It was on August 23, 1958 that Billy McNeill made the first of his 790 appearances for Celtic.

No other player in the club’s long and illustrious history has played more times for the club, and it would be an extraordinary achievement if anyone ever was to reach that impressive total.

The match was a League Cup sectional match against Clyde at Celtic Park, and 18-year-old Billy McNeill was drafted into the starting XI after Bobby Evans had picked up an injury in the previous game, also against Clyde.

And a crowd of 39,000 were at Paradise to see that debut, on a day when the Hoops beat their near neighbours 2-0...

SCOTTISH BHOY

That summer’s day in August 1958 marked Billy McNeill’s unveiling to the vast majority of the Celtic support but it wasn’t his first appearance on the hallowed turf.

And we’re not talking about reserves games or the traditional start-of-season public trial games that took place back then. No, the yet-to-be-Christened Cesar’s very first game at Celtic Park may well have been his most important and he was wearing blue… the dark blue of Scotland.

It was a schoolboys’ international against the Auld Enemy and a newly-appointed Celtic reserve coach who went by the name of Jock Stein noticed something about the big gangly centre-half from Our Lady’s High in Motherwell.

Which was just as well because this young scholar wasn’t even convinced that football was the career for him.

Billy later recalled: “Well I'm not sure that I really wanted to be a footballer back then. I've got to be honest and say I'm not sure what I wanted to be in those days.

“But it just happened that I careered through football and I played in a Scottish Schoolboys' international here at Celtic Park.

“We played England and won 3-0 and Big Jock had just had his injury at the time so he was starting to coach the reserve side, basically there were only the two teams in those days.

“So he was at the game, saw me playing and convinced the then chairman Bob Kelly to sign me. Had that not happened, then I would have been in England as a youngster like so many Scots boys.”

TEENAGE KICKS

In the decade when the word ‘teenager’ was introduced to the mainstream vocabulary, Billy McNeill wasn’t the only young buck to burst on to the football scene that summer – although it’s fair to say that the other youngster made a bit more of a direct hit a bit more further afield

Just a couple of months earlier, Edson Arantes do Nascimento seemed a bit of a mouthful so everyone settled on calling him Pele which was just as well as this 17-year-old Brazilian took the World Cup by storm.

He shone as his country beat the host nation Sweden in the final and the golden era of Brazilian football was born.

HITTING THE RIGHT NOTES

Taking over at the top of the charts on this day were the Kalin Twins with the song When, which followed a seven-week residency by the Everly Brothers with All I Have To Do Is Dream/Claudette.

The Kalins spent five weeks at the top before being dislodged by Connie Francis with Carolina Moon/Stupid Cupid. The original cast of My Fair Lady topped the LP charts until Elvis Presley took over with King Creole.

A WINNING START

The Celtic team on August 23, 1958 was: Haffey, MacKay, Mochan, Fernie, McNeill, Peacock, Tully, Collins, Conway, Wilson, Auld.

The Hoops beat Clyde 2-0 that day with Sammy Wilson and Bertie Auld scoring the goals in the first-half.

The Hoops progressed from their section and all the way to the sem-final before they were knocked out by Partick Thistle.

And Billy McNeill would go on to make a total of 23 appearances for Celtic that season - 17 in the league and six in the League Cup.

It all started here for... Billy McNeill