IT is a little short of 45 years since the day Tommy Gemmell booted Helmut Haller up the jacksie.

This weekend, with Scotland once more taking on the mighty Germany, seems as good a time as any to revisit that comical evening in Hamburg in 1969, when two extraordinary football careers literally collided. You can watch the incident again any time you like on YouTube.

In a World Cup qualifier in which the Scots played heroically, Gemmell was lining up one of his famous thunderbolts 20 yards out when the prissy Haller clipped him on the ankle and put him off balance.

Incensed as only he could be, Gemmell turned and chased after the German, who tried to run away, like a wee boy in a playground. In the grainy black-and white footage, Gemmell's right leg suddenly appears to become twice its natural length as it stretches out and applies retribution to Haller, booting him into the air. The Juventus striker had already jumped to cushion the blow.

Poor Tommy Gemmell. He was a great footballer - some said the best left-back in Europe at the time - yet this will remain one of the funniest moments ever seen on an international football field.

Years later Frank Skinner and David Baddiel recreated the moment on TV for their Phoenix From The Flames series. A self-deprecating Gemmell willingly took part in the spoof.

It remains a night the 70-year-old former Celtic player will never forget. "I can't believe it was nearly 45 years ago," Gemmell said. "But I can still remember the moment very clearly.

"We were trailing 3-2 and I was ready to shoot from my favourite distance - about 20 yards - when Haller came in and clipped me. I was raging and took off after him before catching him one.

"He went down like the proverbial ton of bricks, squealing, holding his head, and I got sent off. The minute I was off the park, Haller was up again, totally fine, dancing around."

In fact, Gemmell might have been sent off 10 minutes earlier when he attempted a wild challenge on Reinhard Libuda as the striker raced through to score West Germany's third goal.

So the Scot's dander was up by the time Haller stepped forward to trip him. "That night had quite an effect on my Celtic career," Gemmell said. "Jock Stein dropped me for the League Cup final against St Johnstone at Hampden three days later and the next day I asked for a transfer.

"I went in to see Big Jock and asked why he had dropped me. He replied: 'It was the chairman [Bob Kelly] who suggested I drop you as a disciplinary measure after last week in Germany.' I'm not sure things were ever the same again for me at Celtic."

That said, it was fully two years before Gemmell finally got his move away from Celtic, to Nottingham Forest in December 1971.

Haller died two years ago, at the age of 73. Years ago he told an interviewer he would never forget the Gemmell, incident.

A brilliant footballer for 20 years, Haller played in the 1966 World Cup final yet never once appeared in top-flight German club football, either in the old top division or in its Bundesliga reincarnation.

A son of the Bavarian town of Augsburg, he played football for his local semi-professional team before being signed for big money at the age of 22 by Bologna. He would spend the next 11 years in Italy.

From Bologna, where he helped win the club's only title in the past 70 years, Haller moved to Juventus in 1968. He returned to Germany when he was 34 to play for Augsburg again but they were still mired in the lower leagues.

But that's not the half of it. Haller, who opened the scoring for against England in the World Cup final, was accused of "nicking" the match ball and making off back to Italy with it, despite England's Geoff Hurst having scored a hat trick.

Immediately after referee Gottfried Dienst had blown the final whistle that afternoon, the orange ball was left lying on the pitch and as Haller walked past he picked it up.

There is film of the German team receiving their consolation medals from the Queen in the royal box and Haller can be seen, perfectly innocently, with the ball under his arm. This was before the days when it became the norm for a hat trick hero to keep the ball.

Thirty years later in 1996, with England euphoric at staging Euro 96, the Daily Mirror embarked on a passionate campaign to "get the 1966 ball back", with Hurst the intended recipient.

Haller, by this point retired and living back in Germany, still had the ball and happily co-operated by bringing it to England. Today it rests in the National Football Museum in Manchester.

One more piece of infamy was to come Haller's way. He had already had a heart attack and was not in great health when in 2003 he married a 21-year-old Cuban woman called Noraimy Rodriguez Guiterrez, whom he appears to have met at a bus stop while doing some coaching on the Caribbean island.

Haller liked to boast that his new young wife, 43 years his junior, even had a mother who was younger than him. He finally went to his grave in October 2012, having suffered from Parkinson's disease, and after a pretty eventful life.

"My God . . . did he?" Gemmell said when I told him of Haller's late and unexpected marital bliss. "Good for him. I never saw him again after Hamburg; our paths just never crossed.

"But over the years one or two other German players said to me, 'you really gave it to Haller that night, didn't you?' Ach, I was just exasperated."

Hopefully, there will be no booting up the jacksies in Dortmund tomorrow evening.