International weeks, unsung heroes and managing stress

It is International week. Hurray! Only not really. More turgid games, especially the friendlies with 76 substitutions per side. I know some people love it but I just can’t get excited by it. As such I had been thinking about what the topic of the blog would be when Celtic doesn’t have a game.

There was a bit of a discussion in the past few days on the always excellent CQN about Great Celts and as you can imagine names like Mc Grain, Larsson, Murdoch, Connelly, Johnstone, Dalglish etc featured prominently. This got me thinking about some of the fantastic players we have been lucky enough to see over the years at Celtic Park, and indeed there have been many. As the song goes

“ Most of football’s greats have passed through Parkhead’s gates

For to play football the Glasgow Celtic way.”

 

I have decided to approach this from a slightly different angle and thought about who was not a recognised and acknowledged hero but who was an unsung hero who did a job in an unheralded manner.

One of my own personal heroes was an unsung journeyman Billy Stark. Big Starky came to us at the tail end of his career in 1987 for a sum of 75,000 pounds and I was immediately struck by how much this big guy ‘knew’ about football. He had game intelligence. He knew when to play at a pace and when to slow things down and what was most impressive was his ability to make late runs into the opposition box and produce a goal, a trait that he had honed in Aberdeen’s glory years and prior to that at St Mirren.

 

The big fella had an immediate impact on the team when he scored at Cappielow in a 4-0 win. There was something about big Starky that I just ‘got’ and immediately felt that he would have a positive impact on the young team in our Centenary year season. This was confirmed a couple of weeks later when the big fella fired home with his left foot against the old Rangers, confirming that he knew how to put the old ball in the onion bag in big, pressure filled games. Ole Sourness (typo intentional) was later sent off for one of his famous assaults/ tackles on big Billy.

We did win the league that Centenary season when the team never gave up and scored many, many late goals and the league was duly clinched at home v Dundee when it seemed there were many, many thousands more than the official crowd of 62000. Late goals were also a feature in the Scottish Cup Final when we came back to beat Dundee United 2-1 after trailing with the winner coming in the last minute. The semi final was even more remarkable as we trailed the Jambos 1-0 into the last few minutes before scoring two ( 90^th and 93^rd minute I think). I was in the old North enclosure for the semi final and Celtic battered them but could not score til the very end of the game. That summed up the mentality of that team. In the Cup final there was the famous anti- Thatcher red card protest that was the one thing that united both sets of fans that day.

There certainly was some community singing that day to Mrs T

Big Starky made a valuable contribution with TB, Peter Grant, Paul Mc Stay and occasionally Roy Aitken in midfield that season. Big Starky had another couple of seasons with us but the first year was certainly the high point. The big guy I felt was an unsung hero in a team full of heroes and made a massive contribution to Celtic winning the double that memorable season.

Big Starky moved on to Killie with TB but he made a valuable contribution at every club he played with. He was named one the best 20 uncapped players for Scotland in 2013 in the Scotsman.

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/the-20-best-uncapped-scottish-footballers-1-3084210

 

APPEARANCES	LEAGUE	SCOTTISH CUP	LEAGUE CUP	EUROPE	TOTAL
1987-90	58 (6)	7 (3)	3 (1)	5	74 (10)
Goals:	17	3	4	1	25

His stats from The Celtic Wiki shows that he was so important as a goalscoring midfielder in his time with Celtic. Not bad at all. Throughout his career he scored about 180 goals, primarily playing as a wide midfielder.

So who was your unsung Celtic hero or hero in your fave team and why? Thanks for taking that wee trip down memory lane with me.

Final words. Playing professional football for many people can be a privilege but let us not forget for some of these guys it is a very stressful job. I just thought it was important to acknowledge that, and it does not matter how much you are paid every week. If you feel stressed out your employer has a duty of care towards your wellbeing.