Billy McNeill MBE

John McNally Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

I will leave Lanarkshire to decide which part is which.

Billy McNeill attended Our Lady’s High School in Motherwell and gained highers in English, Maths and Spanish and could easily have gone to university, but he also excelled on the football pitch and was being looked at by Arsenal, Manchester United, Newcastle, Clyde and Partick Thistle when, in 1957, he was selected to play for Scotland schools against England at Celtic Park. The match, which Scotland won 3-0, was watched by Jock Stein, who was then reserve team coach at Celtic. So impressed was he by what he saw that he persuaded the club to sign this young talent.

It would be lovely to be able to say “And the rest is history” or “It was plain sailing from then on in,” but it was far from that, because ironically Billy McNeill’s arrival at Celtic Park coincided with one of the most dismal periods in the club’s history: “the wilderness years” during which not a single trophy was won in almost a decade and during which the club finished sixth, eighth and even ninth on one occasion in the old first division.

In addition, Jock Stein had left the club to become manager of Dunfermline, and Celtic appeared to be in an inescapable downward spiral. Billy too had plenty of opportunities to leave Celtic. In 1963, Bill Nicholson, the legendary boss of Tottenham Hotspur, offered to quadruple Billy’s wages if he would agree to move to White Hart Lane. Tempted as he was, he turned them down, such was his loyalty to Celtic.

He probably had occasion to regret that decision as the malaise at Celtic Park deepened in the 1960s. It was not until Jock Stein arrived back at Celtic Park in March 1965 that things begin to change, almost immediately, for the club and Billy personally. Within weeks of Stein’s arrival Celtic had won their first trophy in almost a decade. Billy McNeill’s late winner against Dunfermline in the 1965 Scottish cup final heralded a hitherto unimaginable period of domination of Scottish football by Celtic. My dad was lucky enough to be one of the 108,000 people packed inside Hampden that day to see history being made, as was, if I am not mistaken, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick); we had a conversation about this last week.

In the following season Celtic won their first Scottish league title in 11 years and qualified for the European cup for the first time. On their way to becoming the first team from these islands to be crowned champions of Europe, Celtic had to overcome the champions of Switzerland, France, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia before beating the mighty Inter Milan, champions of Italy, in the final itself. That a team of local boys—all born within 30 miles of Celtic Park, a team that cost just £30,000 to assemble, and a team led by the grandson of a Lithuanian miner—could achieve this is, quite simply, a fairy tale. And it is a fairy tale, I believe, that will endure for so long as there are people alive to talk about football.

That game in Lisbon was won by an 84th minute winner from Stevie Chalmers, to whom I should like to pay tribute. He sadly died just a few days after the passing of Billy McNeill. He was a marvellous player for Celtic and Scotland and, as I have said, he scored the most important goal in the history of Celtic football club that day in Lisbon. For Celtic fans, whether they were there or not—indeed, whether they were born or not—that afternoon has left an indelible mark. Indeed, I cannot remember a time in my life when I could not rhyme off that team: Simpson, Craig, Gemmill, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld and Lennox.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, as I grew up in a family of Celtic fanatics, we would inevitably talk football when all the uncles, aunts and cousins got together. Years after Lisbon, the stories would be told again and again. Interestingly, however, the most oft-repeated tale was not about Lisbon itself. In our family, the most revered tale was that of Billy McNeill’s last-minute winner against the Yugoslav champions Vojvodina in the quarter-final. Having pulled back a one-goal deficit from the first leg, thanks to yet another Stevie Chalmers goal, a place in the semi-final of the European cup looked certain to be decided by a play-off in Rotterdam. With the game in injury time, Celtic won a corner. As he did so often, Billy McNeill rose up above everyone—indeed, some say that he hung in the air for an extraordinary length of time—to head home that vital goal. For those who were at Celtic Park that night, the image of Billy McNeill’s winning goal is probably the most enduring moment of their Celtic-supporting lives. In the decades that followed, no Christmas, new year, wedding, first communion or family funeral could pass without my dad and my uncles reliving or—depending on how much whisky had been consumed—actually attempting to re-enact that goal.

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

I want to thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate and to let him know that my uncle, Owen McNally, played for Celtic and scored eight goals in one game in 1927. We still have the ball in the house; it is still inflated and still has its laces. Most significantly, however, my next-door neighbour Willie Garner was signed by Celtic from Aberdeen and he scored two goals for Celtic against the opposition. I think that might have been his second-last game. He was signed by the great Billy McNeill, and he remains with us and still admires Billy McNeill to this day. I, too, was at the game against Vojvodina, and those memories will never, ever leave me.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I remember Willie Garner signing for Celtic in the late 1970s.

As we said earlier, the late 1960s were undoubtedly the golden era of Scottish football. As well as Celtic’s European triumph, I think everyone agrees that Scotland replaced England as world champions when they beat them 3-2 at Wembley. Rangers came within a whisker of making Glasgow the first city in Europe to be home to both of the continent’s premier trophies when they lost out in the final of the European cup winner’s cup to Bayern Munich in extra time. Kilmarnock also reached the semi-final of the Fairs cup that season. Of course, Kilmarnock FC are now back in Europe for the first time in 53 years, and I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in congratulating the team, and also my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) on actually making it to his work today.

It can never be underestimated just how important Celtic’s victory and Scotland’s contribution to world football were. Despite everything that Scottish football had achieved, however, much of Europe was still unconvinced and regarded Celtic’s European cup success as a flash in the pan. Even before Billy McNeill had paraded the European cup in Glasgow, the detractors were at work. Claims from Italy and Spain that Celtic’s triumph was a fluke began to circulate, with the Spanish press saying that the European cup belonged in Madrid and that Real, who had narrowly lost out to Inter Milan in the semi-final, were really the best team in Europe.

To prove the point, and to honour the legendary Alfredo Di Stéfano, Real Madrid invited Celtic to play a challenge match at the Bernabéu in June 1967 at which, in front of 120,000 adoring fans, Real Madrid would put the Scottish upstarts firmly in their place. Billy McNeill’s Celtic had other ideas during the match, played with the intensity of a cup final, and the visitors emerged as worthy winners thanks to a Bobby Lennox goal, confirming once and for all that they were indeed the best football team in Europe. Even the Spanish press grudgingly agreed, with MARCA declaring the following morning:

“May the football which Celtic play stay among us.”