If we knew how and when to say good-bye to those whom we value and care for, life would carry fewer regrets. There will not be single person whom Tommy Burns ever encountered, either in or out of football, who will not feel that way this morning.

Everyone of us will recognise that missed opportunity. Now, we’re left with photographs and some television footage to sustain the memory of a man whose genuine warmth and humanity earned respect in every rival dressing-room and adulation among those who support the club he cared – almost too much, at times – for.

Tommy Burns devoted his life to Celtic. Three spells embracing 27 years. Few people get the chance in the modern game to make that sort of imprint upon a club. Which is why Burns’s death has struck such an emotional nerve with Celtic fans everywhere.

How do you dissect the career of a man who wore Celtic’s colours in the first team for 15 years, was manager for three and then served as the head of youth development and first-team coach for another eight? Which takes the greater significance? None. All were equally important in shaping the impact that Tommy Burns made at Celtic Park.

Very few managers – certainly in Britain - could return to the club that sacked them as manager and take a lesser role. Tommy did that when Martin O’Neill asked him look after the Celtic youth system in 2000. Just three years earlier, he had been shown the door by Fergus McCann, the then-chairman, after a managerial tenure that was cut short by foolish impatience.

Burns was sacrificed because he could not halt the domination of Walter Smith. The irony was that his successor, Wim Jansen, won the title the very next season, in 1997-98, but also added to the instability at Celtic Park in the Nineties. Jansen, Josef Venglos, John Barnes and even Kenny Dalglish were all shoehorned into the manager’s office in the volatile period before O’Neill’s arrival. If Tommy Burns’s life at Celtic was about anything, it was about longevity.

He cried in 1989 after his last game, against Ajax, when he realised that was his last appearance in a Celtic shirt some 16 years down the line since he walked across the threshold after being signed by the late Jock Stein. Burns contributed to a successful era, postStein, as he helped to secure six league title and four Scottish Cups. So committed to the cause was he, that he even played as a left-back in the 1986 title success for David Hay before returning to the creative midfield role for the Double triumph of 1988.

That longevity was duplicated when Burns stepped into the role of youth development. As someone who came through the club’s system, he was almost evangelical about creating the right structure, coaching methods and surroundings for the new generation of Celtic youngsters. At a meeting I had with Tommy in his office last September to discuss a book project, he was eager to show his own coaching “bible”, carefully assembled, laminated pages that would teach Celtic players of the future to play the stylish football he loved. Sadly, he must have known then that he would not be around to see those players.

Tommy’s illness was not something he would wear on his sleeve. Ask Gor-don Strachan and his players about the man who also doubled up as their first-team coach and they will describe the enthusiast who was always first out on the training pitch every morning. He told those whom he had known longest inside the Celtic back-room staff some weeks ago of his unwinable battle with cancer. He was prepared, even if the rest of us were not.

Among the many pictures of Tommy, both as a player and manager, which were aired yesterday on websites, once news of his death was announced, was one of him with Phil O’Donnell from September 1994 when Tommy made the young midfield player from Motherwell his first signing as Celtic manager. It was printed in every newspaper just five months ago when Phil died tragically at the age of 35 from a heart attack. Both men are smiling and full of optimism. Now, both are dead.

Burns was among those who attended Phil O’Donnell’s high-profile funeral, along with the rest of Scottish football. Yet a far more fitting memory of Tommy came the night before. Part of the funeral rites in the Catholic faith is when the body of the deceased in received into the church on the evening before the requiem mass. As a devout Catholic, Tommy knew his presence at that event would be truly comforting to the grieving O’Donnell family and he was standing at the back of the church, alongside Mark McGhee, for 90 minutes. Knowing only too well of his own limited lifespan.

I felt privileged to know Tommy Burns for 15 years. As the young manager of Kilmarnock, he used me to sound out my friend, Owen Coyle, about coming on loan from Bolton Wanderers. His genuine kindness would probably still have been a characteristic if he had been a bricklayer instead of footballer. If you asked for help, Tommy would comply. He organised rehabilitation for my son, Calum, after an injury and that sort of cameo is repeated a thousand times over in his relationships with others.

In the last interview that we did, for the Celtic Opus book, Tommy reflected on his unique status as player, manager, youth chief and first-team coach. “I hope I’ve made my mark,” he said. “Maybe I will not be thought of as a Celtic great, but I would love the fans to remember me fondly. For me, Celtic are all about the fans.”