The 100 Greatest Scottish Sporting Icons day three: Numbers 79-68

One of just seven Scots to have played in the NFL, the Greenock-born goalkicker is the proud owner of two of the ugliest, yet most sought-after trophies in sport, a pair of Superbowl winner’s rings.

Having emigrated to the USA at the age of 10, the son of a mother from Greenock and an American navy SEAL, he made the conversion from soccer to gridiron goalkicker at school, was originally picked up as an undrafted free agent, and made his fateful move to the New York Giants in 2007.

That season he kicked the Giants into the Superbowl with his overtime strike in the NFC Championship match against the Green Bay Packers where they went on to shock the New England Patriots, wrecking their previously perfect season.

History then repeated itself as he emulated that feat four years later, becoming the only goalkicker to register two game-ending overtime strikes in another NFC Championship match with the San Francisco 49ers on the receiving end this time before the Patriots were once again beaten in the Superbowl.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Goalkickers tend to be subjected to similar attitudes to soccer goalkeepers –expected to do a job which is somehow regarded as less valuable in spite of being crucial to every team’s prospects, but Tynes has proven himself capable of doing what the vast majority of sportsmen cannot in coping with outcome-deciding pressure being placed on his shoulders.

Other Scots who have excelled across the pond at the highest level include Paisley’s Bobby Archibald, who played in basketball’s NBA with the Memphis Grizzlies, Phoenix Suns, Orlando Magic and Toronto Raptors, and, going back a bit further, Bobby Thomson, Glasgow-born but whose upbringing was entirely in the USA after he emigrated as a two-year-old. Thomson spent 14 years in the MLB and, more than half a century ahead of Tynes’ heroics, achieved the baseball equivalent when he hit what became known as “the shot heard round the world” with the match-ending home run that beat the Brooklyn Dodgers to win his side the National League pennant and a place in the 1951 World Series.

78

DAVID FLORENCE

He might swap them all for one gold medal, but three Olympic silvers, individually in C1 in Beijing in 2008 and with Richard Houghton in the C2 category in both London and Rio, speaks to magnificent consistency of performance in a sport that demands power, technical ability and concentration in equal measure.

The Aberdeen-born paddler, who first started canoeing after moving to Edinburgh, has also won two gold medals in C1 and one at C2 in World Championships.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Ahead of the Olympics in London, Florence put the record straight on reports that he had grown up in the same street as Chris Hoy, saying he did not but that they came from the same neighbourhood. Something in the air? Sort of.

The air in that part of Edinburgh tends to be breathed by youngsters who go to schools that provide opportunities to take part in sports such as canoeing and cycling.

Florence went to Daniel Stewart’s Melville College and Hoy to George Watson’s College, both of which can teach lessons in the benefits of providing a wide range of opportunities for their pupils to those dictating state school policy.

77

KATIE ARCHIBALD

She did not take up competitive cycling until 2011 yet within two years she had not only competed in a European Championships but had won a gold medal in a team along with Laura Trott, Dani King and Elinor Barker, which broke the team pursuit world record twice in the course of the competition.

Since then, competing in team pursuit, elimination races and omniums, she has won a further 10 medals at European and World Championships, all bar two gold and, along with Trott, Barker and Joanna Roswell-Shand, another gold medal at the Olympics in Rio.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

At the risk of over-egging a point, Archibald was a product of Glasgow Academy, albeit she focused on swimming while there.

Further context is also offered by fellow Rio cycling gold medallist Callum Skinner, who was both inspired and encouraged by Hoy as a youngster, having demonstrated that comprehensive school pupils can still achieve at the highest level having attended Edinburgh comprehensive James Gillespie’s High School.

76

BELLE ROBERTSON

Her predecessor, Jessie Valentine, enjoyed greater success in women’s amateur golf, winning both the French and New Zealand Ladies Championships as well as the British Ladies title three times in the 1930s, ranked No.1 in the world in 1937 and among those sportspeople who were denied even more honours when at the peak of their powers by the intervention of war.

However, there was something particularly special about Robertson’s pursuit of her Holy Grail in the British Ladies, in which she first reached the final in her early twenties in 1959 and did so again in each of the ensuing decades, in 1965 and 1970, losing both times. Hugely respected in the sport by that stage, having first made the Curtis Cup team in 1960, her run of consecutive appearances in the biennial contest was interrupted only by her selection as non-playing captain in 1974 and 1976 and she returned as a player in 1978 and 1980.

Yet the seven-time Scottish champion’s greatest successes were yet to come when she finally claimed that British Ladies title in 1981 before being part of a winning Curtis Cup team for the first time in 1986, the year she turned 50.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

There have been men such as Ronnie Shade and Charlie Green who have enjoyed what would be considered great careers in the amateur ranks but, albeit Jessie Valentine turned professional towards the end of her career, it was much longer before that was a serious career option for women which is why she and Robertson must be considered outstanding figures within their respective golfing generations as a whole.

