I AM THE LUCKIEST LION OF THEM

Byline: EWING GRAHAM

CELTIC legend Joe McBride has revealed why being robbed of the chance to be a Lisbon Lion was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him.

The injury that forced him to miss the biggest game in his club's history uncovered potentially life-threatening cancer.

Every Parkhead fan can rhyme off the team who became the first British side to win the European Cup in 1967 - Simpson, Craig and Gemmell; Murdoch, McNeill and Clark; Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld and Lennox.

But Joe would undoubtedly have been part of the famous team that beat Inter Milan 2-1 exactly 43 years ago on Tuesday.

He finished 1966/67 as the top scorer in the country, bagging 35 goals from 26 appearances.

But while his team-mates were beating Inter, brave Joe was battling cancer.

Far from being bitter, Joe, now 71, is thankful for the injury as he reveals for the first time that missing out on footballing immortality saved his life.

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He had already broken down in training several times before the crunch came in a 1-1 draw at Aberdeen on Christmas Eve.

Joe said: "I got to half-time at Pittodrie and it became obvious that I couldn't carry on.

"The club sent me everywhere - including London - trying to find out what was wrong.

"Eventually I was seen by Professor Roland Barnes in Glasgow. He spotted a pin-hole in the cartilage when he opened me up.

"Most doctors would just have taken the cartilage out and left it at that but he wanted to discover what had caused the hole.

"So he did some investigating and found some flaking on the bone behind my kneecap."

It was what the orthopaedic surgeon did next, however, that made all the difference.

Joe said: Clip on charms "He decided to repair my kneecap by scraping the loose bone away, assuming that the bone would grow back.

"He also analysed the flakes and discovered they were cancerous.

"I was very lucky because that was a really early diagnosis. If I had played on then I could have died or had my leg amputated."

Even then, there was still hope within Parkhead that their leading marksman would be able to share in their European glory.

Joe said: "I had been like Pele up until that injury, just scoring goals for fun. In fact, when I first broke down and was having treatment at the ground all of the directors turned up to see how I was.

"Even when I came out of the hospital after my operation Big Jock (Stein) said to me: "The semi-final's a good few weeks away yet, Joe - there's still time.

"As it was, I came out on crutches and with my leg in plaster up to my waist. I wasn't able to give the crutches up until just before we were due to play Inter."

Joe has already won a League Cup medal that season and had played enough matches to qualify for a championship medal.

The club also gave him a European Cup winner's medal to mark his contribution in the earlier rounds.

He didn't make another league appearance for 12 months - and then bagged a hat-trick against Morton at Parkhead.

However, he was so
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