I had the privilege and honour of attending the Requiem Mass for Lisbon Lion and Celtic Legend John Clark at St Mary’s RC Church on Friday at noon. The term “Star” is used too loosely in most cases with regards to football players, but in the Brush’s case, it was certainly appropriate and well deserved, John Clark was the exact definition of a “STAR”, but with a difference, John was the most civil, humble, and non-pretentious man you could ever meet, he rarely talked about himself, or sang his own praises, John certainly knew and understood what he had achieved with Celtic Football Club, but he also knew that they won as a “Team” not as individuals, even the magical Jinky Johnstone was a team player, and not just a team of footballers, but a team of very close friends, on and off the football pitch.
John Clark only played four times for the Scottish National team, one of those games was when he marked Pele out of the game in a friendly against Brazil at Hampden Park in 1966, Stevie Chalmers scored the Scotland goal, Pele actually swapped jerseys with Stevie at the end of the match, Billy Bremner wanted to swap, but Pele refused because of the close attention wee Billy paid to Pele during the match. For the likes of John Clark to only win four caps is a National disgrace, especially in a period when Scotland continually failed to qualify for major tournaments. Scotland failed to qualify from 1958 until 1974, Lisbon Lion Jim Craig once said, why don’t they just pick the whole Celtic Team? It’s pretty obvious why they failed to do that.
I believe the Lisbon Lions won 117 caps between them, I believe at the same time three Rangers players won about the same amount. Celtic’s greatest ever captain won 29 caps, Ronnie Mc Kinnon won 28, Mc Kinnon was a decent centre half, but he wasn’t even close to Cesar. Jock Stein’s favourite player, the Great Bobby Murdoch won 12 caps, John Greig won 44, a scandal, Celtic’s greatest ever player as voted by the supporters, Jimmy Johnstone won 23 caps, Willie Henderson won 29. Jim Craig won 1 cap for Scotland, Anthony Ralston has won 21 caps, no slight on Tony, how many caps would Tav have won if he’d been Scottish? There is only one reason for the disparity in the caps awarded, and that was a bias against Celtic Football Club, and one that should shame Scottish Football. Kenny Dalglish would never have won 102 caps if he’d stayed at Celtic, I remember Kenny was ready to overtake George Young with 37 consecutive appearances, he was dropped for that game by Wullie Ormond, Kenny was sub, Scotland won 3-0 versus Norther Ireland, Ormond never brought him on. Kenny went on to break that record, but of course it was Kenny Dalglish of Liverpool then. Our History makes us strong, their Hatred makes us Stronger.
I will be sorry to see Nicolas Kuhn leave for Como, I know he shaded off near the end of the season, but his brilliant start to the season set us up to win the title. He is a young bhoy in a foreign land, it takes a strong mentality to handle that, and if he feels better moving, then I wish him luck. The money we expect to get for Nico is substantial, and it should be used to strengthen the squad, we have made a couple of good additions, but there is more work to be done, and as the manager said, the sooner the better, providing we get the right player for Celtic, we can’t just sign players to get headlines in the papers, a lot of selling clubs will wait as long as they can, hoping that the price for their player goes up, or the buying club gets desperate, so we have to identify the right player, and hopefully get them at the right price.
Glasgow’s still Green & White. Requiescat in aeternum pace John Bhoy. You never walked alone.
