woman who looks like Elizabeth Taylor on my arm.
Hail hail – the Celts really are here.
Gordon64
I’ve no time for Alloa since the
Same old Alloa always cheatin
game.
We should not be supporting cheating institutions.
MWD :-@))£
Sky Channel 142 ALBA ….GREAT GAME …Alloa v Brechin 4-4 ….. 5 mins to go
MURDOCHAULDANDHAY on 20TH MAY 2017 6:41 PM.
Absolutely brilliant . A joy to read and so, so true.
Hail, Hail.
PHYLLIS
A tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor?
GFTB
No worries,, as ever family comes first. Glad you enjoyed your day