IAN PAUL

Nobody could ever have under-rated Tommy Burns as a human being. The tributes he receives will be bereft of embroidery in that context. His decency was his badge of honour. However, in terms of his standing as a player and manager, Tommy may well have been short-changed.

Perhaps those who were too young to see him at his peak might point to the eight caps he had for his country as an accurate assessment of his talents. They would be very wrong.

Burns was as much a class act on the field as he was off it. His left foot was as sharp and incisive as any player of his time and his ability to thread passes through defences was up there with the best of them.

Maybe the fact that he stayed with his beloved Celtic for 14 years contributed to his being excluded from the top-rated British players of the seventies and eighties and, had Arsenal or Newcastle been successful in capturing him when they made tentative overtures, perhaps the Burns playing skills would have been given the recognition they certainly warranted.

It is also true to say that in his early days the Burns temperament was some distance short of the familiar calm, laid-back character of recent times. The Burns of the seventies and eighties was a fiery, quick-tempered, classic cliche of the redhead in a hurry.

It would be a surprise for his football students of late at Celtic Park to discover that he could give his managers, not to mention referees, a hard time of it when he let loose on perceived injustices. Billy McNeill, for instance, who was to become a close friend and mentor of the silky midfield man, had to work hard to harness the young Burns' energy in a more positive way.

In his first two years under McNeill, Tommy was sent off three times, was fined £200 for constant arguments with the gaffer and even had "a scuffle" at the training ground with his manager. McNeill recalls the incident: "It shows how slow he was. I caught him."

Gradually, however, the young man from the East End of Glasgow matured and learned to channel his grievances in the direction that profited him as well as his bosses. He remained ever his own man, nonetheless.

His talent sometimes surprised people. I can recall an Under-21 (or maybe it was Under-23) game against England at Sheffield when he was one of the two over-age players, as was allowed then. Two English club managers were sitting behind us and we overheard one saying to the other: "Who is that redhead? What a player he is."

Maybe that was tribute to his youthful looks as well as his skills.

Quick-tempered he had been, emotional he always was. His final game for Celtic before leaving to join Kilmarnock was against Ajax in a friendly. He was fond of recalling how, when the final whistle sounded, he deliberately ran about the park with the ball, tears running down his eyes. "I wanted to leave Celtic with a smile on my face but I had to get the crying done first."

His biggest disappointment as a player was being left out of the Scotland squad for the World Cup in Spain by the manager, Jock Stein. He admitted to feeling very much let-down. He rationalised it later by asserting that he believed Jock always thought of him as "Wee Tommy, the groundstaff boy".

Burns went to Kilmarnock in 1992, where he became a hit as a player and then player/manager. He and his assistant, Billy Stark, did well at Rugby Park and, indeed, caused much annoyance there when they left to take charge of Celtic in 1994.

His time in the manager's office was volatile, much of it down to what appeared to be a personality clash between him and the owner and chairman, Fergus McCann. Both wanted the best for Celtic, but McCann was ever conscious of the economics of football in this country, while Tommy was desperate to find a team capable of taking on the revolution that had taken place at Ibrox.

McNeill sums up the Burns management era thus: "Tommy was like most Celtic managers at that particular time. With the quality of players that Rangers had purchased, life was always going to be very difficult. It was not a good time to be a Celtic manager. Rangers were buying superb players, the English captain, England's goalkeeper etc. They were right at the top of their careers, too."

McNeill acknowledged that the Burns teams played entertaining football, but the domination of their rivals was bound to be any Celtic manager's downfall. Billy also recalls trying to advise him as the rumours grew that Tommy's time in charge was coming to an end.

"He phoned me one day and said that he had been instructed to see Fergus. He believed he was going to be sacked. Tommy wanted to say they needed a break or two and given another chance would get there.

"I told him to forget that, to ask for cash to buy a list of players, XYZ, to improve the quality of the team."

Tommy stuck to his own path and his stint ended three years after it began. He spent a short time at Newcastle as a coach and then as manager at Reading but soon returned and joined Martin O'Neill's background team at Parkhead.

In recent times he also joined the Scottish international squad under Bertie Vogts and then Walter Smith. On a personal note, I had the privilege of having Tommy as one of my guests at the SFWA Player of the Year dinner on a number of occasions. He was always good company, a truly fine man. And a truly fine player.