The 100 Greatest Scottish Sporting Icons day two: The countdown continues with numbers 91-80

Football, swimming and even cricket feature today as we take our count up to No.80...

Miss the first instalment? The 100 greatest Scottish sporting icons day one: The countdown begins

91

Eilidh Doyle

The home team’s athletics captain at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014 ended a 28-year wait for a Scottish athletics medal at an Olympic Games when she was part of the British 4x400m relay team that claimed bronze in Rio.

In doing so, she matched Yvonne Murray’s haul of 11 medals at major meets, Olympic and Commonwealth Games, World and European Championships.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Ahead of the recent resurgence of Scottish athletics that has led to the emergence of the likes of Lynsey Sharp, Eilish McColgan and Steph Twell in the first instance, then more recently Laura Muir, Andrew Butchart and Callum Hawkins as world-class competitors, there were times when it felt as if Eilidh Child, as she was then, was the lone Scot offering any sort of challenge at the highest level in her sport.

That she matched Murray’s medal haul in the way she did, at an Olympic Games, was consequently a fitting tribute for the role she has played in that revival and, still only 29, she is surely capable of continuing to set new standards of excellence for future generations.

90

Nancy Riach

As a teenager, the Lanarkshire swimmer consecutively held 28 Scottish and British records in various swimming disciplines in 1945 and had already picked up a bronze medal as part of the 4x100m relay team when she contracted polio while competing at the European Championships in Monte Carlo in 1947.

Like Eric Liddell, who would be immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire, she refused to compete on Sundays.

That strength of will was to fatally manifest itself in her decision to continue racing against medical advice and she was pulled unconscious from the pool during the 100m freestyle never to regain consciousness.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Belle Moore remains the only female Scottish swimmer to have won an Olympic gold medal, in the London Games of 1908, while in
recent times Hannah Miley’s relentless energy has earned countless admirers across three Olympic cycles, but the poignancy that surrounds Riach raises her story to a different level and its consequent impact on the public consciousness is very evident in the extraordinary Pathe News clips that can be found on the internet showing scenes in Airdrie akin
to those of a state funeral with more than 10,000 people following the procession.

89

Dave Valentine

Only one Scotsman has captained a team to victory in the World Cup final of a major mainstream sport, yet Valentine was something of a pariah in Scottish rugby circles when he did so because he was playing in what was considered to be the wrong code when he led Great Britain to their win at rugby’s first World Cup in 1954.

Capped by Scotland as a flanker before he “took the money”, Valentine had also played in all three Tests in a rare Ashes Test series win against Australia in 1948/49.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

There is something deeply unpleasant about the treatment of men who were deemed greedy but were extremely courageous in both accepting the challenge of playing against battle-hardened opponents in a version of their sport with which they were unfamiliar and in defiance of the views of many of those they had grown up among.

George Fairbairn, who would forge a magnificent career for himself as another Great Britain international, had a different experience in the seventies and eighties, maintaining lifelong friendships in his native Kelso, while Alan Tait’s performance with the British & Irish Lions in 1997 and Scotland’s Five Nations Championship-winning team went a long way towards showing the Borders rugby union community in particular what they had missed out on by shunning these men.

88

Douglas Jardine

To this day, there is perhaps no more controversial name in Australian sport than that of the England cricket captain who instructed his bowlers to launch the “Bodyline” blitz that brutalised opposition batsmen during the 1932/33 Ashes series.

Tasked with subduing the sport’s greatest run machine, Don Bradman, he achieved what he and his players set out to do as an unexpected series win was claimed.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Far from properly supported by the English cricket establishment of the day, it is an uncomfortable truth that despite his own identification with what he considered his family’s homeland of Scotland, some domestic administrators denied him on the basis that, in those colonial times, neither he nor his parents were born in Scotland.

As to his cricketing legacy, while the ephemeral spirit of cricket was widely considered to have been breached, fewer rules were broken than Australian bones.

However, changes to the laws of cricket ultimately resulted, enforcing restrictions to the leg side field that remain in place to this day, albeit they did little to prevent the West Indies, in particular, from deploying similar tactics to intimidate batsmen around the world when they had the firepower to do so in the seventies, eighties and nineties.

87

Tony Hand

Only one player in the ensuing 30 years – fellow Scot Colin Shields – has matched the achievement of the first British player to be drafted by a National Hockey League team and Hand has been described in favourable terms with the man considered the greatest ice hockey player of all time.

