Jackie’s plight puts Old Firm madness in perspective

THE Celtic team who outplayed Lyon in the 2003-04 Champions League featured some formidable characters. Men you wouldn’t accuse of spilling your pint in a hurry.

Undeterred by defeat to Jose Mourinho’s Porto in the UEFA Cup final in Seville, Martin O’Neill’s side licked their wounds and left the champions of France black and bleu four months later.

A 2-0 home win featured fine goals from Chris Sutton and Liam Miller. Those European triumphs under the midweek floodlights tend to live long in the memory of supporters. Longer, in some cases, than the players who created them.

The starting XI from that night has been cursed by freakish bad fortune on the health front.

Goalkeeper Magnus Hedman’s life spiralled downhill due to drug addiction.

Stiliyan Petrov was diagnosed with acute leukaemia whilst captain of Aston Villa in March 2012. John Hartson was given a 50-50 chance of survival after testicular cancer spread to his brain a decade ago. Goalscorer Miller died of cancer aged 36 in February 2018, leaving behind a wife and three children. Now comes the wretched news of Jackie McNamara’s fight for life in a Hull hospital after undergoing surgery for a bleed on the brain.

One of the game’s good guys, Jackie has always been a tough and hardy campaigner. If anyone can pull through a life-threatening illness, he can. Yet the conflicting fortunes of that Celtic matchday squad against Lyon remind us all of an unavoidable truth. Footballers might be treated like masters of the universe. People may wonder what problems they can possibly have when they earn all that money. But even the greats are mere mortals who depend on the same vital organs as the rest of us.

In this, of all seasons, people seem to think winning — or stopping — nine-in-arow is a matter of life and death. Yet Celtic boss Neil Lennon put it best the other day. Our health is our wealth. Everything else is noise.