Jock Stein

As we prepare to mark tomorrow’s (Friday’s) 36th anniversary of the passing of Jock Stein, we look back to an interview, Lisbon Lion John Clark, gave to the Celtic View in 2011.

What kind of impact did he have when he first came to the club?

Although he wasn’t the manager, he was the one who signed me as he was in charge of all the youth teams at the time. He was a tremendous personality and is a legend at the club. These are the kind of people you’ll never forget about. These are real legends and important people in the club’s history. And there will be a place for them for life in the club’s history.

What are your memories of him as a man?

He was a good man, a fair man. But if you got on the wrong side of him, well… But we all enjoyed working for him. He was the only manager that I knew and he was a tremendous person, and his thoughts and ideas were well ahead of his time. The players that played under him respected him. He was a big part of Celtic’s history.

He had a reputation as being hard but fair. Is that accurate?

He was a guy who explained things to you on the tactics board he expected you to absorb it and take it into your head. He didn’t like to be repeating himself too much as if he was doing that he felt it wasn’t registering with the person he was talking to. From that he could tell if a player had a football brain or not. But I enjoyed working with him, and he was well-respected by all the players. He was a guy a bit before his time in training methods and tactics. These people are gifted people but they’re one-offs.

But there are many stories that he also liked having a laugh as well?

He had a bit of humour and was a good singer as well. I could remember he was in Kearney, New Jersey the first time we went to America in 1966. And as usual the manager got up to say a few words, so Big Jock got up and just started blethering away and then said he said I’ll sing you a wee song and sang that one, Old Scots Mother of Mine, and you’ve never so many white hankies in your life – all these women crying about their mother. And he said if there was a bridge from New York to River Clyde in Glasgow here you would all be walking home tonight. I’ve never seen so many women crying about their mums! So he was also having a bit of humour, too. I liked him, and I think that was the case. not only with people at Celtic but at Scotland and all the other teams he managed as well


How did he change your career at Celtic?

He played you in the reserves and then he would play you in the first team and leave you out again, until he felt you were ready for a first-team chance. I think four or five of us made our debuts at Arbroath. There was an international match on but our game wasn’t cancelled as he was confident enough that people he had in reserves and had forwarded into the first-team from his set-up were capable enough to look after things and get a result. And we won 5-0 up there.

Why was Jock so successful as Celtic manager?

He had the players who he thought were good enough and he was the one that managed to gel them all together because he knew that was his best 11 or 14 he had and could depend on them. Both went together




What was his message to the players which made you so relaxed and focused before you went out and won the European Cup?

It’s a long time ago now but it was basically what he always felt. He thought they would play on the counter-attack and told us to be careful and asked us to be patient because he knew they would try and play that way. Although they got a penalty kick, I will always remember at half-time, he told us not to change too much and to just keep going and be patient as things would happen. And they did. He was really calm about it. He knew that the players who were out there could get a result. He believed in everyone and his words were just to keep patient and remain solid at the back and midfield so we didn’t get caught on the counter-attack.

What were his emotions after the game?

He was very proud. Maybe not facially, as was the kind of guy who you wouldn’t know if he was happy or not, but inwardly, you knew he would be really chuffed with himself and a proud person. I think when we arrived here at Celtic Park that was the moment that everyone was proud, and it hit everyone that we had won the European Cup. It was a great feat, and especially that we were the first British team do it. You can’t change that in history, and that’s what we are proud of.

What are your memories of hearing on his death as he led Scotland to the 1986 World Cup finals?

It was a tragedy. It was on the TV, and at the time you hadn’t realised he had passed away but when you heard it you, were stunned as he was part of us – he was like a father figure to us. It was a really big blow for Scottish football as he was a tremendous personality, and not only here, though, as he was massively respected and well-known even when we went to the continent

 

The best manager of all time.

 

The man was a colossus we will never see the likes again champions of Europe with a team of locals I think Bobby Lennox was the one player out with the Glasgow area he came from Ayrshire. My dad took me to Easter Road Hibs we’re very good team back then in the late 60s Celtic scored 3 goals in the last 10mins to win the game my dad said as long as you live you will never see a better team in Scotland. He made good players great players.
So many memories apart from European champs,beating The cocky Leeds united at Ellend Road and Hampden tops it all I’ve never stopped loving the team and what they stand for in how to play football
THE CELTIC WAY

 

Jock Stein was one of the old style managers who stood no bullshit from players or management,he wouldn't succeed in today's football world due to his honest approach,read his biography and what a fantastic book,

 

Of course he'd succeed ffs, in any era.

 

What with the attitude of modern day players, like when they don't get there own way when they don't get a transfer and can't be bothered to play and don't give a * for 12 months

 

September 10, 2021 marks 36 years to the day when the single most important figure in taking Celtic Football Club beyond the norm passed away.

Jock Stein suffered a fatal heart attack in Cardiff and for a fleeting moment the heartbeat of Celtic stopped.

However, as the epitaph on John Thomson memorial states: “They never die who live in the hearts they leave behind.”

On the night of Tuesday, September 10, 1985, the sun came down on a favourable day of what had otherwise been a dire and drear wet summer...

And as the daylight set far to the west of Cardiff City's Ninian Park, the sun also came down on the career and life of quite simply the greatest figure in Celtic's long and illustrious history.