Selected not just by any team, but the then dominant Edmonton Oilers as their ultimate punt in the 12th round of the 1986 draft, he survived the cut-throat environment of their training camp but turned down their offer of a contract with one of their Junior League feeder teams and did the same again the following year.

He would have a stellar 22-year career in British ice hockey but then Oilers coach Glen Sather has suggested he would ultimately have made it in the NHL, stating in the foreword to Hand’s autobiography: “At the training camp I could see that he had a great ability to read the ice and he was the smartest player there other than Wayne Gretzky. He skated well: his intelligence on the ice stood out. He was a real prospect.”

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Hand was Scotland’s greatest ever ice hockey player, but another whose contribution to the sport must be remembered is James Foster, the Glasgow-born Canadian goal-tender who led Great Britain to their only Olympic gold medal in the sport in 1936 and was the only Scot to win Winter Olympic gold until the success of Rhona Martin’s curlers in 2002.

86

Alan Gilzean

Gillie’s goals – 169 in 190 matches – were a key feature in helping Dundee win their only Scottish League title in 1962 and he still holds club records for most goals, most goals in a season and most goals in Europe, his reputation growing across the continent as the team reached the semi-final of the 1962/63 European Cup.

A move to Tottenham Hotspur followed where, forming lethal partnerships with Jimmy Greaves and Martin Chivers, he helped Spurs win a UEFA Cup, an FA Cup and two League Cups, while he also scored 12 goals in 22 Scotland appearances.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

A fine player on either side of the Border and at international level, he acquired additional mystique due to a reputation for reclusiveness since, despite living in the south of England, some 30 years elapsed after he finished playing before he returned to White Hart Lane, then only after our colleague James Morgan published his well-received biography In Search of Alan Gilzean, and partly earns his place in this list as the representative of what was considered by leading commentators as the best Scottish club side of an era that also contained the Lisbon Lions.

85

Hugh McIlvanney

After learning his trade on his local newspaper, the Kilmarnock Standard, and as a news reporter with both The Scottish Daily Express and The Scotsman, McIlvanney switched department at the latter and, in doing so, raised the status of sportswriting within the profession.

After moving to Fleet Street, he was a perennial winner of awards at The Observer and The Sunday Times and remains the only sportswriter to have lifted the journalist of the year prize at the British Journalism Awards.

Retired in March only for his pen to be reactivated when The Sunday Times called on him to pay extensive and typically magnificent tribute to the sportsman with whom he is most closely associated, Muhammad Ali
. . . the greatest on the greatest.

Kevin Ferrie’s Reflections

For many of the current generation of sports journalists, this one included, McIlvanney set the standard, but he might just enjoy the notion that fine as his collection of sports books may be he may just have been the authorial equivalent of Australian Test cricketer Mark Waugh, one of the most gifted writers of his era, but still not the best in his own family.

That said, while his late younger brother William was one of the great modern Scottish novelists, the ever prescient analysis, so stylishly delivered week-in, week-out for The Observer and subsequently
The Sunday Times was of a quality that wholly bears comparison with that of the author of “Docherty” and “The Big Man”.

84

Paul Lambert

A major trophy winner as a 17-year-old, his under-stated quality, mixing a work ethic with sophisticated tactical understanding, brought him to the attention of Borussia Dortmund’s Ottmar Hitzfeld when he was part of a Motherwell side that was narrowly edged out by the Germans in a hard-fought UEFA Cup tie.

His qualities fitted in perfectly and he would play a major role in both the semi-final defeat of Manchester United and, notably, in policing Zinedine Zidane, in the victory over Juventus in the final as Dortmund won the European Cup for the only time in their history.

In five subsequent years at Celtic he would win the league title four times, two Scottish Cups, two League Cups and captain the team that reached the 2003 Champions League final, also winning 40 caps before moving into a managerial career that has seen him spend considerable time at the top end of the game in the English Premiership.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

After he left Fir Park, I once asked Lambert: “Did you know you could play the way Ottmar Hitzfeld [the Dortmund coach] wanted?” He replied: “Aye, it was just hard to do in Scotland when the ball’s flying 30 feet above head . . .”

Lambert was so good playing like a foreigner ITV commentator Brian Moore famously called him “Lomberre” for the entire semi-final against Manchester United.

83

Archie Gemmill

Even if he had not scored that goal which beat arguably the greatest ever Holland side at the 1978 World Cup, the little midfielder from Paisley would have had a remarkable career.

