THE NEW STEIN
Rodgers is Celtic’s modern version of Jock, says Lawwell
CELTIC chief executive Peter Lawwell has hailed Brendan Rodgers as the club’s new Jock Stein.
Lawwell, speaking exclusively to
Sportsmail as Celtic celebrate the 50th anniversary of winning the European Cup in Lisbon, also insisted that the club ‘could be the biggest in the world’ if it could access revenues open to teams in other leagues.
Admitting the recruitment of Rodgers had been crucial in the development of the club, Lawwell said: ‘There are resources to help him achieve what he wants to achieve.
‘Much of this was already in place before Brendan arrived but he has been the spark. He has energised the club. He has been our Jock Stein.
‘Brendan gets Celtic. He is a supporter, so he buys into everything we are doing.’
Lawwell, who stood on the terraces at Celtic Park in 1967 to welcome home the Lisbon Lions, said the club was ‘poised’ for any change in the commercial and playing landscape and added: ‘We could be the best and biggest in the world.’
IT’S not just 35 years spent amid the splendour of Australia’s east coast that distinguishes Willie Wallace as a Lion alone. When Jock Stein arrived at Celtic Park in 1965, the men who would achieve immortality in Lisbon two years later were all already ensconced there. With one notable exception.
It’s an urban myth that Wallace was signed from Hearts midway through the club’s annus mirabilis as a direct replacement for the stricken Joe McBride. The pair actually played together briefly before the latter’s 36-goal season was cruelly cut short by injury.
But Wallace was and always will be the only player in the team that beat Inter Milan 50 years ago today that Stein signed.
Not that it earned him any preferential treatment.
‘I just got treated the same,’ recalled the 76-year-old. ‘It wasn’t any different. He bought me for as cheap as he could.
‘It was amazing for me. I fitted in there within two weeks.’
As much as Stein is said to have begrudged every last penny of the £30,000 it took to persuade Hearts to sell such an asset, it would prove a shrewd investment.
Had it not been for Wallace’s two goals in the 3-1 defeat of Dukla Prague in the first leg of the semifinal the following April, it’s not stretching matters to suggest there might have been no Lisbon at all.
Hearts’ willingness to move Wallace on remains something of a mystery to this day. He had been a formidable player for them between 1961 and 1966 only for his form to dip. Rumours Rangers had tapped him up were rife. To this day Wallace is insistent they had no foundation in fact.
‘I never even spoke with Rangers,’ he stated. ‘My family were all connected as supporters with Rangers but my old mother wouldn’t let me go to Ibrox or Parkhead, so I went to watch Falkirk.
‘It was just the way it was at that time. Fans would come out of the games and half of them were drunk. It seemed a bit dangerous.’
If Wallace’s extended family had a leaning towards the blue half of Glasgow, he was too occupied with carving out a career with his Godgiven talent for scoring goals to care too much.
‘To be honest with you, I went through my career without even thinking about it,’ he shrugged.
‘The first club that picked me up was Stenhousemuir at 16. I’d a couple of years there playing with older players and got an education. I went from there to Raith Rovers and there were good players there. Jimmy Baxter and I had two years together there.
‘There were old players like Willie McNaught, Andy Lee, Alfie Conn, Johnny Urquhart — who I also played with at Hearts. An education again.
‘Then I went to Hearts. When I came to Celtic I was actually a 26-year-old professional.’
In all probability, Wallace would have played a key part in the second half of Celtic’s legendary season in any event. The serious knee injury McBride sustained against Aberdeen on Christmas Eve rather propelled him front and centre.
‘Of course I felt sorry for him,’ said Wallace. ‘I was good friends with Joe. He went on and played at Hibs.
‘But I was quite surprised when you look back and count up the matches played in the European Cup that Joe only played in two.
‘I always thought Joe had been a permanent member of the side until his injury. But that was the gaffer. You weren’t guaranteed to play. The defence stayed the same but you never knew who the front five would be.’
When Stein named his team for Lisbon, there was to be no place for John Hughes, Charlie Gallagher or Willie O’Neill. It was the cruel reality of having only one named substitute in those days. Each had played significant roles in Celtic getting that far.
Wallace, the man who had joined after Zurich and Nantes had been eliminated in rounds one and two, would soon be placing a European Cup winners’ medal besides that of the league and Scottish Cup.
‘Within six months of joining Celtic, I won everything,’ he recalled. ‘If someone had said that to me when I signed I’d have phoned the asylum. It was a fairytale. To think about it now is unbelievable.’
While Wallace’s first half season would never be bettered, his last four years with the club were scarcely barren. He won the league in each season, two further Scottish Cups and League Cups, with the only blemish being defeat in the 1970 European Cup final.
He left with Hughes for Crystal Palace in 1971 before returning to Dumbarton. A left-field offer to play with APIA in New South Wales saw the Australia bug bite.
‘I went to play for an Italian club in Sydney, funnily enough, and we won the league and cup two years in a row,’ Wallace said.
‘I came back and was at Ross County for a few months and then big TG (Tommy Gemmell) got the Dundee job, so I went there with him for three years. Then one winter’s night I came home from training and the president of my old club in Sydney told me they were moving into the national league and offered me the job.
‘It was snow and ice outside. The kids wanted to go right away and that was it. So I’ve been down there 35 years now. I’ve never regretted it for a minute.’
The digital age may have made the world a smaller place but there are times, he admits, when he’s felt each one of the 10,000 miles.
He visited his great friend Gemmell just days before his passing earlier this year but was back on the other side of the world on the day of the funeral.
‘It’s a long way,’ he added. ‘I love coming back but it saddens me that the team is falling apart due to ill health and those who have passed away. Every time I come back there’s fewer members.
‘When I went out there first, it was six stops in the aircraft — now it’s only one.’
He’d have taken any mode of transport to be in Glasgow this week, though. Yesterday brought the Lions back to the heart of the city for a civic reception held within the City Chambers.
As fitting as the recognition was from the City fathers, there are many who feel the achievement of this group of men has been scandalously under-appreciated at government level for far too long.
‘The knighthood issue has never bothered me,’ insisted Wallace. ‘I was born and bred in Kirkintilloch and didn’t have a penny to go to the cinema sometimes, so I don’t look for these things.’
Words of thanks and praise for what he and his band of brothers achieved half a century ago has never been in short supply, though.
Wallace’s love for the game still burns as brightly as it ever did.
‘I go over to a little tournament in Brittany with some Under-13 teams in Australia and the guys I meet are all Celtic fans,’ he said.
‘They were still showing me the newspapers from 1967 just last year — all the reports of the game.
‘Throughout the world there are guys who walk up to you and tell you in Chinese that they are a Celtic supporter because of what happened that day in Lisbon.’