There’s Only One King Billy, That’s McNeil: Vojvodina Come To Celtic Park And A Last Minute Winner Sends Us To The Semi’s On The Way To Lisbon.
There has never been a more important last minute goal in the history of our football club than the one Billy McNeil scored on 8 March 1967.
There will probably never be one.
That night, it was all on the line. History, legend, immortality, myth.
It was the goal that sent us to the European Cup Semi Final.
Zurich and Nantes had been dispatched on the way to that evening, and those games had been easy compared to what we found in Yugoslavia when we went over there for the first leg of this tie; it was the only game in the competition that we lost on the way to our destiny in Lisbon.
Still smarting from that 1-0 defeat the team knew what they had to do.
By all accounts, the first hour was a pretty even one. They gave everything they’d shown in their home tie and we fought hard to keep ourselves in it, and break them down. Then, the dam burst. Steve Chalmers nicked an equaliser and the complexion of the tie had changed dramatically. Now they had to decide whether to attack us or sit back. Whether to try for the winner or hang on for what, then, would have been a play-off match in Rotterdam.
We had no such dilemmas. We knew it was risk everything, or get nothing. We pushed forward, determined to win it in the ninety and send them home sick.
What happened in the last minute of that tie can best be summed up by the words of Big Jock himself, who gave the Celtic fans all the credit for the win.
“I do not believe too much can be said about the way in which our supporters encouraged the players and helped them regain confidence for the renewed effort in the second half to break down the Yugoslavs´ strong, efficient defence. The players went out for the second half believing that they could win this match let alone the tie, and they were further confident when they heard the crowd willing them to victory.”
With one minute to go, Celtic won a corner. Charlie Gallagher took it, and Billy McNeil, the captain, the leader on the park, the inspiration, the legend, rose to header it home. It was majestic, an almost regal finish, a moment of pure joy nearly fifty years later.
It’s the only goal on this list that I wasn’t even alive to have seen, but I regard it all the more because of that fact. Because that goal was everything that followed, the stuff that I was born into, have grown up with and which will be with me until the day I day.
That goal was pure Celtic.
