PLAYING FOR BHOYHOOD HEROES WAS A DREAM COME TRUE FOR STOKES
ANTHONY STOKES had been living on borrowed time for so long that the phone call that finally ended his Celtic career ought not to have arrived as a shock. Yet before the Dubliner could digest the news that his six-year association with the club he loves had ended, he felt a sickening sensation that dulled the elation he had felt at helping Hibernian lift the Scottish Cup on the final day of his loan spell a few days earlier.
‘I was gutted, I really was,’ said Stokes. ‘That’s football. You move on because it’s business. But it was more personal for me than them.’
Stokes says he does not know if it was new manager Brendan Rodgers or chief executive Peter Lawwell who made the final decision not to take up the club’s option of a further year on his contract, but having drifted so far out of the picture that a six-month stint in Scottish football’s second tier seemed the best use of his time, he knew change was inevitable.
Blackburn Rovers are now the beneficiaries of Stokes’s striking skills and he sits down for a chat with Sportsmail at Ewood Park at the conclusion of a lively signing session for supporters on Thursday evening.
He has joined the Championship club on the back of a stunning end to last season when his two goals and man-of-the-match performance dismantled the Rangers defence and brought Hibernian the Scottish Cup after a 114-year wait.
Assured of legendary status at Easter Road for all time, it is at Parkhead that Stokes’ own fondest memories remain preserved.
‘I had a great time at Celtic, six really enjoyable years,’ he said. ‘The way it finished — that wasn’t the way I wanted to leave the club.
‘They had an option on me for a year. I’m not surprised but you might have thought they would have activated that and sold me.
‘But for me this was the best scenario — I didn’t want to go back there and not play. I’d rather just go. The last year was hard enough.
‘I’m happy with my contribution. I won plenty of medals and really enjoyed my time. To come from Dublin and play for the team I’d supported all my life was a dream come true but it’s done now.’
Signed from Hibs for around £1million in 2010, Stokes went on to score 76 goals for Celtic, the last of which came as long ago as December 2014 in a 4-1 victory over St Mirren.
By that stage, Neil Lennon, the manager who had signed him and helped him through some dicey off-field moments, had departed to be succeeded by Ronny Deila.
Successive Premiership titles mean the Norwegian cannot definitively be described as a failure, but the team’s repeated ineptitude in Europe coupled with the deterioration in productivity of several key players offer plenty evidence for the prosecution.
Removed from his favoured striking position to a role wide on the left, Stokes suffered more than most, as his declining goal tally would suggest.
‘I played probably 90 per cent of the games in his first season but I was playing on the left,’ he said. ‘I always enjoyed playing with Emilio Izaguirre, who is one of the most underrated players at Celtic, but I just felt that when we were playing certain teams we should have been playing two up front — I really did.
‘We were winning games but not convincingly. I said what I felt and it was common knowledge at the time — I thought it would have been better if he played with two strikers.
‘If you’re going into a European game and you want to play one up front, fine, or if it’s a big game and you want to be slightly different.
‘But you need to be dynamic and be able to change it from week to week. Not do the same things over and over. I felt it was getting to the stage that teams were working us out. We were going to go wide and then we were going to put it in the box.
‘It’s not like we had a big target man who was really aggressive in the air. Griff (Leigh Griffiths) has come on an awful lot with his heading over the last year, but there’s another thing.
‘If it wasn’t for Griffiths and his finishing, I think that league would have been a lot tighter last season.’
Having performed competently on the left during Deila’s first year, he found himself frozen out completely after a league win at Dundee United last August.
With the manager having stockpiled attacking midfielders and Griffiths thriving in the lone-striker role, there was simply no place for the Irishman in a rigid 4-2-3-1 formation.
While Griffiths has seemed well suited to operating as a lone wolf, Stokes has always looked best in a partnership, never more so than
when he dovetailed with Gary Hooper under Lennon.
The pair would routinely combine to beat up domestic opposition and Stokes admitted he has never enjoyed his football so much as when he was partnering the Englishman.
‘That’s the best partnership I’ve had,’ he said. ‘Hoops had everything. He could hold up the ball, link with you and he provided assists. Not as many as I gave him, mind you!
‘I knew where he would be in the box. We didn’t have to call anything out. He knew I would always be there behind him. We would always get on an angle for each other on the pitch.’
While Hooper was Lennon’s main man for the big Champions League nights, it took Stokes longer to gain the manager’s trust on European occasions.
Yet if the pair’s relationship ever appeared strained — Lennon publicly criticised Stokes for damaging the club’s reputation by attending a memorial tribute to Alan Ryan, a notorious member of the Real IRA, and also voiced concerns over his application to rehab following injury — Stokes always felt the Northern Irishman was in his corner.
‘I always felt like I got on with him,’ he said. ‘I never felt like there was a period when that changed. It probably took him a while to get to trust me in games. For the first year or two, I always found that after 60 or 70 minutes I would be the one taken off. ‘It’s a natural thing. Once you work with a manager for so long, you gain their trust and find yourself involved in the big games. I got that in the last couple of years with him. ‘I felt I had a good relationship with him. The club was always very good to me and very supportive, especially Lenny as manager.’ Above all, Stokes will remain grateful to Lennon for giving him the chance to play for Celtic, something he felt might never happen after he snubbed Gordon Strachan in favour of a more lucrative move to Sunderland in 2007. He left the Stadium of Light after just two years and admits he plotted his next career move with the ambition of catching Lennon’s eye.
‘There were times at Sunderland where I kind of regretted the move, so I’m just glad I got the opportunity to go back to Celtic,’ he said.
‘I remember sitting with my dad and talking about Hibs. Financially, I was very secure and going to Hibs was more about playing football every week.
‘But in the back of my mind, I did think that if I went there and hit more than 20 goals, I might end up at Celtic. I set myself that target at the start of the season. It was always Celtic that I wanted.’
Stokes will celebrate his 28th birthday tomorrow so has signed for Blackburn at what will theoretically be the peak of his career. The charisma of Owen Coyle helped convince him to sign for the Ewood Park outfit, but he harbours thoughts of one day pulling on a Celtic jersey again.
‘I’ve thought about that and if I have a good season or two down here, you just never know,’ he said.
‘I always wanted to thank the fans, but I didn’t want to be one of those that was going on social media and writing a letter.
‘People know how I feel about the club and I have great memories from scoring my first goal for them at Kilmarnock to lifting the SPL trophy for the first time.
‘I will be up and down for games regardless.
‘I was going to Celtic games as a fan long before I played there — and I will be back again still.’