WALTER SMITH may still be hurting following the loss of the UEFA Cup but the Rangers manager is well aware football is not a matter of life and death.
He returned from Manchester the morning after the 2-0 defeat to Zenit St Petersburg having just heard the news his friend, and former assistant with Scotland, Tommy Burns had lost his battle with cancer. According to Smith, the Celtic legend was a ma
n who will be remembered not only for his devotion to the game and the club he loved, but also as someone who knew when to see the funny side of football.
Smith recalled: "I asked him to stay on when his time working with Berti Vogts came to an end.
"I remember his former assistant manager at Celtic, Billy Stark, saying to me: 'Do you know what you're taking on here?'
"What he meant was there was a delightfully harem-scarem side to Tommy's personality, which I found out in Oslo as we prepared for a World Cup qualifier with Norway which would have left us with a glimmer of hope had we won. I was delivering what I could only describe as my state of the nation address to the players when I spotted Tommy fast asleep.
"I had to stop and burst out laughing when I saw him. I remember saying: 'Is my team-talk that boring?' Tommy replied: 'Yes.'
"But I got off lightly compared to Berti. I was told that Tommy left vital team charts underneath the bed in his room at the Cameron House Hotel in Loch Lomond and only realised his mistake when he got to Hampden. Wee Berti was prowling around looking for the charts and shouting loudly while Tommy was trying to organise a taxi to retrieve the vital documents in time."
Smith added: "Tommy had a serious side to him but he knew how to have a laugh."
The full article contains 336 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
