I WAS deeply saddened to learn of the death of my old Celtic team mate Stevie Chalmers earlier this week.

Coming so soon after Billy McNeill, another of the Lisbon Lions, had passed away was pretty hard to take.

I was privileged to play alongside both Billy and Stevie at the start of my career at Parkhead in the late 1960s.

They both, along with all the Lions, played a massive part in my development as a youngster. They were all very helpful in my infancy at Celtic Park. They were all very encouraging. Simply put, they were nice people.

Stevie was a quiet man. But on the park he spoke with his feet. He is the fifth highest goalscorer in Celtic’s history. That tells you everything you need to know about him.

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But he will be remembered forever for scoring the winning goal against Inter Milan in the European Cup final in 1967.

It is so sad that both Billy, who was the captain that day in Lisbon, and Stevie, the guy who scored the winning goal, have passed away in the space of a week. It is pretty poignant to put it mildly.

They never really spoke about Lisbon. The very fact they did it was more than enough for them. I think the respect they are held in is what they deserve.

I watched that BBC documentary about the European Cup triumph after Billy passed last week. It drove home what a great team they were.

I obviously realised it at the time. But it just reminded me how good they were. They were pretty phenomenal.

It was their togetherness that was their great strength. Other than their exceptional ability, their team spirit, that was forged by big Jock Stein, was the important thing.

Their level of excellence was something you strived to get to as a young player. I nearly scaled the same heights – I played for Celtic in the European Cup final in 1970 when we lost to Feyenoord.

But they certainly set the targets. You knew if you wanted to get into that team you had to do well.

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One of the biggest things about that team was they were exceptionally fit. That is one of the great things I learned from them – you had to train well on a daily basis as well as perform well on match days. You had to do that in order to live with them and also to impress the manager.

The group of kids I was a part of, the Quality Street Gang, trained with them almost every day at Barrowfield. That helped us to progress.

It was a bounce game, not a stripped game. It was a two touch game a lot of the time, we always had to keep the ball moving.

There was a joke around that time. They used to say their game with us was their hardest match of the week. It was tongue in cheek. They made sure we didn’t get ahead of ourselves.

The current squad, along with thousands of Celtic fans and supporters of other clubs, will attend Billy’s funeral today.

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But the best way for the players to pay tribute to Billy and Stevie is to carry on winning games and trophies and to try to emulate the standards which they attained.

It would be a fitting way to remember them – maintaining their winning philosophy.

It is what you must always strive for as a Celtic player, not just to win but to win in a certain style.

At Parkhead it is how you are brought up. It doesn’t always come off. But you have to try.