tommy gemmell: a bhoy's own story

Gregor Kyle
AS part of a series taken from the Celtic View, we have been taking a trip down memory lane with a host of past Celtic favourites to get their own personal take on what it was like to pull on a Celtic shirt. Next up is the legendary Lion, Tommy Gemmell.

HE is the scorer of Celtic’s equalising goal in 1967 in Lisbon and can lay claim to the distinction of being the only full back to score in two European Cup finals.

Recently identified by UEFA, alongside fellow Lion, Jim Craig, as being among the world’s first wing-backs, Tommy Gemmell is also one of the greatest left-backs to grace the Hoops during the club’s 120-year history.

A rampaging figure on the left flank, Gemmell was a fiercely committed defender and devastating attacker, blessed with one of the most thunderous shots in European football.

In 1981, long after the peak years of his playing career, one shot was clocked at travelling at 71.55 miles per hour and he had a formidable record as penalty taker, missing just three of the 34 he took in his career.

Between 1961 and 1971, he made 418 appearances, scoring 64 goals and won the European Cup, six league championships, three Scottish Cups, four League Cups and a permanent place in the hearts of the supporters as a true Celtic great.

Here he looks back on his Bhoy’s Own Story.

My first memory of Celtic was going with my old man to the Motherwell games at Fir Park. He used to take me to all the home games and quite a few of the away games and I did go to one at Celtic Park. My early memories were all at Fir Park though and at that age, I was still getting lifted over the turnstiles. It was back in the Jock Stein, Bobby Evans days, from the early ‘50s to mid-‘50s. My favourite player though played for Motherwell, a smashing wing-half, who was absolutely magnificent in the air. In fact, the only person I have seen who was as good in the air as him was Billy McNeill. His name was Charlie Aitken and he was a tremendous player for the club then. I loved going to the games with my Dad and we only lived a mile-and-a-half away from Fir Park and walked to the games. Then, on the away days, we walked to the railway station and got one of the ‘Football Specials’, trains that were put on especially for the fans. I remember our trips to Celtic Park, Shawfield, Cathkin, Ibrox and Love Street and the trains were jam packed, you couldn’t have squeezed another person on. But there were days when you had real crowds, tens of thousands of people, all going to games across the country, it was standing room only.

Looking back, one particular highlight that stands out from my career at Celtic was one Thursday night, when Jinky and I signed for Celtic. I’ll never forget that night and it was my first big event at Celtic Park. We signed provisional forms so that if we never made it at senior level, we could always go back and play junior. That of course didn’t happen. I was really excited going up to the ground that night and I’d been playing in the juniors with Coltness United. I had seen Sean Fallon at a couple of the matches I had been playing with them and I then played in a Lanarkshire Amateur Representative game at Fir Park, when I was about 16. I was up against a guy who had already provisionally signed with Celtic, called John Maguire, but he never got a kick of the ball. About an hour after I had got home from the game a local Celtic scout, who was later the Lord Provost of Motherwell and Wishaw, called Eddie McCardle approached me. He was the man who got me into Celtic Park, along with Bobby Murdoch, Billy McNeill, John Cushley, Tom Duddy, Jim Conway, all Lanarkshire boys. One thing led to another and I was then called in a Thursday and told to bring my father with me. Jinky and I then signed on the same night.

I am fortunate in that I enjoyed a great career at Celtic and as a player, but I suppose if I had to pick regret, it would be the time that I fell out a bit with Big Jock. It happened after I had been sent off in Hamburg, playing for Scotland. He then dropped me for the League Cup final on the Saturday and never gave me any explanation why. I don’t think our relationship was ever the same after that. I always respected him as a manager, that would never change. He never gave me a true explanation and I went into the dressing room that day, expecting to play and saw Davie Hay getting stripped. I just went up and wished Davie all the best and Jim Kennedy gave me ticket for a seat in the stand. It’s sad the way it worked out, but ultimately, all’s well that ends well.

