7.30 am on a Monday morning and, just as Jinky Johnstone might have been doing 60 years earlier, Karamoko Dembele is kicking a ball around with his pals behind their school, but there the comparison ends.

There are no jerseys for goal-posts, torn trousers, scuffed shoes or irate teachers in evidence at St Ninian’s High School in Kirkintilloch. Instead all involved are resplendent in Celtic FC kit, practising their skills under the scrutiny of some of the most knowledgeable youth coaches in the sport.

Reflecting vast cultural change since the Lisbon Lions won the European Cup with 11 players born within 30 miles of Parkhead, it is a less organic, much more scientific process that is now required to hone talent and it is working.

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The emergence of Kieran Tierney may be the most outstanding example to date, but more telling still is the fact that the Glasgow Cup final, contested by the Celtic and Rangers under-17 squads, was won this year by an entire team who attended the same school, some 9.5 miles from Celtic Park, while the Scottish Youth Cup, with a slightly older group from the two clubs, saw Celtic cruise to victory with 10 St Ninian’s former pupils among the dozen players involved.

Such triumphs are part of the reward for the work done over the past eight years under the stewardship of Paul McLaughlin, the school’s head teacher, but he is quick to re-direct the credit to where he believes it is due.

“We work very closely with Chris McCart (the head of Celtic’s youth academy), whose vision this was,” he said.

“He had looked around Europe, at places like Ajax, to see models of youth academies and he came to me and said: ‘I’ve got this vision. Would you be interested?’”

The question was by no means rhetorical, but as well as the advantageous proximity, just down the road from Celtic’s training ground, McCart had done his homework in terms of the environment he was looking for.

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“We’re fairly close to Lennoxtown so geographically it was fairly easy for them, but he had asked around and knew other people in education and we were seen as a school who were positive about things,” said McLaughlin.

One of its then teachers, David Milne, had won the UK teacher of the year award in 2008, while McLaughlin himself had just been named 2009 head teacher of the year, one of several awards the school had accrued at the Scottish Education Awards.

Their willingness to embrace opportunities, which was also demonstrated when they had seized upon the chance to become East Dunbartonshire’s ‘Confucius Hub’, promoting Chinese language and culture, allied to the nature of McCart’s approach meant they could rapidly identify mutual benefits.

“I think that’s why Chris came at first and I was sold on it because of the emphasis that was put on education by Celtic. They did not come just asking to use our facilities. It was asking if they could work in partnership with us to develop football and education together,” McLaughlin explained.

McCart and McLaughlin consequently put together what amounted to a combined presentation to the local authority which was persuaded to enter into a formal agreement with Celtic and, indeed, has more recently allowed another of its schools, Boclair Academy, to form a similar partnership with Rangers.

There were, of course, bound to be complications when pupils were being drawn into the school from outwith its normal catchment area, but football provided the solution to the problem it had potentially created.

“Integration is difficult in a way because the vast majority of the time the Celtic boys are in classes, but at interval and lunch-time you tended to find that the Celtic boys would all hang about together because they don’t live in the area, so they’re not socialising outside school with the other kids and they didn’t go to the primary schools the other kids went to, so those are their friends,” McLaughlin admitted.

“I consequently felt it would be better if there was more interaction between the guys who came from Celtic and the others. It doesn’t cause us a problem, it was just something inherent I thought I would like to see.

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“I worked with the PE department to identify kids who could cope with the level that these boys were being coached at, so each year we have a couple of boys in each of the squads that we put in, again with that discipline of getting up really early in the morning and working with the coaches, which is developing them as footballers and it’s helping break down any perceived barriers between Celtic and non-Celtic.”

The shining example of that is the development of Daniel Finlayson, another who appeared in that Glasgow Cup final, but up against his schoolmates.

“We were delighted that he played for Rangers. He’s great, a lovely boy and the first one I would go to the day after the game. Some people would say he was Rangers’ best player on the night so I went to him and made a point of that,” said McLaughlin.

“Nothing would make me happier than to have his Rangers strip up beside the Celtic ones and he knows that. He would appear to be very highly rated by Rangers and was taken in a few weeks ago to train with them.”

He noted that the understanding the school has of what is required to accommodate Celtic’s players without undermining their education, had worked for Rangers too.

“When they wanted more access to him we knew how to do that. We were used to taking kids out of classes and paying back that time,” McLaughlin pointed out.

Partick Thistle have also benefitted with the school managing to work around the request from Gerry Britton, their academy boss, that one of their youngsters, Mark Ward, be released on a Thursday. The football demands are meanwhile such that the key is how they are factored in.

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“We reduce their curriculum, but none of it is career threatening when we do that. In fourth year every pupil does seven subjects. Those involved with Celtic and Mark Ward, for example, who is currently in fourth year, does six subjects but it still gives them plenty choice,” McLaughlin explained.

“They carefully choose what subject, but we don’t let them drop English or Maths for example. We recognise the demands that are on them and it can be too much. We’re realistic about what can be achieved academically. I don’t think any of them suffer, whereas I think they would if they were trying to do everything every other pupil was doing and for Celtic for example to be spending nine sessions a week coaching.”

While there was something of a stir when the first influx arrived and the speculation around young Dembele’s future when he hit the headlines as Scotland and England started vying for his services last season, these youngsters who are prospectively being groomed for stardom are, then, encouraged to fit into the school, but McLaughlin reckons their presence is also good for their peers.

“It’s that thing about role models,” he said.

“What you’ve got are kids who are totally focussed on something that they’re really interested in and they’ve had to adjust their lifestyle as teenagers to be up really early in the morning, to get to their bed early, to eat properly, to do all of those things and at the same time keep focused on their education, so that is a role model for other kids who will be involved in other things.

“Kids have lots of different things they’re interested in and all we’re trying to say is look at what these guys do… if you put the same dedication into what you’re doing then you’ll be a success in that as well.”