19^th July 1967

Chris Shevlane – New Bhoy

There were several areas in their bodies where players felt the problems of pre-season training. For those who had not done anything at all during the summer, there were blisters to contend with and these could come along at any time. In fact, in my own case, I could be three-quarters of the way though a season and still suffer from a breaking up of the skin round my toes. I can still recall the voice of Bob Rooney, as he blasted out “how the hell can your feet still be blistering when it’s nearly May?”

The answer was I did not know why but just had to put up with the discomfort – and the nagging!

The other problem that everyone suffered from was the damage to the muscles of the anterior thigh. Even if a player did keep himself in shape during the close season, these particular muscles – the quadriceps – were only really given a workout during shooting practice and few did that during the summer. So, when we did start doing those particular sessions, we went at them at full tilt right from the start and the muscles did get a real working out.

The end result was that the quadriceps were extremely tender at that time and trying to lower oneself on to a chair could be quite a feat. Lowering oneself on to a toilet seat was even more troublesome and on more than one occasion, alarmed by the noise, my lovely Mum banged on the door of the bathroom to see if I was all right. By that time – since I was by then sitting on the toilet seat – everything was OK. It was the drop down from the vertical to the seated position that caused all the problems….and the noise!

Another aspect of training around this time that I can still vividly recall was the sheer happiness around the club. After all, we had won every trophy that we entered for in the previous season and finished the campaign with a great showing against Real Madrid in the Bernabeu. So, in a sense, why shouldn’t we all he happy?

And yet, as I walked up to Barrowfield one morning in the company of a member of the first-team pool who had not made the eleven who won in Lisbon, I was given a different insight into the feelings of other players at that time. This guy was really delighted that his team – Celtic – had had all that success – but he was also sad that, as he put it it –‘Everyone will always remember the eleven guys who won the cup on the day but those of us who played a part in the earlier rounds will be forgotten!’.

In the years since, I have often recalled those words and as time went by, recognised the truth in the statement. Through those years, I have always been careful to refer to the Lisbon Lions as a pool of players, eleven of whom were lucky enough to make the team in Lisbon. Truly, it must have been very difficult to go through one’s life in the position of that particular player; as an essential member of a very small group of successful players but not one of those who actually played on the big day.

On the previous day, our major rival in Glasgow took the main headline –

Rangers are Back In Active Business

‘This morning the players who hope to oust Celtic from the role of top club in Scotland reported to Ibrox Park to meet new assistant manager Davie White, the former Clyde manager and then don their training strips.

This season Rangers will play in the Fairs Cities’ Cup for the first time.

They hope to win entry to either the European Cup or the European Cup Winners’ Cup in season 1968-69 by winning either the Scottish League Championship or the Scottish Cup – both won by Celtic in their clean sweep of the football honours of Scotland in the past season.

Rangers have not made any close-season captures so far but manager Scot Symon is expected to do so before the new season. The names of Orjan Persson of Dundee United and Bobby Hope of West Bromwich Albion have been put forward’.

Chris Shevlane, the former Hearts full back who joined Celtic last month after being released by the Edinburgh club because of ankle trouble, has stood up to everything asked of him at training this week.

And the only other newcomer in Celtic’s full-time staff since last season has been Pat MacMahon, the Kilsyth Rangers inside forward, who Celtic expect to break through quickly into their first team pool.

17^th July 1967

Most folk reached the park early and the gossip was plentiful, with stories about the holidays and also what was happening in the rest of Scottish football. The Boss, though, was quick to bring us to heel and gave us a little pep talk which at the time seemed a trifle banal but also one which proved to be very precise in the context of the ensuing season.

It was to the effect that by our hard work in the previous season, we had reached the top of the tree, as far as football was concerned. The problem was, he went on, that those who reached the top of the tree were the target for all those in the lower positions, so we could expect that the players of every single team in the country would do their utmost to upset our day. And, to be honest, once the season got underway, it did not take us long to figure out that what he had said was perfectly true. Teams that we had beaten comfortably the season before were determined to show that they could compete – in terms of football and physicality – against this team which had won the European Cup.

