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Jim Craig
The doughty dentist
The Celtic team which made history by winning the European Cup in 1967 was made up of players who were good at various things. Bobby Murdoch was a great ball-winner, for example, and Jimmy Johnstone excelled at taking on players and opening up defences. Elsewhere in the team, defensive rock Jim Craig was a player who turned the business of overlapping in support of his frontmen into an art form - with devastating effect.
One of the most underrated defenders of his time, Jim Craig signed for Celtic in January 1965, just two years after plying his skills on the amateur front. Over the following seven years, the hugely talented right-back would leave an indelible mark on the club for whom he made 231 appearances all told.
During his tenure at Parkhead, the lanky defender was to collect an incredible 14 domestic honours. A mainstay of arguably the best sides ever to represent the famous Glasgow club, Craig's talent may have been bracketed in the "slow burner" category but his contribution to the all-conquering Celtic sides of the mid-sixties to early seventies was invaluable and acknowledged by his team-mates and team-manager Jock Stein alike.
Craig was made for Stein. His pace and his adventurous style of play appealed to the Big Man. To many aficionados of the Stein football academy, the decision by the Celtic team-manager to displace Willie O'Neill with Craig midway through the 1967 European Cup adventure was not so much a surprise as a change waiting to happen.
The aforementioned O'Neill had been left-back for Celtic's ties with Zurich and Nantes. However from the quarter-finals onwards, he was forced to make way for Craig whose superior athleticism made him Stein's first-choice overlapping full-back.
Craig was made for Celtic. A debutant against St. Johnstone in November 1965, the 6'0", eleven-stone firefly fitted into Celtic's style of play like a well-tailored suit. The club's penchant for all-out attacking moves was manifest in Jock Stein's tactics throughout his spell at Celtic Park and the then 22 year old revelled in the exchanges.
"I think Jock always had this idea that he wanted his full-backs to come forward.
"I'd always overlapped - I'd always got a row at school for doing so, even when I was playing centre-half. It was something I continued to do when I went to Celtic Park.
"Gemmel was always happy to attack a wee bit as well. Don't forget, full-backs traditionally didn't get the ball very much so if you got it you weren't going to give it away to someone!
"While the full-backs were free to go forward, John Clark would stay back throughout a match and Billy would, more or less, also stay back all the time.
"Overlapping was a wee bit primitive in Jock's early days because we were expected to get forward and also get back as well, which is a long run.
"You'd be doing eighty yards down the park and eighty yards back - and the old knees are going. It then became a bit more organised as time went on. Murdoch would step back into the right-back role or the wing-back role as they would call it now. Then I could stay up the park a wee bit more. But to begin with, it was an extremely long run," Craig explained.
However, strangely for one who seemed totally cut out to be a dashing defender, Jim Craig's path to glory with the Lisbon Lions didn't follow the normal pattern.
Although Craig did not have the flamboyance of his would-be full-back partner Tommy Gemmell, the fully-fledged Scottish international had been Mr. Consistency in the Celtic rearguard since making his mark in the Hoops during his debut 1966/67 season. Given his chance by Mr. Stein against Dundee in the first match after Christmas, Craig was to miss only one league game until the end of the never-to-forgotten season.
Back in the sixties, it was unusual for anyone to be mindful of what life held in store for them after their football career tapered to its inevitable end. Jim Craig was an intelligent, forward-thinking man. Thanks to Celtic's latitude and support, he was afforded the opportunity in the early part of his career with the Celts to study to be a dentist while holding down a professional contract. Thus Jim Craig is probably the only dentist ever to don the Hoops.
Blooded by Jock Stein at European level against Dutch side Go Ahead Deventner in a European Cup Winners' Cup match, Craig was to make his mark on the Dutch, Italians, Swiss and a lot more nationalities besides before transferring to Sheffield Wednesday in season 1972-74.
Most Celtic fans who didn't ever have the privilege of actually seeing Jim Craig in the flesh while wearing the hoops will at least be aware of the man's addition to Celtic's attacking armoury in its most successful season in particular.
Craig had posted notice of his intention to make 1967 a year to remember for him personally as well as the club when he turned in a man of the match performance against Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup final. Team boss Stein lauded him for putting in his "best game for Celtic."
However, Craig was in danger of being remembered for more than just his show against Aberdeen in mid-1967. The European Cup final against crack Italian side Inter Milan in Lisbon that year threatened to be a personal nightmare for the stoical defender just 20 months after making his Celtic bow. Even the best laid plans as laid down by team-manager Stein didn't give any clue as to the helter-skelter of excitement that was to follow in the Portuguese city.
"It was Ascension Thursday so a lot of us went to Mass first. Then we had a wee, light session in the grounds of the hotel. Jock was great at keeping the focus on the game but relaxed as well. Hard sessions would suddenly be interspersed with a bit of fun.
"You'd maybe be doing shooting practice and then it would stop and you would have a game of rounders. Then you would go back into something quite serious again. Or he would pick somebody and they would be the butt for the day.
"That was just a way of making things different because there's only so much you can do every day," Jim reflected in the run-up to the final against the Italians.
But things looked decidedly awry for Craig and co. as the Italians careered into a 1-0 lead after just seven minutes of the first half, courtesy of a controversial penalty.
The penalty came about after Inter managed to clear a Celtic corner. The ball found Mazzola in the last third of the pitch and, spotting an opening, the Inter player drove a finely-angled pass into the Celtic penalty area for team-mate Capellini to chase.
Just as the Inter winger was preparing to get the ball under control, Craig, who had tracked his opponent's run up field, appeared to make contact. Capellini fell theatrically to the ground, rolled over a few times and only stopped rolling when German referee Kurt Tschenscher blew for a penalty kick.
The aforementioned Mazzola subsequently slotted home the spot-kick and Celtic were in trouble.
"I don't think it was a penalty. I knew he was a left-footed player and I knew that as he went down that inside right channel he would try and pull the ball onto his left.
"I was merely making sure that if he did that he would bump into me. He collided with me. I didn't tackle him or anything like that.
"I just angled my run so that the two of us would bump into each other. Very few referees would have given a penalty for that seven minutes into the European Cup Final.
"Their whole aim was to instill catenaccio into the game and when they went one-up, a few of them went further back again.
"In many ways, they played into our hands because they gave us the chance to build up momentum. It was a hot day and it involved a lot of work. "Gemmell and I worked very hard that day. Giving away the penalty was, in the end, a fortunate thing because it gave us carte blanche to come forward whenever we wanted to. My father wasn't very happy about it. He'd come all that way only to see me giving away a penalty," Craig recalled.
A thoughtful performer who tended to reserve his best displays for the big stage, Craig's uncompromising yet adventurous display in Lisbon's National Stadium saw him turn from almost villain to hero in the second half of the final.
His ability to read the play had gotten Celtic out of several sticky situations during the final and en route to Lisbon but it was his raid up the wing inside the last half hour of the match against Inter Milan in the European Cup decider which cemented his place in Celtic folklore.
Craig collected a pass from Bobby Murdoch on the right hand side of the penalty box before pulling the ball back to the edge of the area to where Tommy Gemmell was able to race in and meet the ball and slam it to the Milan net for a wonderful equaliser.
Thereafter Stevie Chalmers' goal five minutes from time helped the Celts seal a 2-1 win. Chalmers, Craig et al had written their names into the annals of sporting history. After two seasons at Sheffield Wednesday, Jim Craig hung up his boots. He later spent a period of time as manager of Waterford. But it's his time as a Celtic great that he will be most remembered.
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