Asked about the importance of this league winner’s medal, his fourth as Celtic manager and one earned, no doubt, through sheer strength of will and motivational ability, Martin O’Neill stood in the quiet of the main stand at Celtic Park, whipped the great prize out of his left-hand pocket and showed it off to all and sundry with a beaming smile.
It’s a special one, no doubt. One that will take real pride of place in his collection. Earned from what looked an impossible position seven games earlier following a defeat on the road at Dundee United, carved out by an extraordinary ability to eke the most out of players who looked like they’d given up the ghost when he returned for a second spell this season to pick up the pieces after Wilfried Nancy.
O’Neill enjoys a story and there’s some tale wrapped up in this particular gong. Yet, he also has an innate understanding of what it is to be Celtic.
What the demands are. What happens if you stop too long to dwell on the present rather than switch quickly to addressing the challenges of tomorrow.
Even though the clever money remains on the 74-year-old’s time as manager being over after the Scottish Cup final, there was no question of him losing his thoughts amid the glint of silver in the late-afternoon light.
His words came with a warning to the Celtic board and major shareholder Dermot Desmond and a call for action at the end of a season that, surely, would never have resulted in the potential for a domestic double had O’Neill not returned to the fore.
You couldn’t wipe the smile off Martin O’Neill’s face following Saturday’s dramatic win
Winning the title changes nothing. O’Neill has spoken about this season, its trials and tribulations, serving up lessons that have to be learned. He has talked about the requirements for a reset.
Whether he is to remain in the building or not, the managerial situation needs sorted out tout-suite and plans need to start being actioned to get new players through the door.
O’Neill managed to fend off Hearts this time around, but he is very much of the view they’ll be back stronger next time round. He expects Rangers’ American owners to finance another round of spending too.
Asked about the past nine months being a wake-up call for a board that still has a mutinous fanbase on its hands, one primed to end a temporary truce after the cup final and return to demanding change, O’Neill replied: ‘Today is not the day for it, but, in the overall picture, if you want to stay dominant, then yes.
‘I don’t think anybody saw Hearts’ challenge coming up, considering where they finished last year.
‘But they bought some really fine players and they had the advantage in the sense of not having European football and going out of the domestic cup competitions. They were playing one game a week while we struggled through those times.
‘That can happen. For Celtic, Saturday was a wonderful day and it took an enormous effort. We’d not been in front in the league until we score the second goal.
‘Celtic are used to dominating but you can’t take that for granted — you shouldn’t do.
‘With Hearts and Rangers getting stronger, we need to do the same. We have to look at all the things I’ve spoken about over the last couple of months. That doesn’t change from us winning.
‘I think Hearts have been the story this year. They came roaring into it. They will get stronger and if Rangers have anything to do with it, they’ll get stronger too.
O’Neill was full of praise for the job Derek McInnes has done at Hearts this season
‘We have to try to get stronger, not just match it. Like what Jock Stein set down in 1967 — we’ll never get close to that — but we should be thinking about trying to compete in European football.
‘That takes a really fine player to be able to cope domestically and have a bash in Europe.’
O’Neill, of course, masterminded this 56th title success for this club he loves from a hotel room on the outskirts of Glasgow. He never moved into club accommodation. Stayed out of the way. Stuck with the Alan Partridge Travel Tavern existence. Or a version of it.
Asked why he chose to build such a lasting story from such a transient base, he said: ‘I’ve stayed in the hotel for the whole time. I went home a couple of times, but only if there wasn’t a midweek game or anything.
‘There hasn’t been much chance, to be honest. They were getting me a little flat down the way, but my wife couldn’t come up because she’s doing some classes and it would have been too much change.
‘And the hotel worked out cheaper because I got a better rate! It’s been great, though. Fantastic.
‘I’m delighted with how it turned out because I would have been really disappointed if we hadn’t won it.’
He still recalls, though, the enormity of the decision that had to be made in January when Desmond asked him to come back to Celtic for a second time this term following the collapse of Frenchman Nancy’s disastrous short-term reign.
‘The first spell was different. It was always going to be a small period. As Dermot said, it could be two weeks or two months,’ said O’Neill.
‘It felt like it was a special little time. Coming back in January was a completely different issue. I had a bit of a gulp. You think: “I don’t know about this really”.
O’Neill admitted he wasn’t initually sure whether he wanted to take over from Wilfried Nancy
‘If they’d chosen someone else, that would have been fine, but I’m delighted they stayed with it.’
The veteran concedes, though, that he had to make some deals with himself over the fads and foibles of modern-day football to try and get this title success over the line.
‘That’s a big question. Certainly one for over a dinner or something,’ said O’Neill. ‘The game is incredibly tactical now, whether it’s man marking, the angles, inverted full-backs and so on, which I’ve had to learn, because it wasn’t in my time.
‘I’ve had to go with it at times. The coaches won’t mind me saying that. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I’ve had to acquiesce big time, big time. More than I wanted to.’
It has been a period, too, of course, of remembering the importance of medals. What they mean and represent, The role they play as yardsticks, staging posts, in the story of a football man’s life.
O’Neill recently loaned his winner’s medal from the 1980 European Cup final — a 1-0 Nottingham Forest win over SV Hamburg — to Tony Woodcock to have it turned into a copy that could be presented to his former team-mate to commemorate his role in that campaign.
Asked how Saturday’s gong compares to the one earned through his endeavours in the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid all those years ago, he said: ‘I’m thrilled to bits to get this medal, because it seemed a million miles away.
‘Tony and myself are friends. We used to go for coffees. I was worried Tony might be a bit forgetful and leave the medal on the train or something. I warned him on the pain of death.
‘It’s two different eras. The European Cup as a player is the best medal in the world. Like (Ferenc) Puskas, (Alfredo) Di Stefano, George Best, Jimmy Johnstone, there’s nothing like it.
‘But this one is something special.’