However, on that Monday, after the pep talk, training got underway and was as tough as most of us had expected. As in the previous season, the ‘heavy’ bunch – which did not include my 6 feet 1 inch and 12 stone – were forced to wear the plastic under-garments designed for those trying to lose weight. When they took them off at the end of the session, the water fairly poured out of them. When I saw the discomfort that these guys were suffering, it made me even more pleased that I had continued to train all during the close season.

The session was indeed a tough one – even for those who had kept themselves ticking over during the summer break – but as usual, the coaching staff made it varied and interesting, so we could have no complaints on that score. And, rather surprisingly, we were not asked to come back in again for an afternoon stint

Naturally, the press covered the start of the new season and this offering was in one of the evening papers that day;

‘Celtic, who swept the boards last season, are back at work.

First arrival for the new season at Celtic Park today was Bobby Lennox, who was at the ground half an hour before the 10 o’clock deadline.

Before the arrival of his players, manager Jock Stein said  – “we will be training each morning of this week at Parkhead”.

Jock expects to have Joe McBride, who was out of the team in the closing months of last season after a cartilage operation, taking part in all the training sessions.

Celtic open at Hampden Park on Saturday 5^th August, with a glamour game against FA Cup winners Spurs.

The game is creating such interest on both sides of the border that Celtic have decided to allocate a fifth of the available stand tickets – 3,000 out of 15,000 –to Spurs supporters.

Celtic are almost certain to send out the side which beat Inter Milan in the European Cup final in Lisbon.

Celtic have still not arranged any dates for their European Cup tie with Kiev Dynamo.

Other full-time clubs who started training today were Dundee, Dunfermline, Hearts, Motherwell, Morton and St Johnstone’.

15^th July 1967

It had been a fascinating summer.

After we returned from the final match of the 66-67 season – the friendly against Real Madrid in the Bernabeu – the boys all went their separate ways with their families, most of them heading for the popular and sunny spots of Majorca or the Spanish mainland. I had no plans to go anywhere myself and was quite looking forward to a few days of peace and quiet, as it had been a very hectic season.

As so often happens, though, the reality turned out to be very different from the anticipation and right from my first day back in my parents’ house, the whole world seemed to be on the phone, wanting me to do this or turn up for that. And the fact that I was almost certainly the only member of the Lisbon side who was still in the city at that time only increased the pressure. For a while, I gave it my best shot but it got to the stage where I was reluctant to go out. I would still drive Mum to the shops but while she was in the bigger stores getting whatever was needed, I sat in the car reading the papers, only dashing out to help when I saw her coming back again with the bags.

Eventually, I suggested to my brother Denis that we push off somewhere and we did just that, driving down to Stranraer then taking the boat over to Larne, from where we headed firstly for Donegal, where we had relatives to visit and then swinging across the country back to Dublin, where we had aunts, uncles and cousins.

The weather was good, everyone seemed pleased to see us and Denis and I were treated royally. Only one incident marred the whole trip. It occurred when was driving near the border of the county of Sligo heading for the county of Roscommon. I was doing around 60mph on a fine tarmac road when suddenly the surface changed to something gravelly and the car swung sideways, first one way, then the other, before straightening up itself as it arrived at another tarmac surface.

I just about wet myself and I don’t think Denis was too comfortable either but we carried on as though nothing had happened. A few miles later, though, when I was paying for some petrol at a road-side garage, I mentioned the incident to the guy taking my money and he laughed. “The problem is that the councils of Sligo and Roscommon cannot agree on who has responsibility for that bit of road, so they just put down some gravel. It does give you a fright I must admit…but it is exciting!”.

Exciting was not the word I would have used myself but through the years since since I have always wondered whether he was giving us the true story or was he telling us what could be regarded as an Irish joke?

16^th July 1967

There might have been a bit of a flutter among the chests of a few of my teammates on this particular day. Not because it was a Sunday but because it was the last day of the holidays; on the morrow, we would be officially reporting for the first training day of the new season.

Now, I have been told in the past that some of my actions have been a bit on the not-too- sensible side. In other words, stupid! However, when it came to keeping myself fit I was right up there in the sensible category. All through the summer holidays – not just that summer but all through my career, even when I went on honeymoon in 1969 – I kept myself in shape.

