It would indeed be a wonderful afternoon for Willie and his Scotland teammates, Denis Law giving Scotland the lead midway through the first half, after Gordon Banks had parried Wallace’s shot in front of the lethal hitman. The score remained at 1-0 until 12 minutes from time before Bobby Lennox added a second for the visitors. With six minutes remaining, makeshift striker Jack Charlton pulled a goal back for England, only for Wallace to play in McCalliog for a dream debut goal. Geoff Hurst made it 3-2 just before the end, however, seconds later, we had beaten the world champions. The afternoon is best summed up by the Scotland players, with Jim Baxter to the fore, toying with the home team on their sacred turf.
In midweek, Jock fielded the Lisbon Lions starting eleven for the second time for the League match with Aberdeen at Parkhead, a dress rehearsal for the Scottish Cup Final just ten days later. The Dons fielded a familiar face from Willie’s past at centre-forward, his old friend from their teenage days in Kirkintilloch with Kelvinside Thistle then Kilsyth Rangers, Jim Storrie.
Storrie had made his name in the late 1950’s as a high-scoring striker with Airdrieonians, prompting Leeds United manager Don Revie to bring him down to Yorkshire in 1962. He would win promotion to the English First Division with Leeds at the end of the 1963/64 season, then march all the way to Wembley for the following season’s FA Cup final, the Peacocks captained by former Celt Bobby Collins and featuring Billy Bremner, finally beaten by an extra-time goal from another Scot, the wonderfully-named John St John (known as Ian), after Bremner had equalised Hunt’s 93rd-minute opener. Storrie would then join Eddie Turnbull at Aberdeen in February 1967, before finding himself in that season’s Scottish showpiece against Celtic.
The conditions at Parkhead on the night of Wednesday, 19 April 1967 were hardly conducive to good football, high winds on a sodden pitch, so perhaps it was no surprise that the match ended goalless, as Jock Stein’s men edged another point closer to retaining their League title.
Six days later, Celts were in European Cup action again, facing Dukla in Prague, defending the two-goal lead given to them by Willie Wallace a fortnight earlier. Jock again named the Lions line-up albeit in a different formation. Stevie Chalmers would play as a lone striker with five players strung out across the midfield.
Willie was given the specific task of marking former European Footballer of the Year Josef Masopust out of the game, something the Czech master did not appreciate, as witnessed by the face slap handed to Willie at the end of the 0-0 draw which confirmed Celtic’s place in the final of the European Cup. In fairness, Masopust would later apologise to Wallace before handing him his match jersey in the dressing-room afterwards, as this season of seasons continued to reach new heights for the 26-year-old Celt.
The following Saturday, 29 April 1967, marked another red-letter day in the Wallace calendar, as he rolled up to Hampden with 126,000 others for his first Scottish Cup final experience. Celtic’s opponents were Aberdeen, allowing Willie a quick chat and wind-up with his old pal Jim Storrie before the game.
The two clubs had met twice previously in this showpiece, both matches bringing their own slice of history. In 1937, Hampden had witnessed what remains the largest crowd ever assembled for a club fixture in Europe, 147,365, as Celts won 2-1 in what was the Dons first cup final, Aberdeen at that time playing in gold-and-black vertical striped jerseys.
On that same day, 24 April, 17 years later, Jock Stein had captained the Bhoys to their first League and Cup double for 40 years, since the time of Maley, with an identical scoreline, Sean Fallon grabbing the winner that afternoon in front of a miserly crowd of only 130,000! Both Stein and Fallon would poignantly be in the Celtic dugout on that afternoon in April 1967.
Aberdeen’s cup final day had got off to the worst of starts, with manager Eddie Turnbull confined to bed in his Gleneagles hotel with a stomach ailment, and largely thanks to Willie Wallace, it would not improve as the afternoon wore on. The striker struck two opportunist goals either side of the interval to win the Scottish Cup for Celtic, completing a cup double for the club and himself, following his League Cup success with Hearts against Kilmarnock back in 1962.
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