Jack Hendry was outstanding for Scotland on Tuesday night in the crucial 1-0 win in Vienna in the World Cup qualifier. Alongside his former Celtic teammates Callum McGregor, now the Celtic captain and Kieran Tierney, now an Arsenal player after a £25m transfer from Celtic, Hendry was superb and any one of the three could have been Scotland’s Man of the Match.
Hendry finally left Celtic earlier in the summer when Oostende took up their option to buy the centre-half who was named as Belgium’s Player of the Year last season. However a deadline day move to the Club Brugge followed and a sell-on clause that the defender ensured was in his deal with Oostende meant that the Belgian Champions only paid £3.5m for The Scotsman, rather than meet the £8m Oostende valuation.
Now after successfully shutting out the Austrians – who you will remember had a very decent European Championships in the summer – Hendry is now set to face some of the best footballers in World football when Club Brugge come up against both Paris Saint Germain and English Manchester City in the Champions League.
The 26 year old has grown in stature and confidence since the days when he was running round in a circle at Firhill trying to decide what to do with that hot potato at his feet, much to the annoyance of the hecklers within the Celtic support. Hendry was in the team at that time because Boyata was refusing to play, we’d just exited the Champions League in Athens and all wasn’t well behind the scenes at Celtic.
He often had to play at right back and was always a player that made himself available. Circumstances dictated that he was given too much game-time, often in crucial games like RB Salzburg away in the Europa League and his performances were deemed by many supporters as being nowhere near good enough to justify the transfer fee paid to Dundee or the decision to name him in the Celtic side.
Loan spells followed, after a decent start at Melbourne he suffered a bad knee injury. Jack Hendry just couldn’t get a break. He returned to Celtic, unwanted by the new manager Neil Lennon and was sent out on a season long loan to Oostende with an option for them to buy at the price Celtic had paid to Dundee. It was the best that Celtic could hope for.
Yet Hendry exceeded all expectations in Belgium, won their player of the year, earned an international return under Steve Clarke and was attracting interest from various clubs eager to sign him. Oostende turned out to be a stepping stone to the Champions League for Jack Hendry.
“I have had a lot of setbacks and you have to be strong mentally in football,” Hendry told David Friel at Scottish Sun. “You take the knocks and if you play with big clubs then you need to handle criticism.
“Thankfully I have learned from that and I am now at a great club in Club Brugge. Celtic was a big club and it was a hard schooling there, but it’s put me in a great place now. Anyone that goes out there and puts negative vibes towards me, I use that as motivation.
“I believe in myself, I believe in my own ability. You don’t get the couple of moves I’ve had if you’re a bad player. All I needed was game time to prove myself and I got that at Oostende last season. Hopefully this shows that when I get games at a club that believes in me I can produce.
“And I think that showed with the move I got, going into a really exciting chapter with Club Brugge. We are playing Champions League football, with PSG up next week. That was one of the massive pulls that took me there. I had quite a lot of interest but Champions League football is huge.
“As a young boy, you dream of those occasions and I felt it was the right time to test myself against the world’s best.
“I still have a lot to prove and I will get my head down and keep working hard. But hopefully what I am doing on the pitch now shows people what I can give.”
So his Celtic critics by dishing out criticism and getting on the player’s back pretty much right from the off, have actually done him a huge favour and have helped propel him into the World Cup starts for Scotland and the forthcoming Champions League action with Club Brugge. Hats off to Hendry!
