Who Is Jock Stein?

Two weeks ago the station BBC Radio Five Live aired a two hour special on legendary Celtic and Scotland manager Jock Stein. This was in the build up to the Wales vs Scotland international a few days later. Jock of course famously lost his life during a World Cup Qualifier between Wales and Scotland in 1985. Aside from being an emotional listen on a basic human level the programme will probably be the most vital listen you, as a Celtic or indeed football fan, will come across this year.

It struck me listening to the accounts of football men like Alex Ferguson, Gordon Strachan and David Moyes that I never had to ask the question "Who is Jock Stein?". When you're growing up as a football fan you ask those around you questions which now seem ridiculous, questions like "What's the Scottish Cup?", "What's a corner?", "What would happen if every single player got injured?", "Why is Willie Falconer playing?"... or at least I did.

Stein died around nine months before I was even born but I always had a sense of who he was and who he was in the context of the club I was growing up obsessed with. It is a knowledge I've always taken for granted as if I couldn't find out any surprises about the man or his achievements. I didn't need to know because Jock Stein was Celtic and in a way Celtic was me. It is only when you delve past his connection with Celtic, delve past his achievements, delve past Lisbon and listen to the stories of those who knew him that you really get the measure of the man. Doing so reveals that Jock Stein was more incredible than you could ever have imagined.

The broadcast begins with a harrowing and emotional account from players, journalists and spectators who were there the night Jock died. For a time on the night the gathered throng who knew he had collapsed thought he might pull through and survive. In many ways this was because he was almost seen as indestructible, 'an absolute bear of a man'. It increasingly becomes apparent that Jock will not make it and in the words of legendary sports journalist Hugh McIlvanney, a friend of the man himself, "...the main effect of course was for many of us, especially those of us who had the privilege of knowing him pretty well, was a deep grief." Audibly upset and after a poignant pause, McIlvanney adds through a broken voice, "I just adored him."

Hearing this kind of audible emotion on a live radio programme would intrigue any listener, even if they had never heard of Stein. How did this man's legacy provoke this kind of reaction twenty-seven years later? McIlvanney goes on to regale us with anecdotes and a flavour of Stein's pre-football life. He believes that it was the great man's time in the mining pits of Scotland that not only forged his strength but also his compassion for other human beings. Specifically McIlvanney feels Stein had a great bond with the working man, even as his status within Scottish society grew. Perhaps it's this natural bond with your regular man that sparked the two-way relationship between Jock and the masses of adoring Celtic faithful.

But of course Jock was a football man and it's this compassion and strength that really runs through his career. Pat Nevin, who appears to have been the instigator of this programme, tells a story that when he won a Scottish Young Players' award in the late seventies part of the prize was having lunch with Jock Stein. Nevin, at the time one of those adoring Celtic faithful, had made up a list in his mind of all the questions he could ask his all-time hero. It just so turned out that he couldn't get a question in! Jock sat there for the whole lunch and bombarded the young player with question after question, trying to get into the core of who the boy was, how he lived his life, how he approached the game. It's said by many contributors to the programme that this sort of interaction defined Jock Stein as a manager.

It is another interaction with Nevin that shows another side of Stein the manager. In a Scotland U21s game Stein burst into the dressing room and tore strips off of Nevin, demolishing what Nevin had thought was a decent performance in the first half. Nevin went out and tried his hardest again, trying to prove Stein wrong. After the final whistle they were heading back on to the bus when Stein approached Nevin, ruffled his hair and said, "Great for the full ninety minutes wee man!". It's implied that Jock was testing the player's 'bottle' after such a ferocious dressing down at half time.

A genius of man management, the documentary also covers how influential Stein was in the birth of the modern game. He revolutionised training techniques, taking the standard of training pure fitness, having no ball practice and tossing it aside, letting the players get a ball in preparation of the game. He simplified football, sometimes communicating separate parts of a specific set piece to different players, with the end result not apparent to anyone until it was unleashed on the opposition. And of course conquering the stodgy defensive philosophy of Italian giants Inter Milan with a breathtaking, swashbuckling system of pure, beautiful, inventive football.

Sean Fallon is interviewed too. One of my most anticipated future published books is the biography of Sean Fallon in his own words. Fallon in many people's eyes was almost an unsung hero of Stein era. A vital man in Celtic's most successful period, he is our living link to the past, to many aspects of our past, to many distinct eras. Fallon was a man whose voice resonated most in the Celtic videos I would watch growing up. He has an authority in the way he talks but also a gentleness; a voice comforting and respectful in tone.

Now many reading this and those have listened to the FiveLive programme will know lots about Jock Stein but there's many, like me, who while having a knowledge of all his achievements, have simply taken his existence, his human qualities, for granted. It's only through the words of people who knew him that we come to feel his presence in the stories that are told. When it's said that rooms changed it atmosphere when Jock entered them, you can almost feel it yourself. When we're told of the inquisitions in dressing rooms, his encounters with striking miners, we are there too.

As a club, sometimes I feel we revel in our glorious past too often. Sometimes I feel this is even done to the manipulation of the support. However I understand the purpose. It's vital for us to maintain these links to our history. When this history comes alive on radio in such an entertaining way everyone should embrace it and share it and talk about it. Men like Jock Stein must be kept alive indefinitely in the hearts and minds of all us. If only so generations of Celtic fans that we produce, our sons and daughters, never have to ask the question "Who is Jock Stein?".

This is a direct link to the mp3 of the radio show: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/5live/5lspecials/5lspecials_20121009-2136b.mp3

You can also find it on this page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/5lspecials/all

You can follow the biographer of Sean Fallon and get updates on the book on Twitter @SeanFallonCelt