Jock Stein was the son and grandson of coal miners, and he himself worked down the mines until the age of 27. It was only then he switched to professional football in his beloved native country, Scotland. But it was as a manager that he left his greatest mark on “the beautiful game.”
Just think of it:
He became the first manager of a British side (Celtic) to win the European Cup;
He led Celtic to 8 successive Scottish Cups, and
He led them to 9 successive Scottish league titles. He was the club’s first Protestant manager.
All of this from someone who had once been just a raw, lanky, junior centre-half who, in 1950, was forced to play non league football for Llanelli in Wales. It was one helluva journey from a poor working class background to becoming one of the all-time greatest football managers.
I met him in July 1982 in Hampden Park. It was the occasion of the Scottish Cup Final between Rangers and Aberdeen, and I had been booked to do the pre-match and halftime entertainment.
I’d just completed a hat trick of Guinness world records for aerial ball control. That was when I first came across the term in Scotland for ball juggling —“keep uppy”.
I was being used as figurehead for a nationwide competition run by the Daily Record”. The paper gave me the title King of Keep Uppy. The winners were to be presented with their trophies by the great Jock Stein and yours truly — myself.
So my meeting with Jock took place on the pitch. He was a hugely impressive man, and very complimentary about my world records.
By half time the crowd inside the ground had grown to 80,000. The last time I had given an exhibition before a crowd of that magnitude had been at the Texas Stadium in Dallas.
Little did I know that I would be on the operating table in Galway for bowel cancer within a very short time after returning to Ireland.
It left me with a permanent colostomy for the rest of my life. But, thank God, 40 years later I am still playing the beautiful game, and setting new records.
And the great Jock Stein? Sadly, he passed away in Ninian Park in 1985 after collapsing at the end of a Wales v Scotland World Cup qualifying match. He died from a fluid buildup in his lungs — pulmonary edema.
He had truly loved his football, but was at his most serious when harking back to his days down the mines. “I’d never be alongside better men,” he told Hugh McIlvanney. “Mines were places where phonies or cheats couldn’t survive for long.”
Rest in peace, Jock.
