FOR a while we couldn’t work out why it was taking so long for everyone to get through passport control.
This was at Lisbon Airport the day after Celtic had lost to Benfica in a Champions League match. All the players, management team, directors and hacks wanted to do was get on the chartered flight and get home.
Leading the media contingent was Billy McNeill, well he was hardly going to be following anyone, who had made the trip as a club ambassador and was also doing some radio punditry as well.
When he got to the front of the queue, it became apparent why things were going so slowly. The security guards were frisking everyone even if the metal detector didn’t make a noise, and the frisking was so intense that in normal circumstances those friskers would have bought dinner first before getting to work.
And they just so happened to be young, beautiful Portuguese girls.
So up stepped Big Billy and after a thorough safety check on him, he turned back to the pack of giggling scribblers and said; “Lads, that’s the second best thing to happen to me in this city.”
They say don’t meet your heroes. Not when it came to this great man who in the few times I was fortunate enough to be in his company, was as wonderful, friendly and funny as you hoped he would be.
Another foreign trip, this time to Valencia, and I watched as Big Billy (he was never called McNeill by anyone) bought some beers for a group of Celtic fans and chatted away to them for a good half an hour.
When he left, after signing autographs, they turned to each other in disbelief. “That’s Billy McNeill,” they said as if talking about God, which is some ways he is.
And just because he has been stricken by a horrible illness in dementia, nothing can take away from who he is and what he means to so many.
Those of us in the media have known about his troubles for a while but it was in nobody’s interest to report it.
The way his family have spoken about it today could bring a tear to the driest eye. His wonderful wife Liz came across as dignified and strong. She did not want sympathy for her husband’s dementia, which first became apparent seven years ago, but rather she felt it was important to get his story out there. She is some lady.
Watching Celtic’s greatest captain being led down the Celtic Way last year for the unveiling of his statue was not easy. It was obvious he wasn’t well. This is Billy McNeill we are talking about here. He’s not even human. He doesn’t get ill for goodness sake.
The statue is magnificent. A wonderful tribute to a man who it has been said was involved as player or manager in 33 of Celtic’s 100 trophies. As someone said yesterday; “He is Celtic.”
As a player, McNeill was world class. As a manager he gave the club some of its greatest glories, none more so than the Double in Celtic’s Centenary year. He brought through Charlie Nicholas and Paul McStay; he signed Murdo MacLeod, Davie Provan and Frank McGarvey for buttons.
Another signing, Frank McAvennie, whenever he speaks about his old gaffer does so in hushed tones, almost as if he’s in church. All his former players do that.
However, it is as a man, the down to earth boy from Lanarkshire, which defines this Scottish hero. We need more like him.
Big Billy led his life the right way. When it was the 25th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster, it was he who represented the Celtic. Who else would you want? After being sacked, he never said a bad word about Celtic. Not one.
What this great, great man means to our country, and specifically Celtic Football Club, cannot be summed up in words.
Allow me just one personal story. It took place in the Montrose Bar in Glasgow, sadly now gone, and I found myself in his company. There were a few journalists there but he didn’t hold back in terms of gossip and tales from back in the day; almost all of them starring Jimmy Johnstone.
Big Billy probably saw it as spending an hour or so in some relaxed company over a few red wines. For me, it felt like being the in the centre of the universe.
It is a tragedy that he is far from the only player from his era to suffer from this horrific illness, and it must be said that Celtic have been excellent with him and the McNeill family since the diagnosis of his dementia.
It was lovely to read that his face still lights up whenever he goes to Celtic Park; the captain of all captains, after all, lit up that ground countless times.
Billy McNeill has given us all so many memories. It is heartbreaking to think he is one who can’t remember any of them.
However, it is important to say that he achieved more in his life than almost all of us. He wouldn’t have swapped being Cesar for anything.
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