HE had more clubs than Ian Woosnam on the last day of The Open. He was once accused "of only scoring goals in threes". And his recipe for life as a goalscorer was "to be fat and lazy and hang about the box". And he's not Ally. Or Joe Harper.

Willie Watters is that most Scottish of non-legends because he is a legend too. The perception of Willie is coloured by what strip he wore. He played for Clyde, St Johnstone, Kilmarnock, Queen of the South, Stirling Albion, Alloa, Arbroath, Albion Rovers, Stenhousemuir and Maryhill (pictured). He was routinely inspirational and prolific for most of them, but certainly a bona fide non-legend for Queen of the South and Alloa. He owes his inclusion to two traits, one peculiarly Scottish, the other related directly to Scottish football.

The first is Watters that he did not believe he was good enough. This "Scottish thinking" restricted his ambitions and certainly jeopardised his career. He kept his feet on the ground as a footballer and his knees on the floor as a carpet layer.

Secondly, the pint-sized striker enjoyed a fizzy lager. In one interview, he mentioned bevvy as often as Marvin Andrews does God.

So the diabolical Willie was left to prowl the underworld of Scottish football, making his reputation in front of hundreds instead of thousands. His departure from Killie was typically unjoined-up thinking and he lurched from good to bad to brilliant to desperate.

His heyday for many observers was his stint for a Stirling Albion side that found scoring goals as easy as finding a latte bar in Raploch.

Yet Willie regularly provided the Binos with hope and goals. One strike, when Albion were at their lodgings at Stenhousemuir, was a turn and volley of such exquisite perfection that it forced this correspondent to a gasp and then a quick scan to see if such a gem could be found in such surroundings. It was like finding the Koh I Noor in your pooper-scooper.

In Stirling, he was Alexander the Great. In Alloa, he was Ecky the Inefficient, Bordering On Morbidly Obese. A hero for our times, indeed.