I snubbed chance to become first Celtic player to leave for Rangers and this is how we stopped 10-in-a-row - Murdo MacLeod

The former Hoops midfielder lifts the lid on his time at Parkhead as player and assistant in a new autobiography

Celtic and Scotland legend Murdo MacLeod is a walking miracle. He has twice battled life-threatening heart conditions and survived to tell the tale - and what a tale it is. His autobiography 'Murdo, Murdo' is the story of his fabulous football journey from the infamous 4-2 game to stopping 10-in-a-row and more in between. And, in an exclusive serialisation, we give readers an insight into this fantastic new book.

I’m not sure if 10-in-a-Row will ever be achieved by either half of the Old Firm. Celtic have reached nine titles in succession twice with Rangers having done it once. Jock Stein managed Celtic to the first nine – but times were different then in respect of the fact that managers had a longer shelf life at any club.

Graeme Souness started Rangers’ nine but left for Liverpool and Walter Smith won the vast majority of their titles when he succeeded him. I knew what I had gained and Walter had lost the day we beat St Johnstone at Celtic Park to stop Gers’ 10-in-a-Row bid. But I had too much respect to be anything other than mindful of Smith’s feelings.

Walter was the Rangers man who was so loved by my late great team-mate Tommy Burns that the family asked him and another Ibrox legend, Ally McCoist, to be pallbearers at Tommy’s funeral. They helped carry his body into St Mary’s Church when cancer tragically took Tommy from us in 2008. There are lines you cannot cross in the Old Firm’s ring-fenced world.

You have never seen, for instance, a Celtic player swap jerseys with a Rangers player – or vice versa – at the end of a derby, no matter how epic the match might have been. And you never will. I was friendly with lots of Rangers players but would never have exchanged jerseys because Celtic fans would not have appreciated the gesture. I even turned down an offer to become the first Celtic player ever to leave the club for Rangers because I couldn’t have done that to the supporters who were so good to me.

In any case, it certainly wasn’t something I wanted to do. John Greig was Rangers manager at the time, and I was approached by a third party to sound me out over the possibility of changing sides.

My contract at Celtic Park was due to expire and I knew I was admired as a player by the Ibrox management.

But the Celtic fans had taken me to their hearts. I couldn’t do it to them or to my young family who would have had their lives badly disrupted by my actions. So that was the backdrop when we started the job of stopping Rangers’ Ten by playing Hibs at Easter Road in the 1997/98 season. We lost in the capital because the winning goal came from a misplaced pass by Henrik Larsson that was smashed into our net by Chic Charnley.

It was a brutal start to a league campaign. And it got worse. We lost the next game at home to Dunfermline and a cultural and emotional clash took place in the dressing-room after the final whistle. Wim spoke to the players about our 2–1 defeat. I blasted them. The foreign way, I had discovered, was to ask for things to be done. The Scottish way is to demand that they be done. Or else.

I stood up, raised my voice, and screamed: “We are Celtic Football Club. We don’t lose at home to Dunfermline.” I don’t believe I was being disrespectful. I was being realistic. It was a spontaneous outburst and Wim had no problem with me. You might have called it a case of good cop, bad cop. I called it getting players to understand they were capable of much better than they were delivering on the field.

No points from a possible six. The fans in despair. There was no time to be lost and no margin for error. I have to assume the message lodged in the players’ minds because we won our next eight games on the bounce. And then promptly lost to the one team we had to beat to avoid disaster. Rangers beat us at Ibrox due to a solitary goal from Richard Gough – but the one positive to emerge from an otherwise negative afternoon was the debut of Paul Lambert.

Paul had just won the European Cup with Borussia Dortmund. And he cemented his reputation with a magnificent goal against Rangers in the New Year derby at Celtic Park that sealed a win started off by Craig Burley’s goal. Burley, Larsson and Lambert were the architects who drew up the blueprint of our title win.

But the story had more twists and turns before the job was done. On 12 April we went to Ibrox with five games of the season left to play. Jonas Thern and Jorg Albertz scored the goals for Rangers that not only won the game but put them on top of the league table on goal difference.

But the best plot twist of the lot had still to come. The penultimate round of games had Rangers playing Kilmarnock on the Saturday, with us away to Dunfermline 24 hours later. Rangers’ game was refereed by Bobby Tait, whose leanings towards the club had long been highlighted by Celtic fans.

In a world of suspicion and conspiracy theories, the worst was feared by those of a long-held cynical disposition. The regulation 90 minutes came and went at Ibrox without a goal for either side. Those who believed in the possibility of jiggery-pokery, for want of a better description, felt that the award of a penalty to Rangers might be the inevitable consequence of their inability to put the ball in the net any other way.

Then there was a fact-is-stranger-than-fiction moment. Not only did the referee not give a penalty but Kilmarnock scored in time added on – additional minutes that exceeded the length that might have been reasonably expected in either half of the match.

Rangers had shot themselves in the foot and sustained a potentially fatal but self-inflicted wound. The case against Tait was found to be Not Proven.

On the other hand, Celtic were guilty of premature celebration after we’d gone a goal up at Dunfermline through Simon Donnelly. And when we bent down and waited for the league medals around our neck, the home team kicked us up the backside. Dunfermline’s Craig Faulconbridge hit us with a goal from nowhere with eight minutes to go.

The party hats and streamers had to be put back in the box and we were left to steel ourselves for the final day, potentially a winner-takes-all match at home to St Johnstone. I had to hope the rant I had aimed at the players after the second game of the season was still vivid in their minds.

St Johnstone are a fine club but shouldn’t be standing in Celtic’s way if we’re at home and a league title is at stake. Larsson’s early goal should have calmed our nerves but it didn’t because of the intensity of the occasion. St Johnstone’s George O’Boyle should have equalised but headed over the bar. It took a late goal from Harald Brattbakk to settle our nerves and cancel any need to request asylum and sanctuary in a submarine on the Clyde.

It had been the most intense period I had ever known in my life. I went to bed the victim of mental exhaustion. But Wim and I did what we had been asked to do so sleep came easily to me.

MURDO! MURDO! My Autobiography by Murdo MacLeod is published on 3 October 2024 by Black & White Publishing. Available at Amazon, Waterstones and all good bookshops.

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