One of the first players to get the Cloughie treatment when the great manager threatened to camp outside his house in his car when trying to persuade Gemmill to sign for him rather than then champions Everton, he eventually agreed to head to the Baseball Ground where he helped Derby County become English champions in 1971/72 and captained them when they claimed the title a second time three years later.

Subsequently followed Clough to Nottingham Forest and, while there, won another English league title before the club embarked on its back-to-back European Cup wins. Left the club disenchanted after being left out of the team for the first of those finals, but worked with Clough again in later years as a coach.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

He did score that goal, the highlight of a 10-year international career but, putting his team 3-1 ahead as it did when they needed to win by three goals to reach the next stage, only for Johnny Rep to unleash a thunderbolt three minutes later, it has somehow come to symbolise Scotland’s sporting vision of itself as gallant failures.

82

Ian Smith

“The Flying Scot” was capped in 1924 and toured with the British & Irish Lions that year, playing in two Tests in South Africa, then was part of a Scotland team that marked the opening of Murrayfield in 1925 by completing a first Grand Slam against England.

To this day he remains Scotland’s record try scorer, now jointly with Tony Stanger, having scored 24 in 32 matches and he finished his career by leading Scotland to a Triple Crown in 1933.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Back then he was celebrated as part of the great Oxford University three-quarter line with GPS Macpherson, George Aitken and Johnnie Wallace.

Nowadays, an element in the Scottish rugby community would be quibbling about why two wingers who were born in Australia were required in that Grand Slam team, not least after the other one, Wallace, returned Down Under and played for the Wallabies for the next three years.

81

Wembley Wizards

As is so often the case with Scottish sport, as a nation we have an uncanny knack of turning potential disaster into moments of legend.

That certainly applied to the Scotland team who, after losing to Northern Ireland and drawing against Wales, would, over the space of 90 minutes in North London in 1928, write themselves into the annals of Scottish football folklore, their feats earning them the nickname the “Wembley Wizards”.

Footage of them in action beneath the famous Twin Towers is both grainy and limited, unlike their football on a wet, dreich day, a performance that was bright and expansive.

However, we rely heavily on the written word and on the tales passed on through the generations to understand their true greatness. What is in no doubt is that their talent, individually and collectively, was too much
for the might of England that day.

Alex Jackson, the Huddersfield winger, stood out; he was virtually unplayable down the right, netted a hat trick, and at 5ft 7in was the tallest of the Scottish forward line.

On the left wing, was Rangers legend Alan Morton, while the rest of the forward line comprised Jimmy Dunn of Hibs (his exploits that day earned him a move to Everton), Newcastle’s Hughie Gallacher and Alex James, then of Preston North End, but soon to become a legend in the all-conquering Arsenal side of the early-1930s.

James scored twice in a 5-1 victory, which also saw outstanding performances from the likes of ’keeper Jack Harkness, who would later became a successful sports journalist and centre-half Tom “Tiny” Bradshaw, who nullified the threat of the prolific “Dixie” Dean, the scorer of a record 60 goals that season for Everton.

If Scotland has an uncanny knack of turning potential disaster in to moments of legend, possibly only the Scots could hail this starting
11 as national heroes when finishing third in the Home International Championship, then, never again playing them together as a team.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

The greatness of Gallacher, as a prolific goalscorer with Newcastle, then Chelsea, and James, as part of an Arsenal side that won four Championships in five seasons between 1931 and 1935 (including three in a row and were runners-up in 1932) is easily measured.

As a nation today, Scotland would dearly love to have two players of their prowess and stature playing in England at the same time. Hard to imagine – almost as hard as trying to imagine these two first teaming up at Bellshill Academy . . .

80

Gordon Reid

Diagnosed in 2004 with the debilitating condition transverse myelitis – a neurological condition that inflames the spinal cord, affecting the nervous system – the then teenage Glaswegian served notice of his strength of character when he continued to pursue his love of sport and he was introduced to wheelchair tennis the following year.

He became Britain’s youngest men’s singles champion in 2007 and has continued to improve until, having won Grand Slam doubles titles at the 2015 French and US Opens, enjoying a breakthrough year in 2016, winning the Australian Open and Wimbledon titles as well as the Paralympic gold medal to end the year as world No.1.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Everything the Murray brothers have done Gordon Reid has, but in a wheelchair. For those of us who have been at The Herald for a while, his success has added poignancy because of the pride in his performances that had already been expressed in his achievements by his uncle Douglas Lowe, our golf correspondent for many years before his sad early passing five years ago.