After it was decided, it was chaos. I didn't speak to any of the Benfica players afterwards, but I know they were angry." Feyenoord doing homework & underestimating the Dutch However, the big Fifer walked out on Celtic several times before controversially retiring at the age of 26. Really, it doesn't get any better than this for a sports journalist. Who receives an invitation to talk to Connelly, for God's sake? Many have been turned away. He can be safely categorised as the recluse's recluse, shunning journalists as if they are contaminated by radioactive substances. He gave one interview around 10 years ago, but he dismisses that one as "stupid" because he was under the influence of drink at the time.

Here, BBC Scotland hears about games being decided by a coin toss, career lows and final complacency. 'My greatest disappointment in football' I can’t believe the phenomenal reception I received on revisiting Celtic Park. It’s great to return.” Christine suffered a miscarriage and even though that tragedy was followed by the birth of two daughters, the marriage was a sham. Hay gives more weight to the argument, however, and is convinced that they did indeed take Feyenoord lightly.

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However, after absconding from the club he adored, Connelly was re-introduced to the Celtic supporters at half-time during the recent Champions League game against AC Milan.

By the time his link with Celtic was broken his miserable marriage had also come to an end. He was free at last of the two things that ate into his soul; football fame and domestic strife. Fear stopped me giving in to my illness and the doctor gave me some heavy-duty tablets to calm me down and bring me sleep. That was 10 years ago when I was really hammering the drink and I pray it will never happen again. In the quarter-finals, Celtic beat Fiorentina 3-1 to set-up an all-British semi-final. Though they beat Don Revie's Leeds United, the consensus seems to be that Celtic became complacent for the final as a result. U.S. v. Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, 2004 U.S.T.C ¶ 50,289 (N.D. Ill 2004) - In a “John Doe” summons proceeding, we represented a group of clients of the law firm and persuaded the Court that under FRCP Rule 24(b),merely being involved in an IRS audit and dispute was a sufficient "injury" to our clients to enable them topermissively intervene.I was the child protege who'd matured into a player with capabilities beyond his years and lived in a comfortable home with three cars in the garages. Was I nervous? I wasn't, really. I was too stupid to be nervous. Nowadays, I'm one of those people who gets awfully easily embarrassed. If they said to me to go and do that now, I wouldn't go near it. But then, you just did it. There's David Marshall. He could do anything when he was younger, even play against Barcelona. Ask him to do it now and I'll bet he'd lose about five goals." You could imagine a Hollywood mogul being intrigued by his final farewell, although perhaps not enough to commit it to celluloid, but it was fairly decisive for all that. The players were participating in the morning's training when Connelly reached an irrevocable moment in time. One of those present gives an approximation of a last hurrah you would not have imagined forming on Charlton Heston's lips.

And, in doing so, his disenchantment with the game and his remarkable decision to walk away from the big stage at 26 years old was a huge loss both to Celtic and Scotland. Is it really true that it all began with a shotgun wedding at 19? The depression, the isolation, the sadness was all down to a dysfunctional relationship? In the beginning, before drink took him to some horrible places, he says the marriage was the root of it. He describes his short life with Christine, mother to his two daughters, in graphic detail. George was the sort of guy who if you said ‘What’s wrong with your hair?’ he’d worry about it all day. You had to be able to laugh at yourself although some of the jokes went too far.” One of the myths that's grown up around me while I've been a stranger to the limelight is that I had started to hear voices and they'd told me to get out of football. I used to bite my lip so hard it would bleed but Dan was adept at handling situations such as that, or anything else that had the potential for becoming even more sinister.Now, anyone attempting to trace a casebook which runs on similar patterns will doubtless arrive at that belonging to the indefatigable George Best, but then the historian is liable to run out of viable alternatives. Who else was like Connelly, indeed? But more to the point: where did it all go wrong, George? The morning after Dan's death I went drinking with a vengeance because there was nothing else I could do. In my quiet moments I keep thinking he could, and should, have been alive today and I'm tormented by the thought that I might have helped escalate his intake of alcohol. The fact there was nothing right with my home life had started to affect my judgment when it came to football. I had been voted Scotland's Player of the Year in 1973 and that was when I also walked out on Scotland as we were about to fly to Switzerland.