IT SHOULD really be the happiest of times for Aiden McGeady at the end of a season that saw him voted both Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year by his fellow Scottish professionals, before helping Celtic to an improbable Premier League three-in-a-row, having trailed Rangers by seven points in early April.

But the death earlier this month, at just 51, of Celtic stalwart Tommy Burns - a player, manager, youth development officer and first-team coach during his lengthy association with the club - has hit McGeady hard, the depth of his grief over the loss of a man who played a major role in his formative footballing years evident when he spoke in Dublin where he joined up with the Irish squad.

"To be honest I wouldn't be where I am today without his help. Tommy was such a big influence on players like myself and a lot of the younger boys. It was said in the dressingroom on the last day of the season that if we could do this for Tommy it would be a fitting tribute, so it means a lot that we did.

"I was always very close with Tommy, he was the one to take me aside in training to have a word, to help me practice things like crossing and finishing, he was always a big help. I remember he said to me at the start of the season that this could be the year I'd go on and win Player of the Year. So I owe him an awful lot.

"Look at the tribute he got. I remember coming from the chapel, we (the Celtic squad) were behind the cortege on the coach, and all the way to the cemetery Glasgow was at a standstill. Both sides of the Old Firm, Celtic and Rangers fans, were out, I saw grown men crying. He was one of those guys you meet who is just a special person."

McGeady last saw his mentor when he turned up at training a couple of months ago. "He wasn't looking his best but that's the thing, it was just as if nothing bothered him. Clearly things weren't going well for Tommy, but he was still at the training ground, still having a laugh with us.

"But I knew when he came back from France (where Burns was undergoing treatment for skin cancer) he only had a few weeks to live."

Was that hard to come to terms with?

"Aye. It still is."

McGeady's consolation is that Celtic, in winning their last seven games of the season, displayed the kind of character that Burns himself was renowned for during his playing days with the club. "He'd definitely have been proud," he said. "Five, six weeks ago we were totally written off, people were calling for the manager to be sacked, so to have such a turnaround, the fact that it was in Rangers' hands and we stole it away from them, makes it that bit sweeter. It speaks for the character of the squad and the management."

A source of pleasure, too, for McGeady has been Giovanni Trapattoni's regular name-checking of the player since his appointment as Irish manager. "I heard him talk about me a while ago on Sky Sports News, so that was very encouraging for me.

"He seems like a very down to earth guy, he's nearly 70 years old but he doesn't look it. His training is enjoyable and he's got a good manner, all the players have taken to him and the other coaching staff pretty well. He seems a funny guy, too, so he should be good to work for."

Liam Brady, one of Trapattoni's team, has, Brian Kerr suggested in a recent Irish Timescolumn, "ground to make up" with a group of Irish players "still bristling from his columns and comments as a TV pundit during recent campaigns".

McGeady, along with Lee Carsley, Kevin Kilbane, Robbie Keane and John O'Shea, was one of the players mentioned by Kerr in that context.

Ironically one of the reasons cited by Brady, who tried to sign McGeady for Arsenal in his schoolboy days, when he reluctantly called for Steve Staunton's sacking on RTÉ last September, was Staunton's selection of McGeady for the game away to the Czech Republic - although he stopped considerably short of his fellow panelist Eamon Dunphy's description of the Celtic player as "a brainless winger (who) needs a brain transplant".

The 22-year-old, though, insisted there were no problems. "To be honest it was just a job he had to do, he's paid to be, well, not controversial, but speak his views on the game.

"If he thought a player wasn't performing well he would say it, that's just something that happens. We're all grown-ups, we can learn to deal with it. I've not seen Liam yet, I'm sure it will be fine."

No hard feelings. Life, McGeady reckons, is too short.