At the age of 62, Jock Stein died of a heart attack

While the darkness crept over and enveloped not only the Welsh summer's night but the whole of Scottish football in general and Celtic in particular, Doctor Stuart Hillis, the Scotland team's medical officer stated: "It was a sudden death which could have happened at any time."

However, it didn't happen at any time nor at any place, the most revered figure in Celtic's folklore passed away at his place of work - he had just steered Scotland to the brink of the 1986 World Cup with an indispensable 1-1 away draw against Wales.

This was a war-ravaged soldier passing his last breath on the battlefield - but Jock Stein was no ordinary infantryman, he had advanced from footsoldier to Field Marshal in a fashion that was as spectacular as it was unexpected...




And it was in the latter capacity that he transformed Celtic from a cannon-fodder team of stagnant has beens and hungry wannabes to a winning side that trailblazed through competition after competition leaving all in their wake shell-shocked.

Such was their desire for silverware, being second wasn't simply a case of not good enough - even when they were first they craved more and under Stein's tutelage more often than not they got it.

Stein was the much-needed injection of amphetamine that not only stirred the sleeping giant; he infused a vibrant belief in a club that slumbered in the hazy nostalgic meadow of remembrance.

He instilled in the players a creed, a conviction that they were the best not only in Scotland but also in Britain, in Europe and probably just as importantly in many eyes - in Glasgow.


The giant awoke from its Rip van Wrinkle-like hibernation and with Stein ruling the roost from Cloud Nine, it would be many a year before any uppity Jack hacked away at the beanstalk with an axe sharp enough and with sufficient force to topple the all-conquering Celts.

However, that was as the Field Marshal, when he first arrived at Celtic in 1951 he was a journeyman footsoldier and expected to have the hands-on job of squarebashing the raw recruits from the cadets in the reserve side.

But fate intervened and decreed that Stein would be thrust into the frontline of first-team football and he commandeered the captain's rank.

Injury intervened in 1956 but Celtic realised there was something simmering within Stein and he was offered the job of coaching the youngsters and this is where he started to earn the stripes and colours befitting a general's chest.

Commissions as manager at Dunfermline and Hibernian only added to the list of decorations and in 1965 Celtic sent out the draft papers and recalled Stein to the fold.

To say that Jock Stein left a legacy at Celtic Park would truly be an understatement and that bestowal is still held in awe 43 years after he left the club and 36 years after his death.




Such was his imprint on Scottish football that Rangers fans packed into Clydebank's Kilbowie on Saturday, September 14 observed the minute's memorial to Stein in faultless silence.

At the great man's funeral service, the Reverend Dr James Martin of High Carntyne Parish Church differentiated between football's Jock Stein and the family man who was John Stein.

And thanks to football historian Bob Crampsey's 1986 biography Mr Stein, Dr Martin's full address has been recorded for posterity. On Friday, September 15 at Linn Crematorium on Glasgow's south side he said:

"This is not the occasion - it is neither the right time or the right place - for declaiming a lengthy tribute to John Stein. Already a large number of tributes have been paid and there will be many more, all of them richly deserved. But we are gathered here in mourning to give thanks for him and to seek *'s comfort and help in an experience of great sorrow and extreme need.

"It is, of course, really two men we mourn today, two men in the one body. There is Jock Stein, football's genius without peer, known and acclaimed all over the world. Jock Stein who has done so much for Scottish football and for the Scottish football public. Jock Stein will be grievously and sorrowfully missed.

"John Stein will be even more grievously missed. John Stein - husband, father, grandfather, uncle, nephew, cousin, friend and colleague. John Stein - warmhearted and generous, caring and compassionate, loving and beloved. John Stein, who has done so much down the years to enrich and enlarge the lives of so many who knew him. John Stein whom is was such a privilege to know.

"Of the many moving tributes that have been paid to the man we mourn today, none moved me more, personally, than the one given by a Scottish fan interviewed on television in Cardiff just after the sad news became known last Tuesday night. He said: ‘It was a great result tonight but all of us here would rather Scotland were out of the World Cup and Mr Stein was still with us.’

"That fan was speaking for us all.

"And yet, you know, in a real sense the man we mourn today is still with us. Jock Stein will still be with us as long as football survives. With us still, for example, in the performances on and off the field of the footballers who have come under his direction and his influence. With us still not least in the probable play-off matches and in the hoped-for involvement in Mexico. These things will be an enduring memorial to Jock Stein, football immortal.

"Even more important for us today, John Stein will still be with us also, very much with us, in the memories and the lives of his friends and his family, even in the life of the grandson he rejoiced to welcome but did not live to see.

"This is a time both of sorrow and of joy, both of mourning and of thanksgiving. And it is a time for seeking *'s comfort and strength.

"We are going to sing together now of *'s caring love in the 23rd Psalm."

The above are only a small example of the thousands of words written in tribute to Jock Stein but few captured the feeling more than the eulogy penned on a bunch of flowers left on the pavement outside Ninian Park.

Simply put, it said: "Jock! Heroes live forever."

 

They were at Benburb Juniors , who where they looking at ????

 

Bless the big man. Legend

 

Jock Stein would never have bought such a player. He would only have had players desperate to play for him and Celtic.

Reminds me of a more recent manager...

 

He wouldn’t have signed them