happy 70th birthday billy

Joe Sullivan
IT’S now 35 years since Billy McNeill last kicked (or headed) a ball in anger for Celtic Football Club and back then, at the age of 35, he almost immediately regretted giving the playing side of the game up so early.

Any such quandaries are now long gone and the man who is undoubtedly the greatest living Celt and now the Club Ambassador turned 70 this week and will be able to look back on a career that was not only littered with success, but also inextricably intertwined with the triumphs of Celtic FC.

And in this week’s Celtic View we take a look back at Billy’s career.

William McNeill was born on March 2, 1940 in Bellshill and after playing for his primary schools both north and south of the border, it was with Our Lady’s High in Motherwell that ‘Willie McNeill’ started to catch the attentions of scouts up and down the country.

It was the Celtic second-team coach that convinced the youngster that his future lay with the Hoops although it’s not known just how much of his persuasive powers that the 35-year-old Jock Stein had to use on the 17-year-old Celtic-daft McNeill.

Just over a year later, the young centre-half made his debut as an injury to Bobby Evans opened a window of opportunity and a whole new world awaited both McNeill AND Celtic.

The process wasn’t instant, though, and one of the key ingredients, Stein, moved on to manage Dunfermline and Hibernian before making his historic return to Celtic Park.

In the interim, the gangly centre-back he signed all those years before had become club captain and led the team to the Glasgow Cup in 1964, their first trophy since 1957.

McNeill himself had been considering offers from down south but the arrival of Stein fused the players and reeling in that Glasgow Cup was soon going to be considered very small fry indeed.

Within two months of Stein arriving, McNeill led the Celts out at Hampden in the Scottish Cup final, scored the deciding goal in a thrilling and memorable 3-2 encounter and then made his way up the national stadium steps to raise the trophy aloft.

It was a scenario the skipper and thousands of adoring Celtic fans were to get used to over the next 10 years as McNeill with his arms up and holding a trophy pointed upwards to the heavens was one of the abiding images of the era.

And none were quite as iconic as the image captured in Lisbon when he was crowned ‘Cesar’ as he became the first player from these isles to lift the European Cup.

The silverware kept rolling in throughout his captaincy and it was typical of the aura surrounding the man that his last ever action as a Celtic player was to raise aloft the Scottish Cup once more in his last ever game in the Hoops.

You could have put your Celtic shirt on McNeill returning to the Hoops as manager and he did so, not once, but twice and on both occasions led the team to historic championship wins – the never-to-be-forgotten 10-men-won-the-league 4-2 win over Rangers in 1979 and the Centenary Year championship of 1988.

It really does stand to reason that he is truly the greatest living Celt and so, this week on the occasion of his 70th, we say: “Happy Birthday Billy and many happy returns.”

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