This weekend a Celtic winger was on the scoresheet for Scotland.
James Forrest’s second goal against Albania is likely to be widely shared on social media for a long time to come.
A wide player who regularly scores goals is a valuable asset for any team.
Consequently, the national manager Mr Alexander McLeish EBT would be rather silly if he didn’t pick him on a regular basis.
Also, this weekend the Celtic family and the good people of Saltcoats honoured one of their own.
The Parkhead side that I was taken to see as a wee fella was equipped with an IED to demolish opposition defences.
Improvising Explosive Deadly.
When the “Buzz Bomb” put on the afterburners there wasn’t a defender in the league that could legally stop him.
Between 1961–1980, Bobby Lennox scored 273 goals in 571 games.
He is the club’s second all-time goalscorer, despite the fact that he usually played out wide.
At the height of his powers, the best defenders in Europe wilted as he whooshed past them.
Once in on goal, he was an executioner.
Amazingly this stunning talent only played for his country ten times.
Years later he would say:
“I would still like to think I deserved more than the 10 caps I got, scoring three goals in six wins, three draws and only one defeat.
It wasn’t a bad record but maybe I was a victim of the times.”
Unlike football clubs, nations cannot sign players.
Consequently, they are at the mercy of the ebbs and flows of talent that the country can produce in any given era.
As a boy in the 1960s, the Fitba experts around me were still enthralled with the “Mighty Magyars”.
When the Hungarians humbled England 6-3 in November 1953 they threw out the prevailing orthodoxy of tactics and formations.
Two of the six goals for the visitors were scored that day by Ferenc Puskás.
Of course, “The Galloping Major” would become the spearhead of the all-conquering Real Madrid side.
It was the golden age of Hungarian football and it has never been replicated.
That can happen in the footballing fortunes of a country.
The thing is to know that you are living through a golden age and to appreciate it.
A decade later Scotland produced 11 sons who would win a trophy that Los Blancos had pretty considered to be their personal property while Ferenc Puskás was leading the line for them.
Bobby Lennox was in that immortal eleven.
The Lisbon Lions squad had other players in it who would now have a market value that would sound like the GDP of a small country.
Despite that Scotland had such an embarrassment of riches that it could largely discard Stein’s heroes.
The man who scored the immortal winner at Stadio Nacional in 1967 was already out of the plans at Hampden.
Stevie Chalmers received five full caps for Scotland between 1964 and 1966, scoring three goals.
Given these facts, the Scotland national team must have been an ever-present at international tournaments in those years.
Quite…
A cynic might conclude that back in the day it was just too much for the chaps at Hampden that a club set up by Irish immigrants had clearly become the real footballing power in Fair Caledonia.
The year before the Hungarians destroyed England at Wembley the Referee Committee of the SFA ruled “that Celtic be asked to refrain from displaying in its park any flag or emblem that had no association with the country or the sport” on match days.
This was about the flying of the Irish Tricolour and the Parkhead club looked to be on a collision course with the SFA.
For the rest of the 1951/52 season, the threat of Celtic being suspended from football remained extant.
Therefore, the apparent exclusion of Stein’s men starts to look explicable when you consider that the same blazers were probably still in place in the 1960s.
However, I’m sure all that stuff is in the past.
However, Scotland’s golden age has almost certainly past as well.
It is for historians to examine why such footballing riches were apparently ignored by those in charge of the national game back then.
Celtic fans come up with this quite alot regarding caps won by the European Cup winning team .
You have to look a bit deeper than some conspiracy theory however.
Class players of many teams will feel they didn’t get the caps they deserved.
Alan Gilzean is such a player. 12 goals in only 22 games over 10 years.
Ian St John got only 21 caps .
Plus nobody in their right mind would leave out Denis Law.
Players being overlooked who you think should have won more caps happens in all eras.
Even Jock Stein overlooked the captain of a European Cup winning team.
