Lisbon Lions
50 years on, the play, by Bertie Auld’s brother
HE hid from Jock Stein in a wardrobe in Lisbon and watched his big brother go on to win the biggest prize in European club football. Had Ian Auld taken the right turn, at the right time, he might have followed in the footsteps of his brother Bertie, the legendary midfielder at the heart of Stein’s European Cup-winning Lisbon Lions. But bad decisions, a battle with alcoholism and a life sentence for murder meant Ian’s life played in stark contrast to that of his sibling.
Yet this week, as the celebrations marking 50 years since Celtic’s famous win get under way, Ian’s legacy will be secured with the posthumous publication of his play set during the days before the European Cup Final between Inter Milan and Celtic on May 25, 1967.
The Lions Of Lisbon: A Play Of Two Halves will be published on Friday by Luath Press, more than a quarter of a century after it was written.
Ian died in 1998, but penned his own biography for a programme accompanying a production of the play in 1992 – reprinted in the published script – in which he describes the moment his life took a wrong turn.
“Ian Auld could have gone to Arsenal,” it reads ominously, “but he went to the Balmore Bar in Saracen Cross instead.” His wife, Eileen Auld, remembers him as many things: father of her chil- dren, keen gardener, self-taught piano player, reformed boozer who made sure everyone’s toast on their wedding day was apple Shloer. It was while in prison, before they met, that Eileen thinks Ian first started to write. She recalled how he would sit up at night in the kitchen of their family home in Glasgow spilling out ideas in ink. Eileen said: “He used to go into the kitchen and sit writing with pen and paper, puffing away on cigarettes. He’d met someone in prison who was writing a wee bit of music and they did a demo tape. But it fell on deaf ears so he started writing things himself. He just took to things like that. He played piano by ear.” Ian wrote The Lions Of Lisbon in the early 1990s with Willy Maley, a working-class Glasgow boy not long returned from studying at Cambridge. “He had written a few wee things about Lisbon, about how people would have sold pints of blood, a kidney or their soul to the devil to get there. He did that to the best of his ability and then Willy put a bit of structure to it,” Eileen said. In 1967, Ian was like most other Celtic fans who’d travelled to see his team in the heat of Lisbon, full of hope and high spirits. Like most, but not all. For one thing, he knew where his heroes, his big brother among them, were staying in the days before the final. At the time Ian was 25, four years younger than his brother Bertie.
“He used to tell stories about going to see Bert in the hotel when he went to Lisbon for the final,” said Eileen, 57, sitting below a picture of Ian in her living room in the north of Glasgow. Of course, Jock Stein, would not have taken kindly to unauthorised access to his star players – even by close relatives.
“I think it was in the days leading up to the game, some of the other players were in the same room talking and Ian was in there with Bert, but Ian had taken a drink.
“Next minute, two knocks at the door. Big Jock. Ian was thrown into a wardrobe and the door shut. Imagine? Big Jock catching Bert’s brother in a wardrobe? He’d have went aff his nut.”
It was this story, among others, that convinced Willy Maley of a potential for collaboration.
Ian’s recollection of his journey to
Lisbon and into the back of a wardrobe in 1967 gave rise to an unlikely writing partnership between the reformed lifer and the professor-in-the-making, the fruits of which are still being enjoyed by audiences 25 years later.
The play toured in 1992, directed by actress Libby McArthur and starring a pre-Billy Elliott Gary Lewis and Frank Gallagher, better known as Lenny Murdoch in BBC Scotland’s River City. It played to sold-out audiences at Glasgow’s Pavilion, and was this year revived to mark the Lions’ 50th Anniversary at Celtic Connections and Glasgow Comedy Festival, with a small tour scheduled for the summer.
Willy, now Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow, was writer in residence for Milton Library at the Milton Unemployed Workers’ Centre when he met Ian.
“He came in one evening and started talking to me. But he didn’t mention anything about being Bertie’s brother,” said Willy, 56.
BOTH men’s names are steeped in the Parkhead club’s lore. Auld, for the brother immortalised after beating Inter 2-1 and lifting the big cup 50 years ago, Maley for being the namesake of the club’s first manager. “Ian’s is a very real connection, but I have no connection, maybe a third cousin somewhere away back,” he said. “We were from similar parts of the city, we understood football, the working class and that humour. We came at it from different angles, but neither of us could have written this on our own.
“I knew he had stories and a passion for Celtic that I had. He was the perfect person to do it with, he had extremely strong Celtic connections and, like me, he was from a background which made him emphatically anti-sectarian. Neither of us were Catholics. We loved the club, the team, the history.”
History. As the club’s anthem goes, if you know it, it’s enough to make your heart go whoah-oh-oh-oh.
Celtic’s calibre during their most glorious spell remains the stuff of fantasy.
Bertie Auld and his teammates won every competition they contested that season, eventually going on to bag a still-unsurpassed nine Scottish championship titles in a row skippered by the legendary Billy McNeill..
None of the men in Stein’s Lisbon XI came from further than 30 miles from the stadium door at the top of Kerrydale Street in the city’s east end. Yet by breakfast time on May 26, 50 years ago, their names were world news.
Ian’s history, though, is far darker than Bertie’s Technicolored triumphagainst-the-odds tale.
When he did eventually go to London it was for labouring work and not to Arsenal.
After an argument over drink with a man in his shared digs spiralled into violence, Ian found himself in the dock at the Old Bailey being handed a life sentence for murder.
He served 15 years in Wormwood Scrubs before being released on li- cence, keenly aware that he’d been given a second chance worth more than any football medal.
After jail, Ian had a spell in Ronachan House, the now defunct rehab centre on the Argyll coast, meeting Eileen’s late brother Terry, who introduced the pair in 1982. Despite a 16-year age gap, a year later they were married, with two children adding to Eileen’s child from a previous partner.
“There was a bit of stigma at the time,” Eileen recalled, of the reaction to her marrying a former prisoner. “It took some people a while to get their head round. But a year down the road I couldn’t have asked for anyone nicer,” she said.
Willy remembers him as “incredibly streetwise”. He said: “Even when I met him he had bags of attitude. His nickname when he was younger was Danger Auld. He would have been as strong and able to deal with big players as Bertie Auld was. He didn’t take any nonsense.
“He would have been a brilliant community worker if he had got the break, but he was on licence because he served life so he was never able to.”
The new production is gallus, warm and nostalgic, starting in 1992 and spinning back to ‘67 with references to Hillman Imps, spearmint chewing gum and macaroon bars set against cute new gags about Andy Murray, Brendan Rodgers and Paolo Nutini.
These names nudge Ian’s words into a world he didn’t live to see, having died of a heart attack in 1998 aged 56 following a fight with lung cancer.
“I wish he could see what they’ve done to it,” said Eileen. “All the wee new twists. I got quite filled up watching it. He’d have been very proud to see it back. The kids are very proud of it too.”
Ian wrote of himself in the original programme notes that he “played outside right, but learned to write inside.”
For Willy, the play’s publication and performance are testament to the power of writing as rehabilitation.
“It was massively empowering for Ian,” he said. “The terrible thing is, if you kill somebody, you’re a murderer and that’s what you are for life. Then if you come out, you’re an ex-jailbird.
“This gave Ian a different identity. If he had been able to think of himself as an actor and writer, which he was, that was different.
“You can be full of talk but if you translate that onto a page, onto the stage and sit in the audience at the Pavilion, the Arches, the Tron, like Ian was, listening to actors read your lines, that’s an incredible thing.
“Ian’s story is one of triumph over adversity. And so is the story of the Lisbon Lions.”