SHOW me your medals. It is the only possible question to pose to Charlie Gallagher, a player defined by many by a match he did not play in and two corner-kicks out of the thousands he took. This definition is a mean-spirited response to a career that included three league title victories and winners’ medals in the Scottish Cup and League Cup.

Yet everyone wants to talk about running with the Lions and crossing for Big Billy. Everyone knows he did not play in the Big One, but many also his appreciate his achievements at the club he loves.

“I was on the pitch at Lisbon,” he says with a smile of that day 49 years ago today. “I even had a Celtic jersey on. It was just an official jersey – not a strip - that allowed me to go into the dressing-room. I watched the match from the stand and then had to go on to the pitch to make it across to the dressing-room.”

Was he disappointed not to have played? “I was just delighted we had won it. I was a supporter first and I still am. I have the Lisbon Lions blazer. That is enough for me,” he says.

And those two corners? The first in 1965 provided McNeill with a free header to win the Scottish Cup against Dunfermline, Jock Stein’s first trophy at the club. The second in 1967 allowed McNeill to perform an encore against Vojvodina that saw Celtic come through the toughest tie en route to Lisbon. “If I am walking down the street, I will be stopped and that is what people will want to talk about,” he says.

He treats all this with an understanding and his customary politeness, but he has other stories to tell. He is a Celtic player who had an uneasy relationship with Stein and a mutual respect for Willie Waddell. He is a man who trained with Charlie Tully, but survived to play with George Connelly. He is the quiet man who chinned McNeill. He is the Gorbals boy who played for Ireland.

“Aye, I was Aiden McGeady before Aiden McGeady,” he says. “Here’s a strange thing. When I was researching the book*, I went back to my old school, Holyrood, and met Aiden’s dad who is an English teacher there. Our families are both from Donegal.”

A more intriguing relationship is that with Stein. There is a perception that the manager and Gallagher did not get on.

“I felt he never took to me, maybe because I was seen as a Kelly Kid,” he says, referring to the generation who came though under Robert Kelly, the Celtic chairman.

“I remember I was recovering from a knee operation and Sean [Fallon] finally convinced him to come and see me. The first thing he said was: ‘I have good news for you. I have signed Tommy Callaghan’. How was that good news for me? Signing another midfielder?”

There was also the theory that Stein did not rate Gallagher’s level of aggression. “They say I was too nice a guy, but I had a bust-up with Billy in training and I punched him. Stein ordered me from the training ground and I thought: ‘That is it. I am finished.’ But Stein called me into his office the next day and praised me for standing up for myself. The Lions were great players, but we could all look after ourselves.”

Any animosity towards Stein has long since dissipated. “He was a great manager,” he said. “He took a team that was underperforming and made them champions of Europe.

“My problem basically was Bertie [Auld]. We were both in for the same position and he was always ahead of me.”

Gallagher has a sense of mischief, too, when revealing he could have signed for Willie Waddell, the great Rangers manager. “For Kilmarnock, mind you,” he says. “Waddell always rated me as a youngster and kept increasing his offers to me, but my heart was set on Celtic and he appreciated that.

“When we were playing Rangers and Waddell was the manager, he always took time to talk to me outside the dressing-room or even in the tunnel. I got some funny looks from my team-mates.”

Born on November 3, 1940, in the Gorbals, Gallagher learned the game on the streets amid the debris of the Second World War and chose Celtic as other teams sought his services, arriving in 1958 and training with the likes of Charlie Tully.

If Gallagher was philosophical about missing the Lisbon final, his absence from the flight list to the European Cup final in Milan in 1970 was the final snub. He was freed within days, joining Dumbarton.

In a small room of his home in Bishopbriggs lies the odd reminder of a career: an international cap, a team photo, a Player of the Year award from Saltcoats Celtic Supporters’ Club for, poignantly, 1967.

So, Charlie, where are your medals? “They are in the museum at Celtic Park,” he replies. Of course, they are.

*Charlie Gallagher? What A Player by David Potter is published by CQN Books at £14.99