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CELTIC LEGEND – STEVIE CHALMERS
David W Potter reminisces about the Celtic Legend, Stevie Chalmers, Celtic's fourth top goal-scorer in history and the man that scored the most important goal in the Club's history.
David writes:
STEVE CHALMERS
There could never be a nicer fellow than Steve Chalmers. Naturally a quiet, unassuming man, seeming occasionally to lack the “devil” that professional footballers need to possess, Steve was often looked upon as a Kelly Kid who would never quite make it. He had his good days, and he had his shockers, but as with almost everyone else, things changed dramatically and permanently when Jock Stein came to Celtic. It was Steve Chalmers who scored the goal, which won the day in Lisbon.
Yet a little over four years earlier in 1963, one recalls a dreadful game at Tannadice Park which Celtic lost 0-3 to an incredulous home side. But Dundee United fans' amazement at the result against a team who were in the Scottish Cup Final (it was the Saturday after the honourable 1-1 draw with Rangers and four days before the humiliating Replay) was nothing in comparison to their utter shock at the vitriol, hatred and foul mouthed abuse hurled at Steve Chalmers by some who claimed to be Celtic supporters.
True, he was playing badly. For some reason he was being tried on the left wing where he was anything but at home, and the forward line simply was not functioning. As often happens when someone is having a shocker, the ball kept coming to him and he was continually losing it, being robbed, misdirecting a pass and even sometimes running the ball out of play. This in no way excused the behaviour of the boo boys, and one would like to have seen their reaction at Lisbon. I would like to think that some of them apologised.
Steve was born in 1936. His father David Chalmers had played alongside Jimmy McGrory for Clydebank, and from an early age, young Steve revealed a penchant for the game. His career suffered a set back and indeed his life was endangered when he took meningitis, but he recovered well enough to play for the traditional Rangers nursery of Ashfield before joining Celtic in 1959, at the age of 23 possibly on the old side to be a true Kelly Kid.
For as long as Jock Stein was in charge of the youngsters, things were tolerably sane, but when Jock moved to Dunfermline, things became chaotic and haphazard. There was no real development programme and youngsters were pitched into the first team long before they were ready. Team selections were crazy and inconsistent, League points were habitually lost to weaker teams, and Cup Finals were reached only for the team to collapse badly in the Final.
Yet Chalmers maintained his dignity through all this. He always was well dressed and a perfect role model for youngsters, rarely in trouble with referees or authorities and capable of some fine performances. He was even on the fringe of the Scotland team, often in the squad, but it would be some time before he could oust the likes of Alan Gilzean and Ian St. John. He did however distinguish himself in a few games for the Scottish League team.
It would be fair to say the Stevie reached his peak in 1964 before Jock Stein arrived. He had a brilliant start to that season, scoring two great goals to beat Rangers in the rain at Parkhead in early September, then rescuing his team from a rather large hole against East Fife in the League Cup Quarter Final. The Fifers had beaten Celtic 2-0 at Methil in the First Leg, and humiliation beckoned until Stevie notched 5 at Parkhead in the Second Leg.
Form like this earned him his first of five Scotland caps in October 1964, but tragedy struck the Celtic side when they lost the League Cup Final to a lucky but clinical Rangers side. Chalmers thought he had the ball over the line early in the second half but referee Hugh Phillips was unimpressed by Chalmers' impassioned appeal, and the Kelly/McGrory regime never recovered from this debacle. The autumn and winter of that year saw dreadful times and even after the appointment of Jock Stein in January 1965, recovery was far from certain.
Chalmers was now on the right wing as Jimmy Johnstone (having been sent off on New Year's Day at Ibrox) was temporarily out of favour and John Hughes was in the centre. And Stevie played his part in the capture of the Scottish Cup in 1965, as the glory days were launched. Bertie Auld was now there in the forward line, and Stevie and Bertie, two entirely different characters, reacted well to each other
Chalmers might have seen the arrival of Joe McBride and Willie Wallace and the re-invention of Jimmy Johnstone in the early Stein years as some sort of threat to his place. But Stein was far too impressed by Chalmers' dedication and commitment to the Cause to allow Stevie to become disheartened. Chalmers was of course used to the chopping and changing of a forward line. It had happened all his Parkhead life, but the difference here was that there was some thought behind it. Stein would often say “Horses for Courses”. There was seldom a more willing horse than Steve Chalmers – and Jock would normally find a place for him in an important game like a European match or a Cup Final.
Chalmers won a League medal in 1966 and then reached one of the peaks of an already remarkable career when he scored for Scotland against Brazil in a game that Brazil had arranged as a World Cup warm-up. It was a fine goal too, early in the game, and much admired by Pele and the other Brazilian legends.
The Lisbon year of 1967 was of course marked by Stevie's winning goal, that marvellous touch-on of Murdoch's powerful drive. But he is also due a great deal of credit for scoring the first goal against Vojvodina and for running his socks off in Prague as the only forward in that nerve-wracking Semi Final. Considering that he was 30 by that time, the amount of running he put in was remarkable. And this was as well as winning a Scottish domestic Treble!
He won League medals in 1968 and 1969, and played his part in that glorious April of 1969 when the team won all three Scottish trophies. It was he who scored the fourth goal in the rout of Rangers in the Scottish Cup Final, something that paid them back for 1963 and other horror stories of Chalmers' early career.
Stevie had the misfortune to break his leg in the League Cup Final win over St.Johnstone in October 1969, and seldom played again for Celtic, joining Morton in September 1971, and beginning more and more to enjoy his round of golf. In later years, he would become the Celtic Pools organiser and would visit the house of anyone who might wish to become an Agent. Many a fan volunteered for this job, simply because it involved a knock on your door from the man who scored the winning goal in Lisbon.
Stevie's son Paul played a few games for the Club in the mid-1980s, but never reached the heights of his illustrious father. Indeed they would have been difficult to reach, for Steve Chalmers scored 241 goals for the Club, something that entitles him to be mentioned in the same breath as Jimmy McGrory, Bobby Lennox, Henrik Larsson and Jimmy Quinn. That says it all, really.
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