There was little that went right for Celtic this year. It was the first trophyless season since 1964, it was the first and only season in which Jock Stein was tested and found wanting, it was a season that raised disturbing questions about the future of Celtic and it was a prequel to the awful days of what was to happen ten years later. Most disturbing of all, it was a season in which the supporters and their views did not seem to matter. For those of us who lived through it, it was a dreadful year.
It was a season in which Celtic had very bad luck with injuries, and as often happens in such circumstances, it was also a time where he had some crazy refereeing decisions against us – but these things are only significant when there is something wrong at the top, as there clearly was this year. The major blow was self-inflicted and it happened before the season started. It was the selling of Kenny Dalglish to Liverpool.
This meant that we had to listen to all the know-all, patronising sort of stuff about how “He has a right to improve himself” and “Wouldn’t you do the same?” Such specious, quasi-political cant possibly means something to those who live their lives without any great emotional investment in anything other than making money, but for those of us who loved the green and white, it was beyond devastating to lose the one great player that we had. It immediately sent out the signal that Celtic did not want to win the European Cup again. Its effects remain with us some 40 years and more later.
Dalglish could have been kept. Sean Fallon said so years later. Dalglish was born a Rangers supporter although that need not have been a problem for many others had similar backgrounds. He had caused trouble two years before and had had to be bought off with the captaincy. But although there was never any sort of problem with Dalglish’s attitude on the park, those of us with eyes to see saw the problem coming.
Apart from anything else, the Press kept chipping away at it, and after a very successful season in 1976/77 in which Stein had excelled himself by coming back from a serious road accident and a year out of action to win the League and Cup double, Stein and Dalglish fell out about a silly close season tour of Australia, and Dalglish did not go.
This might have been patched up, but it wasn’t. The details of what actually happened behind closed doors on these awful days of early August 1977 we will never know. We have been given half-truths, contradictory tales, red herrings and sheer lies, but what we do know is that Kenny Dalglish joined Liverpool for £440,000 (at least that is one of the figures given!).
All right then. Let’s accept the “Celtic couldn’t keep him” “No point in keeping a discontented player” sort of argument that we read so much of in the Press. We now had all that money in the bank. We could even have insisted on some kind of a swop with Liverpool for some of their players, and we certainly could and should have spent the money immediately before the start of the season to show the fans that “Yes, we’ve lost Dalglish, but that is the way of life these days, and we have used the money to buy someone else”. As it was, the message sent out was “Celtic are just in this for the money, and you dopes that turn up every week simply don’t matter!”
If the fans were devastated and shattered, so too was Jock Stein. Even the most charitable interpretation of all this does not reflect well on him, and how he suffered! He showed all the signs of suffering from some form of nervous depression with a sad inability to bounce back (as he had done when Macari and Hay departed) and it was possibly now that the after-effects of his road accident of two summers ago began to kick in. His judgement had now gone. There was no major signing to replace Dalglish.
There were one or two half-hearted signings in the autumn which looked like vain and hopeful attempts to appease the support, but it was a total contrast to last year when he had signed Joe Craig, Pat Stanton and Alfie Conn, and in contrast to next year when the dynamic Billy McNeill picked up the pieces and signed Davie Provan and Murdo MacLeod. Parkhead was broken in autumn 1977, and all the while the Directors rolled up in their posh cars and expensive coats.
The first game of the season was a 0-0 draw with Dundee United. Mrs Stein unfurled the League flag, but that was the only cheer of the day. Bad news followed when we heard that Dalglish had scored for Liverpool, but even worse news came in the injuries to Alfie Conn and Pat Stanton, arguably the two best players in the Dalglish-less Celtic. Conn eventually made some sort of limited recovery, but this game signalled the end of the long and distinguished career of Pat Stanton. We could more or less have congratulated Rangers in winning the League Championship there and then.
Things got worse quickly. There was an element of ridicule and humour about Johnny Doyle getting sent off by a stunned referee for accidentally hitting him with the ball at Ayr next week, but there was a sinister element in the bottle throwing and general hooliganism. We lost to Motherwell, Rangers (after being 2-0 up!) and Aberdeen, we lost Danny McGrain to a mysterious foot injury (presumably his diabetes having some effect in this), we went out of Europe to an anodyne Austrian team called SWW Innsbruck, some ludicrous signings were made of players who were palpably not Celtic class, and when the weather got bad in January and lead to a few postponements, it was a relief.
As happens though, when you are down, someone will put the boot in. In this case it was the controversial referee called JRP Gordon. Gordon who would later be done for “accepting hospitality” on European trips, and who used the hum the tune of “No Defender” in the dressing room (as verified by several sources) excelled himself at Ibrox just after the turn of the year. He turned down a blatant Celtic penalty and while protests were still going on, Rangers took a goal kick unsupervised, ran up the field and scored!
The ball was technically not even in play! It remains one of the most shocking pieces of refereeing ever seen in Scotland (or anywhere else) and little wonder the crowd turned nasty and some Celtic players showed signs of wanting to come off the field in protest! The refereeing was universally condemned in the Scottish Press, but the goal stood and Gordon’s career flourished.
But that was almost now a sideshow. The season continued its weary way, although the emergence of youngsters like Burns and Aitken was encouraging. But they were still young, and Aitken’s immature ordering off at Kilmarnock for a second booking was a major reason why we exited the Scottish Cup.
There was one hope and that was the Scottish League Cup. We reached the final to play Rangers. But when you are down, you stay down and in spite of impressive backing from the remarkably loyal support, Celtic went down late in injury time after what looked like a foul on the goalkeeper Peter Latchford. It was hard luck, and most newspapers were of the opinion that Celtic deserved a draw and a replay, if not an outright win. The now paranoid Jock Stein was fined for slating referee Willie Syme, likening him to his late father.
And so the season fizzled out with Celtic fans reduced to supporting Billy McNeill’s Aberdeen who fell just short of beating Rangers in the League and the Cup and even getting excited about Scotland going to Argentina, even though no Celtic player came remotely close to being selected. That ended in tears as well, as we all know, but by that time, changes had happened at Parkhead. 1978 however remains a low point in the existence of us all.
And the galling thing about it was that it was all self-inflicted. Why could we not just have said “No!” to Liverpool? Yes, yes, I know, it’s all about money. But why then, did we not use the money? Scotland and England were full of talented youngsters who would have given their eye teeth to play for Celtic. We didn’t even try to get them! For that, the Board stands condemned. And it is a major blot on the record of Jock Stein.
David Potter
