Scotland v Ireland: The night wee Jimmy was all at sea

Watching Roy Keane and the Irish players striding into Celtic Park past the statue of Jimmy Johnstone was to be reminded that, to paraphrase Martin O’Neill, some pre-match "distractions" are definitely more distracting than others, writes Liam Mackey.

‘Jinky’ Johnstone, whose death in 2006 was widely mourned not only in Scotland but well beyond its borders, was one of football’s most devastating dribblers of the ball in a golden era when the game was hardly short of such magicians.

George Best, the greatest of them all, and a contemporary with whom Johnstone bore serious comparison, once famously said that if he’d been born ugly, the world would never have heard of Pele. If Jimmy Johnstone had been born in Brazil, you suspect that even ‘El Rei’ might have struggled to command as much attention, although it was another Brazilian icon, celebrated winger Garrincha, whom the Celt most closely resembled in his mercurial style of play.