Lisbon Lion Jim Craig is celebrating his 78th birthday today (April 30), and the best wishes of every Celtic supporter are with the Hoops legend and Club Ambassador today.

Jim was the last of the Lisbon Lions to come through the ranks at Celtic Park and, in line with that, apart from the incoming Willie Wallace a year later, he was the last to make his debut.

Befitting a Lion, this young right-back made his debut in a European match as he took part in the Hoops’ 1-0 win over Dutch side Go Ahead Deventer in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup on October 10, 1965.

The name of the opposition side proved to be prophetic as the youngster did indeed go ahead and make the right-back berth his own amid some startling competition for places in a side that would have the choice of a remarkable conveyor belt of talent over the following years.

For seven years he was a first-team Celt and there is no doubt that the highlight of his career came less than two years after his debut when he travelled with the rest of the squad to Lisbon and returned with the European Cup.

Personally, he was involved in two big turning points in the game when he was adjudged to have given away the penalty that Inter Milan took their early lead from.

However, if any atonement was needed, he produced it in spades when, on one of his foraging runs down the right flank, he cut the ball back for fellow full-back Tommy Gemmell who cannonballed a shot into the net for the equaliser.

The rest, as they say, is part of Celtic rich and illustrious history and he was to go on write himself into another chapter in the annals of the club when he joined a rather elite club.

That was because his final game as a Celt was the Scottish Cup final of May 6, 1972 when the Hoops beat Hibernian 6-1 and he joined that band of players who went out on a high with a trophy win on their final day.

However, that was the last of a raft of winner’s medals with the Hoops who he joined as an amateur from Glasgow University AC where he played football while studying to become a dentist.

Aside from the European Cup, the full-back also lifted seven league titles, four Scottish Cups and three League Cups in a seven-year period for a total of 15 top-level trophies with to Glasgow Cup medals added for good measure.

He missed out on the 1966 tour of Bermuda and North America due to his finals at Glasgow University and therefore had to fight to earn his place in the team ahead of Willie O’Neill, but by halfway through the glorious season of 1966/67 he had made the right-back berth his own.

It was there that he operated in tandem with Tommy Gemmell on the left, a partnership that was to prove priceless in the final competitive game of that season.

He was also a figurehead in the run-up to Fergus McCann’s takeover in 1994 and worked regularly as a media pundit with the club in the years following. As well as having played his own part in Celtic's history, Jim is extremely knowledgeable on the history of the club and has written a number of Celtic books, while he is also honorary patron of the Celtic Graves Society.

JIM CRAIG

Right-back
1965-1972
Celtic debut: October 10, 1965; European Cup-Winners’ Cup, Celtic 1-0 Go Ahead Deventer

A S G

League                143        4            1
Scottish Cup 21 2 -
League Cup 29 1            4
Europe 31 - 1
Total                   224        7            6

Happy Birthday to Lisbon Lion, Jim Craig