Celtic's Lost Legend

The talent of George Connelly was prematurely denied to Celtic and football, but he returned to tell his story, and the View was there

THIS week in If View Know The History, we travel back a mere 12 years to pay homage to a Celtic legend who had resurfaced after more than three decades of living in the shadows.

George Connelly finally came out of the dark and revisited Paradise again in November, 2007 to do what we all thought to be impossible – he was promoting his life story in book form.

Here, we revisit the Celtic View interview from the November 21 issue of that year with the man who, in the mid-1970s, practically disappeared from the game when he was seemingly at the top of his career.

THEY were the pretenders to the throne of the Lisbon Lions but, there was no pretence about this group of players whatsoever, as the 1960s melted into the ‘70s the assumption was ‘when’ they would take up the mantle, rather than ‘if’.

The ‘they’ in question were a bunch of lads known collectively as ‘The Quality Street Gang’ and individually each of them was still a frightening prospect as the rest of Scottish football looked on and wondered when the Celtic monopoly was going to end.

There was George Connelly, Lou Macari, Kenny Dalglish, Danny McGrain and Davie Hay – added to that there were the likes of Vic Davidson, Paul Wilson, David Cattenach and John Gorman.

The signs were that the championship was going to take up a permanent residency at Celtic Park and, the legend goes, that this reserve side was denied the chance to enter the old Second Division and gain more experience in case they actually won it.

Arguably the most talented, undeniably the most unruffled and certainly the most enigmatic of this bunch was George Connelly who hailed from the coalfields of Fife.