I loved playing at Celtic Park and still love going to the games there today. Looking back I can immediately tell you one ground that I didn’t look forward to going to and that was Broomfield, it was a team of hatchet-men at Airdrie at that time! But if I had to pick a favourite ground apart from Celtic Park I think it would be Tynecastle. It was like a bowling green at that time, a smashing place to play. And it helped that we always seemed to get a result there! I don’t go to any of the away matches anymore, but I am still at all the home games and one of my clients has a corporate box in the main stand, so my wife and I are there for every home game. I still love going to the ground for matches.

If I had to pick my most difficult opponent as a player it would be wee Jinky in training! He was a nightmare. The last 20 minutes of training Big Jock would play the first-team defence against the first-team forwards and I was always against wee Jinky. He liked to nutmeg you, so I told him at the start of every game, ‘Jimmy, you’ve got three nutmegs and after that you’re getting it!’ He would then shout to Big Jock, ‘boss, he’s trying to intimidate me! He says I’ve got three nutmegs and then I am getting a doing!’ Jock then told him, ‘well that’s fair enough’. He was a great, great player. In terms of real live games my hardest opponent was George Best, he was absolutely magnificent. I would say that he was a more all-round player than Jinky, but Jinky had more individual skill.

I still believe that both of my strikes in the European Cup finals were as good as each other and they were hit from round about the same distance. The Inter Milan one obviously meant more and was more glamorous, because we won. But as badly as we played against Feyenoord, it was only a minute from the end of extra-time that they scored the second goal. Now had we taken them to a replay, we just couldn’t have played as bad again. As far as the quality of the strikes was concerned, both were equally good, although one was obviously more important than the other. I still look back on that game in Lisbon and what strikes me the most about it was the way we played. It was pure attacking football. The Italian style at that time was to score, sit back and soak up the pressure, but we had nine potential goalscorers in our team and there was no way they could sit back and give us the ball as much as they did. When I scored you could see their heads go down and when Stevie Chalmers scored the second, the referee could have blown the whistle there and then. Inter just didn’t want to know.

One of the first attacking full-backs that I can remember was Giacinto Facchetti of Inter Milan. Big Jock and Willy Waddell went over to Milan to study Helenio Herrera’s training methods and returned raving about Facchetti going up and down that left-hand side. It kind of developed from there. My job, first and foremost, was to defend. But at that time Celtic had so much of the ball, I had a lot of freedom up and down the park and in a lot of matches the winger was put out to mark me, instead of me marking the winger. Their job became marking me and putting me out of the game.

My philosophy when it came to taking penalties was simple, ‘hit the target and hit the ball as hard as you can’, because if I didn’t know where the ball was going, the keeper had no chance! I think from the 34 penalties I hit in my career I only missed three and on those occasions the ball came back off the keeper’s legs. So I don’t even know if they count as misses! I was never bothered when it came to taking penalty kicks, in fact, I quite enjoyed it.

Had I not have been a professional footballer I would have been a sparky. I served my apprenticeship as an electrician at the Ravenscraig Steelworks. When you left school you had to get a job and my old man got me an interview and if you had a parent or relative already with the company they would consider you for a job and that’s basically what happened. It was difficult combining the two at first and I trained at Celtic Park on a Tuesday and Thursday. Eventually Billy McNeill got a car and he was able to drop me and Jinky at Bellshill and we would get the bus from there, but I used to go straight from the steelworks to the bus stop after starting work at 7am. I would fall asleep on the bus, pass my stop and eventually wake up at Glasgow Cross and then jog back to Celtic Park, because I had no money for a tram back to Parkhead. It shows you just how much the game is changed, when you look at what the young players have at the club today.

Hard work is the key for any young player who wants to make the grade at Celtic, you have to work as hard as you can and give it your all, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t work hard, you don’t get anything, nothing comes for free in your career and you have to work for every opportunity.