THE CELTIC TEAM THAT LET 10 IN A ROW SLIP THROUGH THEIR FINGERS
MUCH has been made recently of the Rangers team which failed to make it 10 in a row in 1998 and not a little has been written and said about the Celtic side which stopped them. Surprisingly, rather less attention has been paid to how Jock Stein’s Celtic failed to reach double figures 45 years ago.
Celtic hadn’t been champions since Stein captained them to a league and Scottish Cup double in 1954 but, in 1965/66 (his first full season as manager) they finished in pole position and repeated the feat every year until 1974. Bookmakers made them prohibitive odds-on favourites to make it a perfect 10 and, as they prepared for their visit to Ibrox on January 4, 1975, those prices had shrunk.
Another clean sweep appeared likely. Celtic had already claimed the Drybrough Cup (a pre-season tournament for the four highest-scoring clubs in the top two divisions from the previous term), beating Rangers in the final and they had crushed Hibernian 6-3 to claim the League Cup in the highest-scoring cup final in Scottish football history.
Stein and his players were in confident mood as the team coach deposited them at the front door of their closest rivals on that bitterly cold winter’s day.
They occupied their familiar place at the top of Division One, having won 16 and drawn two of their first 19 fixtures. Few anticipated their form falling off a cliff but that is exactly what happened next.
Jock Wallace’s players exhibited the battle fever the former jungle warrior revered while the visitors were passive: the 3-0 scoreline did not flatter Rangers.
That was bad enough but much worse was to come. Celtic would win only four of their 15 remaining league matches, losing at home to Motherwell, Dundee and Dundee United and away to Aberdeen, Airdrie, Hibs and St Johnstone and trailed in third behind Rangers and Hibs.
Jackie McNamara Snr made his debut for the club in the 2-1 loss at Easter Road, one of his eight appearances in that campaign. His son, Jackie Jr, was part of the Hoops side which prevented Rangers from reaching that landmark 22 years ago.
He has looked on approvingly from his home in Spain as Celtic renewed the loan agreement with Southampton for Norway winger Mohamed Elyounoussi and then splashed out £5m on AEK Athens’ Greek international goalkeeper Vasilis Barkas this week, arguing that recruiting on the cheap was what prevented the club from making it 10 in 1975.
‘The problem for me was that good players were allowed to leave and the replacements who were brought in weren’t of the same calibre,’ he said. ‘Davie Hay was a great influence on the team but he was sold to Chelsea — against his will — in the summer, after having a great World Cup with Scotland.
‘I remember being in the tunnel at Parkhead when we played Atletico Madrid in the European Cup semi-finals the previous season. We drew 0-0 and they kicked us — particularly wee Jinky (Jimmy Johnstone) — off the park.
‘After the final whistle, I stood and watched as Davie decked one of their big defenders with a single punch, without even a backswing. He was my hero for life after that.
‘But when Davie left, George Connelly was lost. He was a brilliant talent but the shyest man you’ll ever meet and Davie was his best pal.
‘He missed as many games as he played after that and 74/75 was his last full season with the club. It was an ageing team. Billy McNeill retired after the Scottish Cup final, Jinky was freed, Bobby Lennox missed half of the season with an ankle injury, Bobby Murdoch had been sold too early and that left a hole that was too big to fill.
‘Kenny Dalglish, Danny McGrain and Stevie Murray did their best and it was a good dressing room but the same quality just wasn’t there.’
Midfield warhorse Tommy Callaghan had won six in a row after Stein returned to former club Dunfermline to sign him for £35,000 in 1968 and he’s still mystified as to the hows and whys of their collapse that year.
‘It was a difficult time for us, especially since we’d done so well up until that point,’ he claimed. ‘We had a terrible second half of the season and nobody saw that coming. People say it must have been down to complacency but I can assure you that wasn’t the case.
‘We were a confident as a team and a club — after everything we’d achieved, we were entitled to be — but we didn’t take anything for granted, which was one of the reasons we’d been so successful.
‘And it certainly didn’t happen because we weren’t bothered about it. I can remember sitting as a group, having discussions trying to work out where it was going wrong but we couldn’t put our finger on it.
‘If anything, I think we might have been trying too hard but it just didn’t work out for us, which was a pity.
‘We’d become used to winning the league every year and it was a horrible feeling when we didn’t.
‘But there wasn’t the same fuss about the 10-in-a-row thing then that there is now because the previous record had been six in a row and we’d already smashed that.
‘I fully believe that Neil Lennon’s men will get the 10, though. With a few more players coming in and the likes of Karamoko Dembele — a tricky character in the Celtic tradition — coming through, I can’t see them being stopped.’
While conceding that their league form was unacceptable during the second half of that term, Callaghan is at pains to point out there were consolations.
‘Don’t forget that we won the Scottish Cup as well,’ he stressed. ‘For most clubs, lifting two major trophies would make it a pretty good season but we were judged by higher standards than that.’
Callaghan also emphasised that Stein, who could be a combustible and intimidating individual, remained calm amidst the carnage of their campaign.
‘He was very disappointed, obviously, but he didn’t go off his head at us, partly because we were going well in the Scottish Cup and ended up beating Airdrie in the final,’ he added. ‘He wasn’t happy but he was fine.’
Players left and the replacements weren’t of the same calibre