It is not only Celtic Park that is coming to terms with the death of Tommy Burns. Rugby Park feels the pain, too. The shrine of scarves and shirts placed on the steps yesterday at the main entrance of Kilmarnock’s ground underlined a shared sense of loss.

There will be a minute’s silence before today’s Clydesdale Bank Premier League game with Falkirk, which brings the curtain down on the season. Burns spent 4½ years there, between November 1989 and June 1994, as both player and manager. There are few at the club now who remember the days when Burns wore blue and white, not green, and guided Kilmarnock to promotion to the top flight and a Scottish Cup semi-final appearance. Perhaps, though, it is fitting that Kilmarnock’s newest recruit can supply plenty of memories about the man whose life was abruptly cut short at 51 by cancer.

Paul Dalglish has only been at Rugby Park for four months. Kilmarnock are the fourteenth side he has played for in a packed career, yet it was his first that supplied the association with Burns. “Tommy was my very first manager at Celtic,” the forward said. “He was appointed in the summer of 1994 and I had joined the groundstaff a few months before that. He was a great guy who had time for everyone at the club, whether you were a top player or a kid.”

Dalglish’s father, of course had played alongside Burns at Celtic for two seasons, between 1975 and 1977, before Kenny Dalglish took his talent to Liverpool. It was a friendship that was renewed when Dalglish senior appointed Burns to the coaching staff at Newcastle United in 1998 as the latter tried to adjust to life after Celtic, after his sacking as manager in 1997.

“I worked under Tommy when I moved on to Newcastle as well,” Dalglish junior said. “He was brilliant there and the players loved him. I think you’ll find that is what everyone says about Tommy. He was an absolute gentleman. However, he demanded high standards of everyone and he was a great coach. I think the biggest compliment anyone could pay Tommy was done by Gordon Strachan. I watched his interview on television on Thursday and I don’t think anyone could do Tommy more justice than the way Gordon spoke of him.

“Everyone knows that Tommy was a great player. However, it is more fitting that people are just coming out and praising him for being a good guy and a friend. You saw how emotional Gordon Strachan was and that summed up the way every felt who knew Tommy. My dad will be coming up to Glasgow to attend Tommy’s funeral on Tuesday.

“When I came back to Scotland, in 2005, and signed for Livingston after being out the game for a while, Tommy and Gordon were great to me, they gave me a fitness programme and weight training to get me back in shape. I never heard anyone say a bad word about him.”

Ironically, the man in the opposition dugout at Rugby Park today has a Burns connection, too. John Hughes, the Falkirk manager, was brought to Celtic by Burns in 1995 to employ the no-nonsense centre-back style that was his trademark as a player.

“Yogi”, as Hughes is universally known, may have scared strikers but the groundstaff at Celtic Park saw a softer side.

“I used to clean Yogi’s boots,” Dalglish said. “He was another great guy. Yogi may have been an absolute giant of a man but he had a big heart and was good with the kids. I have fond memories of him and he was a really good professional.”

Yet Falkirk’s stylish, passing football is in sharp contrast to the game that Hughes played during his career. “I am not surprised,” Dalglish said. “He played in a good Celtic team and was probably influenced by Tommy Burns. Management is about getting the most out of the players you have and Yogi was always a winner when he played. If you have that quality, and demand it from your players and they respect you, that is halfway towards being a good manager.”

Paul Dalglish, of course, should know something about what is required of a good manager. He shared a house with one for most of his life. Kenny Dalglish’s serial successes of winning the English championship with Liverpool and then with Blackburn Rovers have ensured his reputation in the game as a manager, before his incomparable playing CV — as Scotland’s greatest-ever with 102 caps — is even taken into account.

Young Dalglish may have suffered from the endless comparisons with his father — which is perhaps why he enjoyed his most successful period far away in the United States playing in the MLS for Houston Dynamo, where no one had ever heard of “King Kenny” — but it does not appear to have created any resentment. Paul, now 31, would like to follow his father into coaching.

“I am taking my coaching badges this year,” he said. “With all the experience that I had in my career, playing for every single type of club, from the big ones like Newcastle and Celtic, to the smaller [Livingston and Scunthorpe]. I’ve played in the Premier league in Scotland and England and abroad. You pick up different ideas from every place.

“And of course, I grew up in a house with my dad. I have talked about football all my life and not many people have had the chance to bounce ideas off one of the greatest football people produced by this country. I want to test my ideas and see how they work in today’s football.”

Dalglish left Hibernian in August 2006 to continue his nomadic career in the MLS. It brought him success — Houston won two MLS titles — and a wife. It was his desire to show his new bride, Brandi, something of the world outside of America that prompted his return to the Premier League, and Kilmarnock, in January.

“My wife has never lived anywhere outside of the US, so the chance to come and live in Glasgow for a while was a good opportunity,” he said. “With Kilmarnock’s training facilities being at Glasgow University, that suited me. Brandi and I plan to visit parts of Europe this summer and see the sights. In the long-term, we will probably move back to America but right now I’m happy to be at Kilmarnock.

“I am really content and will be meeting Jim Jefferies next week to talk about a new deal. If we can agree on something for a year or two, that would be great. It is a great club. I don’t want to be moving myself and my wife around again. It would be good to stay in one place for a while.”