The Road to Lisbon (18 page)

In towns and villages in France and Spain, curious locals in white-painted squares are coming out to stare as every conceivable type and age of vehicle passes by, festooned in green and white.
Some of these motors look as though they would struggle to make it to the end of London Road, let alone to London, let alone to Lisbon. Most of these travellers haven’t been abroad before and
for them a road adventure such as this is a true one-off. Boulogne, Rouen, Chartres, Tours, Angoulême, Bordeaux, Biarritz, San Sebastian, Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca. Horns are sounded
festively, cheers exchanged, songs sung.

We’ll be running round Lisbon when we come,

We’ll be running round Lisbon when we come,

We’ll be running round Lisbon,

Running round Lisbon,

Running round Lisbon when we come!

Lisbon. A word so often used that it has already passed into folklore. Now less a place, more a concept, a state of being; a new mutual state of heightened being that has existed since the Dukla
match in Prague.

Or a fictional, mythical place. Tir Na Nog, Narnia, Fairyland, Lisbon.

On and on they drive, that single destination in mind, and a single goal:
to be there
. To witness history. To witness the culmination of everything good about Celtic. They sense that this
is the hour, that this is the time. And afterwards – in ways not yet fully revealed or comprehended – nothing will ever be the same again. A victory will draw a dividing line in the
collective consciousness between everything that has occurred before and everything that will occur afterwards. For an entire community Celtic has always been about pride, about defiance. But to
become the first club from northern Europe to win the ultimate prize in the game; that would make their sneers ring hollow for evermore.

“It’s a poisoned chalice, Jock.” So they all told me. Dunfermline, third bottom of the First Division with two months of the 1959-60 season
remaining, relegation a very real prospect . . .

“Bide your time. Something better will come along.”

I went to the interview anyway, one of three candidates. They started the interrogation. But I had some questions for them, too. Soon, I was interviewing them. “What is the
financial situation at the club? Who would I deal with about signing players? Would I have complete control of team matters? What were
their
ambitions for the club?”

I liked their answers. They knew where they wanted to be. The structures were in place. They just needed to sort out the football side, get the team motoring again. It made
sense.

‘We’ll be in touch, Jock,’ they told me.

I phoned Jean immediately afterwards. “I’ve got it.”

Poisoned chalice, or the opportunity to make my name? I needed no convincing. My experiences with the Celtic reserves had stood me in good stead, but I needed a new test. I wanted
to work with first-team players. I thumbed through my scrapbooks every night and wondered if anyone else thought about football as much as I did. I had ideas that no-one had even thought of, but I
needed to know they worked. Now I was about to find out.

It was a curious twist of fate that my first game was against Celtic. Twenty minutes before kick-off and the dressing room resembled Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday afternoon.
Directors, injured men, youth coaches; all hanging about, distracting the players.

“Right, everyone who is not in my first-team pool get the fuck out . . .”

They thought it was a joke at first. One look at my face told them how serious I was.

“I mean it. OUT. FUCKIN’ OUT. Every single one of you. And don’t come back. This is a place of work, not a social club.”

If the players didn’t know I meant business before, they knew then. I had given them their place, made them feel important. This was about them and their ability to perform. I
wanted focus. I did not bombard them with tactics. I put it to them simply.

“I want you all to think about how it feels to lose, that feeling of trudging up the tunnel after another defeat. Think about the Saturday nights this season that have been
ruined by a bad break, a late goal, an individual mistake, whatever. Think about the guilt and the disappointment. Think about those feelings and hold them for a moment . . . then banish them from
your minds. Forget everything that has gone before. Think only about this moment. Think about your team-mates. Think about that patch of grass out there and think about what you are going to do on
it, how you are going to express yourself. Think about how you will feel walking up that tunnel after beating one of the big boys. Think about telling your friends and family how you got one over
on the great Glasgow Celtic. Hold that feeling. Let it enter through your feet and rise up through your whole body. Feel your spine tingle, the hairs on your neck rise. Now, stand up, get out there
and win this fuckin’ match!”