75

JOCK WALLACE

Today, in a world of coaching badges, tactic books and plastic cones, it is impossible to look at the CV and career of the late Jock Wallace and not smile; jungle fighter, part-time manager and goalkeeper who presided over the biggest shock in Scottish Cup history, a tactical genius on the European stage and ultimately a managerial trailblazer on the continent.

Above all else, however, comes the line ‘highly successful football manager’. And Jock Wallace was certainly that. In 1967, Wallace inspired the ‘wee’ Rangers from Berwick to defeat the ‘big’ Rangers, still regarded as the biggest upset in the Scottish Cup.

A few years later, Wallace was coaching the Ibrox club to the Cup-Winners’ Cup, beating Bayern Munich (who provided the core of the West German European and World Cup-winning squad) ahead of the final against Dinamo Moscow.

Once Willie Waddell had been moved upstairs, Wallace ended Celtic’s run of championship title wins at nine, taking the top prize in 1974/75, before steering Rangers to two domestic trebles in three seasons. His second spell at Ibrox was less successful, yet he still managed two League Cups in the same year before making way for Graeme Souness.

Amazingly, Wallace – while being unable to speak Spanish –then surfaced in Seville at a time when coaches plying their trade abroad was something of a rarity. However, while he also managed Leicester City, Motherwell and Colchester United, Wallace earns his place in this list thanks to that Rangers side of the 1970s he coached so successfully.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

As a young man he fought the Chinese in the jungles of Malaya while with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. So when he said, ahead of key games, that his team had ‘the battle fever on’, he knew exactly what it meant.

That discipline never left him. His competitive nature also revealed itself in Malaya, when after losing a tennis match against a fellow squaddie, he jumped the net, not to offer congratulations, but to beat up his opponent.

If his teams had limitations and his man management was ‘industrial’ (he once picked Gary Lineker up by the scruff of the neck and threw him against a wall, while Ally McCoist’s famous League Cup hat-trick against Celtic came after he had been threatened with a loan spell at Cardiff), Wallace’s men were never lacking in fitness, the manager regularly running them to a standstill up sand dunes as part of his brutal training regime. It was hard, but it produced many a late win for Rangers.

74

PETER NICOL

A deeply controversial figure in Scottish sporting circles, the man from Inverurie is widely viewed as having tainted his own legacy by turning his back on Scotland when at the peak of his powers because he was able to get greater support from those running the English game.

Some of his greatest successes were achieved before he made that decision in 2001; Commonwealth gold (singles) and bronze (doubles with Stuart Cowie) medals in 1998 ahead of his victory in the World Open in 1999, having lost the final in each of the previous two years.

He remained world champion for three years because the competition was not run again until 2002 and was ranked No.1 in the world for a total of 60 months in the course of his career, including two full years during 2002 and 2003.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Bought and sold for English gold? That is what his strongest critics would assert but perhaps it is why he felt it necessary to make that switch that he is remembered in Scotland as much as for his achievements as a homegrown performer in a ‘minority’ sport.

Certainly few Scottish tears were shed when Canadian Jonathon Power, the volatile John McEnroe of squash, gained revenge for his defeat in the 1998 Commonwealth Games singles final when he beat ‘England’s’ Nicol in 2002.

Nicol then went on to win both singles and doubles gold for England at Melbourne just before he retired in 2006.

73

DR JOHN CATTANACH

In sport, the ‘greatest’ label is never easy to pin on any one individual, especially when it is judged across decades and generations. People have their favourites, listen to folklore, and are influenced by those of other generations.

To that end, shinty is no different to football, rugby or golf. For instance, there is a case for Celly Paterson of Kyles Athletic, both as a goalkeeper, a manager and as a rules administrator.

From the 1930s, some would advocate Caberfeidh’s Ken MacMaster, although he would also find himself behind Ronald Ross, the Kingussie goal machine, whose 1000-plus career strikes earned him the nickname ‘The Ronaldo of the Glens.’

However, in general, most consider the late Dr John Cattanach as the game’s greatest exponent. If greatness is judged by doing it on the biggest of occasions, then his efforts in the Camanachd Cup final of 1909 take him to a different level.

Newtonmore beat Furnace 11-3, Cattanach – who was also capped for his country at hockey and athletics – scoring eight of the goals, a record which still stands more than a century on. Cattanach is also the only shinty player, thus far, inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

While there was no TV in his day, and no-one is alive who saw him at his peak, the general consensus has always been Cattanach was a cut above the rest.

Having seen Ronald Ross in his pomp, I can only guess how great Cattanach was. In addition to international recognition in those other sports, he also graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in medicine. That was in 1912.

Three years later, serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps, Warwickshire Regiment, Lieutenant John Cattanach, like so many of his generation, was killed in action.

72

IAN STARK

The Selkirk three-day eventer was into his thirties by the time he attended an Olympic Games, yet he was to compete in five.