A well-deserved tribute to Lennox, the Lion and the legend. HH
Yes Celtic FC did have an embarrassment of riches at that moment in history,
however,it was to the nations embarrassment that the sfa were ‘picky about who they played’.
ie.IF you weren’t of the correct religion and faith it did NOT matter how talented you were or what club you plied your trade with,(eg.Jinky)these were the ONLY qualifying traits that was needed and better still,IF,you could shake hands in the correct fashion too,well,that was also a shoe-in.
We still have that mindset @Hampden in Level 5 productions to date to a lesser degree,it’s just not quite as hard and fast a rule as it once was,after all,they had to try and win some games,so the unwritten laws were slightly eased off,but,only occasionally.
I hope EBT McLeish continues to have CFC🍀 players refuse to play for the Scottish National team,payback,if you like,for all the times Our Clubs players were ignored and/or overlooked.
Thanks Phil 🇮🇪🍀💚✅
Oh how I remember those days. I remember that Kenny Dalglish was suspiciously dropped for his 50th consecutive cap as this would equal and probably surpass the feat held by one Willie Young. No need to state which team Mr Young played for.
George Young.
Cheers I knew it was a young
https://www.eveningtelegraph.https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/blether-hibs-hero-wanted-celtic-kicked-out-of-league-over-ireland-flag/.uk/fp/blether-hibs-hero-wanted-celtic-kicked-out-of-league-over-ireland-flag/
I had the privilege of seeing Bobby Lennox, still have very vivid memories standing in the Jungle while my Father argued vehemently round him about the merits of every charge forward or tactical retreat. I was steeped in the folklore, dipped like Achilles in that fond green pond, every heart rending defeat and exhibition of sheer footballing guille and dominance.
Young Jamesy excites me like those bygone days, tis a tragic indictment on Scottish football he’s only earned 25 caps. Then again with the tax cheat at the helm I’d selfishly want him to say fuck off, he’s a 1st choice and should probably be on that team sheet no matter what. The tax cheats excuses about formations are scandalous.
Was interesting to hear the BBC commentator say “If this was Messi in Spain we would be gushing” only to be shot down by Miller and Stewart both replying “We are gushing”
Thank God we can showcase him at Paradise.
He hadn’t scored in 25 caps and was in no way in the kind of form that he has shown in the last two games.
Jim Farry successfully continued as his predecessors had done when it came to matters concerning Celtic.
In fact he went a step further by single handedly preventing the registration of George Cadete.
Fortunately for Celtic Fergus wasn’t one to sit at the back of the bus and accept Farry and the SFA’s dictat.
By the time Celtic’s lawyers had presented their case, demolishing any notion why Cadete couldn’t be registered as a Celtic player, the SFA folded it’s hand and didn’t come out for the 2nd half.
Not quite clear if Farry was sacked, resigned with a payoff or what but because the SFA threw in the towel we never officially found out why Cadete’s registration was initially denied.
That itself is telling on it’s own.
Did Farry call all the shots on this matter or was he acting in cahoots with others within the SFA?
Is there any reason now why Maxwell, his hands clean on this matter, should not make public the SFA case, if indeed there was one at all, other than ‘just because.’
It was a shameful act by Farry and his co conspirators but should he have been the only one to lose his job as a result?
Farry received a “six figure sum”, as it was reported at the time, and as part of the deal signed a ‘non-disclosure agreement’. Hush-money, in other words.
A certain Sandy Bryson was also involved but sadly Fergus never pursued him after he’d got his main target.
Cheers, just gone back and had a look at a Scotsman article on the affair.
Farry was paid £200k to walk away.
He lied in evidence to the SFA’s own lawyers, then tried to spread the blame to others, Bryson included.
The guy who wrote the article is insistent that there was no anti Celtic bias involved in Farry’s actions and that it was because he knew the pertinent rules better than anyone else. Turns out he didn’t.
Just a coincidence then that Cadete wasn’t registered in time for the semi final against Rangers.
It stank to high heaven then and it still stinks.
Very informative Phil.