Inside the first minute, we were one up courtesy of Charlie Dickson. The game finished 3-2, the first victory in four months. I looked around the dressing room afterwards and saw
players who had been reborn, flushed with confidence. After that, we inflicted Kilmarnock’s first league defeat in 21 games and went on to record wins in all our remaining games. No
Dunfermline team had ever managed to win six consecutive First Division matches. We avoided relegation. Poisoned chalice, eh?

The summer brought with it a chance to strengthen the squad. Willie Cunningham and Tommy McDonald arrived from Leicester, and I started to build a spine to my team. By the end of
season 1960-61 we were up to fourth in the league. We also reached the club’s first Scottish Cup final, against Celtic. I started the mind games immediately by booking Seamill Hydro,
Celtic’s traditional pre-big match retreat. The game ended goalless and went to a replay in midweek. In the 67th minute, Davie Thomson scored and, two minutes from the end, Charlie Dickson
added a second after a mistake from Frank Haffey, the Celtic goalkeeper. Bob Kelly, by now president of the SFA, was in the presentation area. “Well done, Jock. You’re fairly making a
name for yourself,” he said, with a warm handshake.

Silverware has a habit of attracting attention and Newcastle United came in for me soon after the Scottish Cup final triumph. The Magpies offered me a £4,000 a year salary
– double my annual wage at Dunfermline – but there was more work to be done at East End Park. Harry Swan, the Hibs chairman, offered me the vacant post at Easter Road but, again, the
challenge of European football at Dunfermline was an attractive one.

We negotiated the first couple of rounds of the Cup Winners’ Cup by beating St Patrick’s Athletic and then Yugoslavian side Vardar 5-2 on aggregate. That set up a
meeting with Újpesti Dózsa, of Hungary. The quarter-final tie took us to Budapest, the home of the Magical Magyars, whose style of play had excited me all those years before. Alex
Smith scored after 40 seconds and Tommy McDonald added another in the eighth minute. Ujpest came roaring back and made it 2-2 by the half hour, but still I urged my team forward. The game ended 4-3
to the home side, but we had proved a point. We had shown that a Scottish team could go away from home in Europe and have success through playing attacking football. Despite losing the return leg
1-0 at East End Park, the experience had been successful. “If there is any glory in defeat I think we earned it tonight,” I told the Press. “We are learning all the time at this
game and for a first attempt at a continental tournament Dunfermline have done very well. There will be a next time.”

I did not have to wait long. The following season we were given a slot in the Fairs Cup after a Greek team withdrew. I knew we had the quality to cope. Our fourth-placed finish the
previous season was an indication of how far we had come in a short space of time. But we had our work cut out when we drew Everton in the first round. The Merseyside club was nicknamed the
‘Bank of England’, having lavished huge amounts of money on assembling a squad of big names, including Scottish internationals like Alex Young and George Thomson. A couple of days
before the first leg I pinned up an interview with an Everton player from the
Evening Times
with the headline:
Who are these Country Cousins?
I watched from my office as the players
gathered round to look at it. “Look what these fuckin’ bastards have said about us.” The disrespect cut them deep. They were like rabid dogs. All I needed to do was let them off
the leash.

The first leg was at Goodison and it crackled from start to finish. They scored a disputed goal. Stevens’ header from Billy Bingham’s corner was goal-bound but Willie
Cunningham got his head to it on the line. The ball then bounced off the underside of the crossbar. My players were adamant that it had not crossed the line but the referee controversially awarded
the goal. The match degenerated into a war of attrition, and the savagery continued after the game when we were showered with objects thrown from the home fans and then the team bus was attacked as
we left the ground. We had lost 1-0 but the game had represented a minor tactical triumph for me. I had asked Cunningham to play as a floating defender, dropping in behind the centre-halves,
picking up loose balls and offering us an extra layer of protection. He had argued against me, but I had been insistent. Against quality opposition away from home we had to be extra vigilant and
the tactic proved a masterstroke. Apart from the controversial goal, Everton had barely laid a glove on us. Something I had noted in my tactics book some years before had come to pass on the
European stage. It was little surprise that, in spite of everything, I left Goodison with a spring in my step. A week later, in front of 25,000 at East End Park, we beat them 2-0 to progress to the
next round. After the game, I told the Press that we could not lose against Rangers at Ibrox that Saturday. I looked at their faces: ‘Who the fuck does he think he is?’ But sometimes,
when you know you are good, you need to say you are good. And we were a good team. After our 1-1 draw against Rangers, I spoke to the Press men with more than a touch of defiance.

