PURE JINKY
Bertie on the night Hoops humbled mighty Leeds
THERE was a time when the mere mention of a certain Celtic player would strike fear into the hearts of England’s finest.
With the best will in the world, while Pep Guardiola will respect the team his so far unbeatable Manchester City face in the Champions League tomorrow night, it is doubtful any of his squad will suffer sleepless nights.
It wasn’t always like this and in a week when an excellent Jimmy Johnstone documentary will be screened, what better time than to look back to when that wee genius terrorised the best. Then once he did that he would terrorise them again.
Bertie Auld, Celtic’s greatest living raconteur, was a team-mate of Jinky and latterly one his best friends along with Bobby Lennox and Charlie Gallagher.
Who better to recall a time when that rascal of a number seven did things to Leeds United left-back Terry Cooper which these days would put him in jail for cruelty.
In both legs of the famous 1970 European Cup semi-final between the champions of Scotland and England, Johnstone went to town on Cooper, a superb player and at that time a full international, to the extent Billy Bremner apparently told his team-mate to “not go back out there” at half-time of the first-leg at Elland Road.
Auld recalls seeing Cooper crumbling at the mere mention of Johnstone when he bumped into the Englishman on holiday in Majorca and witnessed the effect Johnstone had.
“We were sitting at a golf club and having a bottle of San Miguel and I promise you, Terry Cooper was coming down one of the holes towards the bar,” said the now 78-year-old Auld who is as sharp as ever.
“And I shouts: ‘Terry, there’s Jinky!’ And I’m not kidding, he dived to the ground and said: ‘See you, you’re trying to spoil my holiday’.
“Jimmy was the type that could have done it each and every time. He had everything.
“You need width and one thing about Jock (Stein), the first thing he did was get width and played with Jimmy and Yogi (John Hughes) and Bobby Lennox at times, he switched it about. And Jock had options.”
As does Brendan Rodgers and while Celtic may never have a talent like Johnstone in their ranks again, the Celtic manager has utilised his own wide players Scott Sinclair, James Forrest and Patrick Roberts to good effect in his first few months in charge.
Former City winger Sinclair has scored in each of his first six league games, a club record, while a rejuvenated Forrest hit his fifth goal of the season in Celtic’s 6-1 win over Kilmarnock.
“I still feel we need a couple of players, but I like Sinclair and I like the big centre-forward (Moussa Dembele), he is starting to look the part,” said Auld. “Sinclair is the type of player that Celtic supporters love, someone who is going to take it from defence to attack and get by players.
“Brendan has got a bit of life about Forrest, he has brought him back and he is starting to believe in himself.”
With Dembele and Leigh Griffiths scoring 18 goals between them already, Celtic have two serious contenders for the central striker’s role too.
Auld added: “Even the rightback, (Mikael) Lustig, he is scoring goals from set-pieces. We have options and that’s what football is all about, scoring goals.”
Auld was speaking to publicise purpleTV’s film, which evoked a range of emotions for the former Hibernian and Partick Thistle manager, who regularly accompanied Johnstone during hospital visits after his good friend was hit by motor neurone disease, which claimed his life in 2006.
“He was quite ill and I went to see him,” he recalled. “Celtic were playing Dundee United when (Craig) Bellamy was playing. He had no power in his arms and I sat behind him and we watched the game and Bellamy scored two magnificent goals. I said to him: ‘Jinky, just imagine it, if you and I were playing today, we’d be on about 10 grand a week.’
“You could see the laughter in his eyes when he turned his head round. He said: ‘Bert, that’s for mediocre players.”
Jimmy Johnstone, produced by purpleTV, will be broadcast on BBC ALBA, Friday, September 30, at 9.30pm.