Celtic Park was home to many mentors in the 1990s; Tommy Craig, Liam Brady, Lou Macari and Frank Connor, to name but a few, all certainly left their mark.

Nobody, however, can hold a candle to the one and only Tommy Burns.

In fact, former Hoops defender Barry Smith reckons Burns is the closest thing he has ever seen to perfection in a human being.

Even when Smith was forced to call time on his Celtic career in order to seek regular game-time elsewhere it was Burns who softened the blow by telling him that he could still kick it as a player and that his career would actually be best served away from Paradise.

"Tommy Burns wasn't just a football guy, he was a life coach,” Smith, who went on to become a legend at Dundee, told TCW. “He acted in everybody's best interests. Whether it was on or off the pitch, I don't know how he did it but he just knew what was best. He was a real father figure to us all. It was a gift he had. It's a strange thing; he just knew.

“I have just total respect for Tommy. You get respect for the football side of things but a lot of respect for him stems from the off-the-park things, the way he conducted himself away from football is hard to describe.

"I know Tommy is not the perfect guy but he's the closest thing I have ever seen to it. That's the image I have of him. He would say he had faults but you probably never ever saw them because he was so good at everything else.

"Tommy was the Celtic manager when I left the club in 1995 and, at the time I needed to go just because I needed to be playing regular first-team football at that age. I needed to play.

“Nobody ever wants to leave Celtic when it comes down to it but I had a conversation with Tommy before I left and that pretty much made up my mind. I left for the right reasons and, once I sat and listened to him, I knew he was right and that I needed to move on.

"It's one of the ones where I think I gave everything to try to get there. At the end up I probably became a wee bit disillusioned because I wouldn't get an opportunity. Again, that's the manager's choice and I'm not going to argue with Tommy because I've got so much respect for him. He knows what's right and what's wrong.

"Strangely, Tommy knew that if I stayed at Celtic I wouldn't have had a career whereas if I left the club at that specific point in time I could go on and forge a career for myself elsewhere.

"Even having the most difficult conversation that I was ever going to have with Tommy was handled with so much dignity and class. It typifies the man. And he was proved right; he always was and I’m glad I listened to him."

While Burns was the foremost figure in his Parkhead life, Smith concedes that he will always remain indebted to Brady in particular. It was the Ireland great that handed him his dream of turning out in the famous green and white hoops.

"I played under the likes of Tommy Craig, Brady, Macari and also Connor for a wee spell,” Smith recalls.

Celtic Way:

"Tommy Craig was interim coach between Billy McNeill leaving and Brady coming in. It was Liam who handed me my debut in 1991. He came in that summer and about two weeks later he gave me my game.

“I'll always be grateful to him for giving me that opportunity. It was against Falkirk at Brockville and it was a strange game that we lost 4-3. It was quite intimidating as the fans were right on top of me. I had graduated into the first team as a product of Celtic Boys Club and, all through my career with them, I had played right-back or centre-back. I came on as a sub as a left-back and there I was making my debut for Celtic in a position I'd never played.

“I guess the overriding thing in all of this is just that I was playing for Celtic – and to be honest I would have played anywhere just to get out on that pitch and play for them. It was the stuff of dreams.”

Brady’s successor, former Celtic ‘Quality Street Kid’ Macari, was somewhat found wanting managerially for his failure to adapt to the talented playing staff he had at his disposal.

"The thing with Macari is that, sometimes in management, people have different ideas and everybody has got different ways of doing things. When you have got senior pros like Paul McStay, John Collins, Charlie Nicholas and Peter Grant sometimes you've got to adapt to the way they play.

READ MORE: I still talk to Tommy Burns every day - Peter Grant

"Maybe that was what Lou didn't do. He didn't adapt and play to their strengths. But that's the manager's call and who am I to say it's wrong? It's just a different way of doing things but I think you've always got to be able to adapt.”

Smith reckons that hitting a comfort zone in the reserve side which more often than not swept the boards was partly to prove his undoing at the Hoops.

He added: "I became confident playing in the reserve team – which actually isn't a great thing because you don't want to be comfortable playing in the reserves. I always seemed to get games at the end of the season then, come the new season, a new player would come into the club and I would be at the back of the queue again.

“That happens at Celtic because they are a massive club. When I look back could I have worked harder at it? Maybe, I don't know."

There was, though, another person in the shape of reserve team coach Frank Connor who instilled in Smith what it meant to be a Celtic player – on and off the park and with a healthy dose of realism, discipline and humour.

"Bobby Lennox and Benny Rooney were the reserve team coaches when I started out and they were great,” he said. “We had a superb reserve team, we won everything. They just kept us all going by playing games. That is the only way you learn to play football: by playing games.

"Frank then came in and I loved him from the off. He was brilliant with me. He just upped the discipline levels and understood all my strengths and weaknesses. He understood, as captain of the reserve team, that strength of discipline could help me as well as the team. He was such a good guy.”