The element of surprise is a powerful weapon in football. I used it to my advantage in the next round of the Fairs Cup against the holders, Valencia. After losing the first leg 4-0
in Spain, I had nothing to lose. “As long as we give a good account of ourselves tonight, eh Jock?” said the chairman before our home leg. I bristled. I was not prepared to accept it
was over. The pitch was rock-hard, and I had to make sure the game went ahead. “The pitch is going to be okay,” I told the officials on their arrival at the ground, “the
groundsmen have been working day and night to make it playable. We haven’t had a game called off in six years.” I saw them tapping the frosty turf with their shoes. “You’ll
see that it’s a bit hard, but it’s a man’s game,” I told them, “nothing deserving of a call-off.” Valencia were not happy, not fuckin’ happy at all, but my
charm offensive had convinced the officials to push ahead with the game and they overruled the Spaniards’ protests. My team-sheet raised a few more eyebrows. I brought in Alex Edwards, a
16-year-old, and Jackie Sinclair, three years his senior, for their debuts. The response was awesome. Within 17 minutes we were 3-0 up. The game finished 6-2 to set up a play-off in Lisbon. In
February 1963, we lost 1-0 to Valencia in the Portuguese capital and exited the tournament. It was a disappointment, but when I saw Valencia go on to win the trophy I started to think about what
was possible, about how far I could take it.

The humidity builds upon itself, layer after layer. Please Lord, grant us rain.

It is Biblical when it comes. Such is the deluge that at one point we have to pull over; the wipers can’t cope. But it clears the air and cleanses the land, and afterwards I can smell
ozone rapidly giving way to the delicate sweet pollen of wild flowers and the aroma of damp leaves. The soil gives off a marvellously satisfying fragrance as it slakes its thirst.

“T-T-Tim. We’re ahead of s-s-s-schedule, aren’t we?” enquires Mark, looking up from his Spanish guidebook.

“Aye,” I reply contentedly, feeling pleasantly relaxed by the driving.

“Well then, after the S-S-Spanish border the morra, could we follow the coast road for a wee while? Then we could come down into B-Bilbao and onto B-B-Burgos from there.”

“Sounds fine.”

“Can we no just push on to Lisbon? Contingency and all that,” complains Eddie, slurring his words slightly.

“It says here that B-Burgos is on the P-Pilgrims’ Road,” says Mark, ignoring him. “For Santiago de C-Compostela.”

“Compost-whit?” asks Eddie.

“It’s the Way of St J-J-James. Where pilgrims used to travel in m-medieval times from all over Europe. To visit the relics of the apostle James. Which r-reminds me, I want to get to
M-Mass soon.”

“Aye, I wouldn’t mind sending one up myself,” agrees Iggy.

“Here, Mark. How come you’re so interested in going to Mass and Jesus and all that?” enquires Eddie.

“Because I had a r-r-religious experience.”

“Don’t mumble.”

“Because I had a r-r-r-r-r-religious experience.”

“Pah! When?”

“When I was f-f-f-fourteen.”

“Where?”

“At P-P-P-Pluscarden Abbey. I’m sure I’ve t-telt you this before.”

“So you had a religious experience. What happened – did you realise all the other monks had willies?”

Eddie somehow appears physically uglier in this mood. His skin greasier, his hair wirier, his features blunter.

“Get to f-f-fuck.”

“I will n-n-no,” mimics Eddie cruelly. “Here Rock, did ye hear the one about the fella with the terrible stutter? He goes up to the dancing looking for a lumber. He’s
jigging with this bird, who as it happens has also got a stutter, and he goes, ‘M-m-m-my name’s P-P-P-Peter, but I’m no a s-s-s-saint.’ And the lassie goes, ‘M-m-m-my
name’s M-m-m-Mary. But I’m no a v-v-v-v-very good dancer!”

“I should c-c-congratulate you Eddie,” says Mark.

“On what?”

“T-t-twenty years of d-dedication and you’ve achieved it.”