The Celtic Rising: David Potter on The Day Everything Changed – Part 1

Photo The Celtic Wiki The build-up to the Cup final is often a vital time. Both teams had something to pick themselves up from after last Saturday’s disappointments. Dunfermline Athletic were now out of the title race and Celtic’s performance had been truly abysmal with Jock Stein’s timeous statement about the need to clear things out and his promises to bring in new players not missing anyone and hitting the wall.

It was clear, however, that this was a decision for the future. At the moment, hardly anything in the whole world was more important than Saturday’s Scottish Cup final. For those in school, the “Highers” and “O” Grade exams were beginning.

These were crucial, life-defining moments to so many people – but the Scottish Cup final was more so! Jock Stein decided to take his squad to Largs on the Ayrshire coast from the Tuesday to the Thursday for light training before returning to Glasgow for a final training session on Friday. The 14 chosen were John Fallon, Ian Young, Tommy Gemmell, Jim Kennedy, Willie O’Neill, Bobby Murdoch, Billy McNeilll, John Clark, Jimmy Johnstone, Steve Chalmers, Charlie Gallagher, John Hughes, Bertie Auld and Bobby Lennox.

The squad surprises us from a modern perspective. In the first place, there are three left-backs in Gemmell, Kennedy and O’Neill, more than sufficient presumably but enough to lead to some speculation that one of them might be deployed as a left-half, allowing John Clark to play at right-half and then Bobby Murdoch could return to the forward line. Speculation along these lines (and it did appear in certain areas of the Press) clearly did not understand Stein’s major positive move so far, namely the transformation of Bobby Murdoch from an ordinary to average inside-forward to a world class right-half.