It sure is the week for the old mystique isn’t it?
Not only are we looking back to the Centenary Double, we’re also recalling one of the Celts who seemed to be involved in moments of sheer mystique that have lent credence to the Celtic cause throughout the years.
For Billy McNeill, there were two turning points in the 1960s that involved the big man flying high above the shoulders of team-mates and opponents and getting his head onto a cross-ball that 
billowed the rigging approximately 0.6 seconds later.
The first, of course, is as well-known a ‘60s’ moment as the Beatles arriving in America.
The dying seconds of the 1965 Scottish Cup Final with  Jock Stein’s Celts and Dunfermline Athletic tied at 2-2 and Cesar diverts a corner into the net to secure the Bhoys first trophy for eight years. Big Jock was barely in the dug-out at Paradise and he had netted a trophy already. BillyMcNeill is on record as saying that, had the Scottish Cup not been won by Celtic in ’65, then the history of the club and all that that entailed thereafter could conceivably have been different……….it was a pivotal moment.
As was the second incident involving our blonde-headed captain sticking one in the pokie from a well-flighted corner.
That was in 1967 and on the Lisbon trail.
Most of the guys involved in that campaign will tell you that the hardest team they faced were Vojvodina Novi Sad who were the champions of the then Yugoslavia.
The Hoops had already lost the first leg away from home 1-0 and although a Stevie Chalmers finish had squared the tie at Celtic Park, it was beginning to look as if a one-off on the neutral soil of Rotterdam would be required to separate the sides.
Once again, in the dying seconds of the match, Celtic clinched a vital one from a set-piece.
Two corners, two goals, two years apart and yet enough to change the destiny of a football club.
Billy McNeill may have scored these winners but the man who supplied the pinpoint delivery for both was none other than Charlie Gallagher and he’s JC’s subject this week on This Man Craig. 
Charlie, just like Yogi Hughes and Willie O’Neill, both of whom we’ve discussed before, is one of those guys whose name always appears fleetingly in biographies of Big Jock and any paperback detailing the road to Lisbon.
And, indeed, just like the aforementioned players, Charlie was also the recipient of a European Cup Winners medal courtesy of the Novi Sad game and the Nantes match earlier in which he had taken part.
All the sages now tell you that football is a squad thing these days. That all the successful sides have a team pool that’s as deep as Bill Gates’s pockets is a modern-day given yet, the teams of yesteryear also had to maintain healthy squads to keep up with the fixture list.
When Charlie was in his prime that was also the case at Celtic Park.
If he’d only ever supplied those corner deliveries in those two high-stakes matches that would have been enough to cement his name in Celtic folklore but with 171 appearances and 32 goals over an 11-year Celtic career, you could hardly argue that cheerful Charlie was a cameo-part player.
My uncle was at that Novi Sad game and he clearly remembers that the Jungle was bellicose with Charlie as he positioned the ball in the corner arc.
Time was running out……the European dream was being delayed and yet Charlie seemed to be taking time out to smoke a cigarette before sizing up the situation!
The terracing Tams did not fully grasp the reality though as Charlie waited until two Celts ran towards him, dragging their markers with them giving CG the time to deliver and Cesar the space to move onto his cross.
It was right off the training ground just as it had been in ’65 and required timing, space and above all, the accurate arc of a well-weighted strike…………….Good Time Charlie had no blues and he delivered big time!
I can pay no higher compliment to Barry Robson than to say that, when I watch him whip in a corner with all the attendant danger of a night out with Pete Docherty, I often think of Charlie Gallagher.
Catch yer man himsel’ with JC this week on CelticTV.