It was at Los Angeles in 1984 that he first impacted on the public consciousness, claiming silver in the team event and repeated that achievement at Seoul in 1988 where Stark set himself apart by also finishing runner-up in the individual competition.

After returning home empty-handed from Barcelona and Atlanta he was back on the podium as part of the team who again took silver at Sydney in 2000.

Also a member of the World Championship-winning British team in 1986, he collected a further nine medals, seven of them gold, at European Championships.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Nick Skelton may have set new standards for longevity in British equestrianism with his individual showjumping gold medal at the age of 58 in Rio last year, but in the physically demanding and highly dangerous world of three-day eventing, Stark’s performance in Sydney at the age of 46, playing a key role for the British team on Jaybee, was every bit as impressive.

71

MIKE DENNESS

Selected to play for Scotland in 1959 while still at school, Mike Denness was invited to a trial by Kent in 1961, made his county debut in 1962 and established himself in the side by scoring more than 1000 runs in 1963.

First capped by England in 1969 he played 28 Test matches in all, 19 of them as captain.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

John McCaffer, a former Ayr Academy teacher, once proudly showed me a photograph of the school’s rugby first XV of the fifties which contained Ian McLauchlan, who would go on to captain Scotland and represent the British & Irish Lions on their two most celebrated tours in 1971 and ’74, Ian Ure, who represented Scotland at football having been part of Dundee FC’s greatest team before playing for both Arsenal and Manchester United, and Mike Denness.

Albeit the 11-plus was then in place, it is hard not to be wistful for times when such breadth of sporting talent was encouraged at a Scottish state school.

Denness is unfairly best remembered for a decision which was easily characterised as lacking courage when he dropped himself as captain during the 1974/75 Test series, but doing so actually took great courage.

Curiously, Geoff Boycott played in the first six matches under Denness of which four were won during a drawn series with the emerging West Indies and a 3-0 whitewash of India, but then on the grounds that he felt he should have been made captain, opted out of that Australia tour.

Denness stood down only after battling gamely, albeit ineffectively, after undergoing the Dennis Lillee/Jeff Thomson onslaught through six Test innings and returned to lead the side for the fifth and sixth Tests, scoring a match-winning 188 in the last of them.

He finished his Test career the following summer with a winning record as captain, something little more than a third of his successors have achieved, with Boycott notably among those who failed to do so.

70

LIBBY CLEGG

The wide array of classifications in Paralympic sport make comparisons between disciplines difficult.

Several Scots have excelled – notably gold medallist and 10-time world champion cyclist Neil Fachie and seven-time European champion swimmer Andrew Mullen – but, with some justification, athletics considers itself the original and purest form of sport.

In keeping with that, there is something unambiguous about sprinters with impaired vision competing on a level playing field by putting on blindfolds.

In her category, therefore, the 26-year-old Clegg, who is English-born and based but chooses to represent Scotland, reigned supreme in Rio, winning both the 100 and 200 metres.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Unlike most Paralympic disciplines, the able-bodied can get a flavour of Clegg’s experience by putting on a blindfold, tethering themselves to someone of comparable athletic ability, then trying to run on a track as quickly as possible.

She herself has admitted that when she was reclassified and had to use the blindfold for the first time it was ‘terrifying’.

That she coped with that and with losing her funding support during the build-up to the Paralympics has only added to the scale of her achievements.

69

WILLIE WOOD

Made his Scotland debut in the same year that England won football’s World Cup and finally retired from the international team 45 years later just as he had started, as part of a winning Scotland team at the Home Internationals.

In between times he won a record haul of 15 medals in World Outdoor Championships and became the only sportsman to compete in eight Commonwealth Games.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Other Scots, notably Alex Marshall, Paul Foster, Richard Corsie and Hugh Duff who have, among them, a total of 15 World Indoor singles titles – have gained greater profile since indoor bowls began to feature regularly on television.

That is one of the few that Wood has never won along with, even more strangely, the Scottish outdoor singles title. However blessed with a cheerfulness that his solemn delivery demeanour on the green belies, wee Willie’s longevity sets him apart.

68

BOBBY MURDOCH

The playmaking genius of the Lisbon Lions only became recognised as such after the strategic and tactical genius that was Jock Stein recognised his greatest strengths and switched him from inside forward to a deeper slot at half-back where his long-range passing ability could be fully exploited behind a vibrant and varied forward line, as well as allowing him to arrive slightly later into the danger zone, maximising his shooting power.

He struggled with his weight and, in turn, fitness, which greatly reduced his career, but would go on to be a major influence in the career of Graeme Souness when they found themselves at Middlesbrough together under Jackie Charlton.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Jock Stein’s observation that Murdoch was ‘just about the best player I had as a manager’ is placed in its full perspective when one considers that Stein managed Scotland through several successful World Cup qualifying campaigns and that, at Celtic alone, Murdoch had Jimmy Johnstone as a fellow Lisbon Lion, while Kenny Dalglish was among the Quality Street Gang who were emerging before he left the club.