Bellahouston Park – Home on the Range

I never went to Celtic Park to do the training. After all, would you go back to your school in the summer holidays? My parents lived just along the road from Bellahouston Park in the south-west of Glasgow, there was a one way street at the east end which was ideal for parking and that area was also probably the quietest part of the park, so ideal for a bit of running.

Unfortunately, not everyone prepared along the same lines, hence my comment about the fluttering in the chest. It was always assumed at every club I have been to that the players would keep themselves in some sort of shape during the summer break, so there was no breaking-in period. It was full tilt right from the start. More than a few suffered and little sympathy was handed out. Monday would be an interesting day.

The fact that Monday 17^th July would be the first day of training for the new season had been well publicised in the press and an astonishing number of folk came up to me after Mass, the vast majority of them wishing me all the best. However, there were also the jokers commenting on how I was going to suffer etc. I merely smiled but could not help but notice that a spot of training might get their weight back on to a healthy level.

Should I perhaps have asked them to join me in Bellahouston Park?

I woke the morning after the win in Madrid feeling really pleased with myself and decided to go down for an early breakfast. Tam was flat out on the adjacent bed and never moved as I shaved, showered and got dressed. Continue reading →

As I mentioned before, there were a few of our squad who were less than happy that our recently-won European title was being put up for a test against a side of Real Madrid’s quality but I am afraid that they under-estimated the Boss. Just before we headed for the stadium for the match, he announced the side, which showed two changes from the team which had won in Lisbon. The teams lined up as follows; Continue reading →

As the 15 players, plus the Boss, Sean, Neilly and Bob, boarded a bus at Celtic Park to take us to the airport, one figure was getting ready to go out to the track for another session…a lonely one. Continue reading →

After our training session on the previous Thursday, we had been back in again for another one on Friday, then got Saturday and Sunday off. Continue reading →

1^st June 1967

Training had been intermittent that week and the attention of the Scottish – or more precisely the Glasgow – press had been on the build-up to the European Cup Winner’s Cup final the previous evening, when Rangers had taken on Bayern Munich in Nuremburg. Continue reading →

Di-Stefano:
Our new reputation on the line

It had been a dedicated weekend of partying to celebrate our win in Lisbon and more than one face was looking a bit worn on the Monday morning when we came in to Celtic Park.

Never one to miss an opportunity, the Boss spent a few minutes telling us what we did not do so well on the park the previous Thursday afternoon, then confirmed what we already knew, that we would be travelling to Spain to take on Real Madrid in a testimonial for Alfredo Di Stefano on the 7^th June.

I was really pleased at the thought of playing in the Bernabeu against such a well-known side but was surprised to find that not everyone felt the same. The reluctant fliers, of whom there were more than one, did not want another flight; and there some who felt that to put our recently-won title of European Champions up for a test against a team of Real Madrid’s standing – they had recently won the Spanish league title – was not a bright move.

However, while those might have been the private thoughts of the individuals concerned, they were only divulged to other players and not publicly. So, after being given the news, we went out to do a light work-out and finished the session with an 8-a-side match behind one of the goals.

At one point, the ball ricocheted off someone’s foot and rolled on to the pitch itself and Wispy ran on to the surface to collect it. Suddenly, a voice roared across the deserted stadium;

“Get off that park!”

The voice belonged to Hughie Docherty, the groundsman, who like every other tender of the grass on a football pitch I have ever met, was obsessed with the quality of the surface and did not like any incursions on to it. Wispy, though, was not to be put off ;

“Ah! gie us peace. The season is finished and we’ve just won the European Cup”.

Unfortunately, Hughie was not to be deflected from his mission and opened his throat again;

“I don’t care what time of year it or what you’ve won…..get off my pitch!”

All the troops had gone through a late night after the European Cup final. The wives and girl-friends had arrived at the hotel after the banquet to see their men, then they left for the airport to catch their flight home.

Within a short space of time, however, they were back again as there had been a delay in their flight and it was the early hours of Friday morning before they were taken back to the airport. That meant that the guys did not get much sleep before gathering for breakfast. Still, when you have won a European Cup the night before, it gives a certain edge to your life and I, for one, never noticed the tiredness. Continue reading →