A Sad Week For Scottish Football With The Death Of Two Legends

THIS has indeed been a sad week for Scottish fitba. Bad enough to lose wee Alex Young, 'The Golden Vision' of Hearts and Everton, but to follow this with the passing of big Tommy Gemmell, one of the immortal Lisbon Lions – and this in the week I turned 70. I am definitely feeling my age this week.

Alex Young (right) at Wembley in 1966

ALEX YOUNG came from a coal-mining background, he followed his Dad down the pit, but, thanks to the promise he showed with Newtongrange Star, he was signed by Hearts, quickly got into the first team and as a 19-year-old, he helped them beat Celtic to win the Scottish Cup in 1956, the Edinburgh club's first win in the competition for exactly 50-years.

Two League Championship and one League Cup winner's medals followed, before, almost inevitably, he was sold to a big English club Everton, for £40,000 – which was a big fee for 1960. He was part of Hearts' Golden Era under Tommy Walker scoring and making goals at will.

At Goodison he scored fewer goals, but created more. He and Welshman Roy Vernon, with whom he formed a life-long friendship, were magnificent midfield providers, never more so than when the Toffees won the FA Cup in 1966.

Sadly for Young, while the great Irish legend Johnny Carey took him south, he was replaced by Harry Catterick, who, for all his managerial success, never liked Young, and, in 1968, their relationship had so detriorated Young was happy to go to Glentoran, as a player, later player-manager.

We will never know how good a manager he might have been, as the Troubles began and he returned to Merseyside to play-out his career with Southport, before a persistent knee problem forced him to hang up his boots.

Back in Scotland, he and Nancy, his wife of 60-years, ran a pub, before Alex settled down to run a very successful furnishing company in Edinburgh, which is still managed by his sons.

I interviewed Alex Young two or three times. He was always modest, but incisive, and a wee bit surprised that he should be remembered. To those of us who saw him play, that was a surprise – he really was a great player.

When he was at his height, the Scotland team was picked by the selection committee. Young was only picked eight times, scoring five goals in those eight games, which is one hell of a return for an attacking midfielder.

Competition was fierce – John White and Bobby Collins were also looking for the number eight shirt; Alan Gilzean and Ian St John for the number nine one and Denis Law and Ralphie Brand the ten shirt, while we had the likes of Alex Scott, Willie Henderson and Davie Wilson, and later Charlie Cooke, Jimmy Johnstone and Bobby Lennox vying for selection on the wing.

Young was certainly good enough to be in that company, but, his cause was not helped by having a club manager repeatedly telling the SFA guys he was useless.

For all that, none of the rest ever participated in a TV play, which took its name from his nickname – 'The Golden Vision' really was one of football's special ones.

Tommy Gemmell's other European Cup Final goal, against Feyenoord

I SUPPOSE nothing demonstrates the contrast between Celtic and Rangers better than to compare John Greig with TOMMY GEMMELL.

Both played at full-back for Scotland, both were known to their team mates as jokers in training; legend has it that the young Greig did a hilarious Davie Wilson impression, which involved running towards the penalty box, then taking-off about five yards outside it, in a graceful dive!! Greig also did a mean line in one-liners.

However, and more-so as the Lisbon Lions kept winning things, football began to become a hard job for Greig, the smiles vanished, to be replaced by a grim determination on the park.

Gemmell on the other hand didn't so much play with a smile on his face, as with a great big cheesy grin. His team mates called him 'Danny Kaye', after the great American entertainer, to whom he bore a resemblance. Well, if you're brought-up in Craigneuk, in the shadow of Ravenscraig, I suppose you have to seek laughter in all aspects of life.

Tommy had a functioning brain. He was Dux of his primary school, and sent to Wishaw High School, an old-style Scottish Senior Secondary. He might have gone on to become a professional man – doctor, lawyer, accountant or something similar, but, fitba got in the way.

He was a tradesman – serving his time as an apprentice electrician at Ravenscraig, before signing for Celtic and becoming a football immortal. Forget Jardine and McGrain, Scotland never had a pair of go-forward full backs to rank with big Tam and Eddie McCreadie when they were our national team's full-backs – as they were that great April day when we toyed with World Champions England at Wembley.

It is a small distinction, but, Tommy Gemmell is in a unique club of four, along with Ronnie Simpson, Willie Wallace and Bobby Lennox – the guys who played in the two best post-war results by Scottish teams: Celtic's European Cup win over Inter Milan and that Wembley game.

Gemmell scored Celtic's equalising goal in Lisbon, and had what was in ice hockey terms, the second assist in Stevie Chalmers' winner. Not content with that, he scored another European Cup final goal, in Celtic's 2-1 loss to Feyenoord three years later. He is in a two-man club, with another left-back, Alex Neil of Liverpool, as British players who have scored in two European Cup Finals.

Gemmell was one of the jokers in that Celtic pack of such laughing players, but, his sense of fun, his liking for fast cars and the good life, brought him into conflict with Jock Stein' staunch presbyterianism. Theirs was an often rocky relationship, which, in his very readable autobiography, Gemmell partly put down to his ability to stand-up to Stein's often dictatorial managerial style.

He got away with booting one of the Racing Club Argentinians who so despoiled Celtic's 1967 World Championship clash, but, after his quite brilliant revenge on Helmut “Hamlet” Haller – for once the German wasn't kidding when he fell to the floor and screamed in pain when Gemmell “booted him up the bahookie” in Hamburg in 1969 – the writing was on the wall for Gemmell at Celtic.

After he and Bertie Auld were sent home in disgrace from th USA in 1970, it was only a matter of time before Gemmell was off to Nottingham Forest, where he did well, leaving, however, before the glory days undeer Clough, to return to Dundee.

He captained them to a League Cup win over Celtic, before managing them for a time, and encouraging the young Gordon Strachan, and, like Stein before him, being driven scatty by the off-field highjinks of Jinky, who had signed for Celtic on the same day as Gemmell.

He had a couple of spells as manager at Albion Rovers, before concentrating, after a foray into the licenced trade, on building a solid reputation in the insurance and financial planning world – along the way, making sure he kept hold of more of his football earnings than most.

He married twice, did an entertaining spell as a radio talking head, before illness blighted his last years. Sadly, one of the main jokers in the team which got the Celtic Family laughing again in the mid-to-late 1960s will not be around when the Golden Anniversary of the May evening in Lisbon is celebrated later this year.

But, as one Celtic fan noted on Phil Mac Giolla Bhain's blog this week: Ronnie Simpson, Tommy Gemmell, Bobby Murdoch, Jinky and Joe McBride – that's one hell of a five-a-side team Celtic are fielding in heaven this week, and managed by Big Jock and Tam Burns too.

You know, sad though the circumstances are, writing about Alex Young and Tommy Gemmell has made me a lot happier, remembering two magnificent Scottish talents, than I might have been, commenting again on the madness around Rangers.