Jinky was a true legend

THE story is told about the two Scottish footballers who are condemned to death.

Facing the firing squad in the prison yard, one is sober and the other is roaring drunk.

The governor offers them the choice of dying like men or wearing blindfolds. The drunken winger goes berserk and tells him to stick his blindfold where the shone don't shine. The sober one, alarmed that his team mate might make a bad situation worse, puts an arm on his shoulder and says: "Calm doon wee man you'll get us intae trouble with the SFA".

In his book Hampden Babylon, Stuart Cosgrove suggests that the fiery winger might have been Jimmy Johnstone.

You can understand why. Johnstone, whose death last Monday, after a long battle with motor neurone disease, brought forth a huge outpouring of affection and acclaim, belonged to an era in football when truth was often stranger than fiction.

And never more so than on the celebrated occasion when the diminutive winger was almost lost at sea, fresh or at least fresh-ish from Scotland's midweek victory over Wales and just a few days before they took on England at Hampden. The team were billeted in a hotel on the Ayrshire course but on arrival at their lodgings repaired straight to a nearby pub, where the owner provided generous hospitality until about four in the morning, when the cream of Scottish football finally decided it might be time to head for home.

According to Johnstone's own autobiography, they were just a few yards from the safety of the seafront Queen's Hotel, when he and Rangers defender Sandy Jardine found themselves sheltering behind some boats, as goalkeeper David Harvey playfully showered them stones from the beach.

"Fancy a wee trip on the water?" Johnstone asked Jardine. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Jardine let Johnstone get in first and promptly gave the boat a strong kick, setting the winger off on a solo voyage. As he drifted off into the night,

Johnstone could hear Jardine laughing uproariously in the darkness.

At first, Johnstone could see the funny side of it himself. Staggering to his feet, he began singing Rod Stewart's 'Sailing' but the movement destabilised the little craft, and the oars slipped overboard and sank.

Helplessly, he headed out towards the open sea. Back on the beach, his team mates suddenly realised the seriousness of the situation. Celtic's David Hay and Hibs' Eric Schaedler tried to launch a desperate rescue mission but the boat they chose had a hole in it and capsized almost immediately. Woken by the commotion, residents alerted local police, and Hay and Schaedler were quickly fished out. But Johnstone was now beyond their reach. The police turned to two experienced local seafarers for help. John and Tam Halliday, salty veterans who knew nothing about football but plenty about the sea, set sail and finally located Johnstone drifting aimlessly with the tide. "What the hell did you think you were doing?" one of them asked. "I was just going out to fish," Jinky replied.

Safely back on shore, Denis Law greeted the shivering winger with a blanket and hardly what the doctor ordered a hot whiskey. And the next morning at breakfast, he received a standing ovation and a rousing chorus of 'What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor.' Amazingly, he didn't have to face a firing squad or the SFA or even the wrath of manager Willie Ormond.

And this being a Scottish football story, the team duly went on to beat England in front of 100,000 fans at Hampden, the delirious Tartan Army putting new wind into an old chant: "We drink beer, we drink wine, we're the Scotland forward line."

However, the price for too much fun of a certain sort is invariably paid further down the line. Later in life, Johnstone would admit that his drinking became a serious scourge, something he regretted and fought to control.

And, then there would be the ultimate challenge of the illness which led to his death at 61, a battle which those who knew him said he fought with great courage and good humour.

As a winger, he was an almost unstoppable force. Earlier this week, Roy Keane called him a "proper footballer", a man who never resorted to rolling around on the turf. And 'Jinky' had more incentive to do that than most he was relentlessly hacked by defenders who knew no other way to halt his gallop.

Often enough he retaliated and received his marching orders, but his best response was to beat his opponents time and time again with such extraterrestrial wing play that, in 1967 the year Celtic won the European Cup he was voted number three in Europe and selected for an Earth team to play The Universe!

In an echo of Matt Busby's view of George Best, legendary Celtic manager Jock Stein said that no player at the club had caused him more headaches but when AC Milan reportedly offered £100,000 for Johnstone, Stein astonished the Italian giants by informing them that he could only be rented out for one game at that price.

And perhaps the most memorable tribute was paid by another great Scottish talent of the day, Jim Baxter of Rangers. Of Johnstone's stunning display in Celtic's European Cup semi-final against Leeds United, 'Slim' Jim remarked: "What he did to Terry Cooper should be prohibited by Act of Parliament."

Young 'uns who still don't know what all the fuss is about, might get a clue if they combine football and maths. For Jimmy Johnstone, think of Duffer squared. Or for an even clearer picture, check out the videos. The pictures, grainy though some may be, don't lie. Jimmy Johnstone belongs to the immortals.